REPUBLIC DAY CELEBRATIONS DISPLAY INDIA’S MILITARY MIGHT
CELEBRATIONS//The majestic Rajpath saw a fascinating display of India’s military might and resplendent cultural diversity as the country celebrated its 68th Republic Day on January 26, 2017, with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan attending the event as guest of honour. The Parade, held every year at Rajpath in Delhi was concluded earlier. On January 26, 1950, the Constitution of India came into force, and Republic Day is celebrated to honour that day. On this day in 1950, the first President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad took oath. President Pranab Mukherjee started the ceremony by hoisting the Indian flag, following which the Republic Day Parade began from Rajpath. The parade, started from Rajpath and ended at Red Fort in Delhi. This year’s guest of honour was the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who personally received the Prince at the airport, said that United Arab Emirates is India’s valued partner and close ties between the two countries are important for the entire region. India and UAE have signed 13 agreements, including one on strategic cooperation. Though Republic Day is celebrated on January 26 with the Parade on Rajpath, the celebrations were spread over three days and ended with the Beating Retreat ceremony on January 29.
ANGER OVER JALLIKATTU IN TAMIL NADU
PROTEST// The ancient sport of Jallikattu pits man against beast. But it was humans who came up against other humans as fights over the conduct of the sport disturbed the peace in Tamil Nadu earlier this week. Thousands of protestors who wanted the sport to be practiced freely got into a confrontation with the police across the state. Many were injured, vehicles were damaged and in Chennai, a police station was set on fire. In 2014 the Supreme Court of India banned Jallikattu for the reason that the sport was cruel to bulls. Animal rights organizations like PETA had complained to the court that bulls were being hurt and tortured before being released into the Jallikattu arena, possibly to anger them so that they would put up a fight before being tamed. People who want the sport in Tamil Nadu deny that bulls are hurt in any way. Instead, they argue that Jallikattu bulls are specially taken care of since they are prized possessions of farmers. Plus, they say, the sport is the only way of ensuring that bull species native to Tamil Nadu don’t become extinct as dairy farmers use only cows for milk production. Since early January, large groups of people had been protesting peacefully asking for the sport to be allowed. Huge crowds also gathered at Chennai’s Marina beach. On January 23, the protests turned violent, even as the government made moves to change the law to allow Jallikattu.
TRUMP TAKES OVER AS US PRESIDENT
APPOINTMENT// Donald Trump, the surprise winner in last year’s presidential elections in the United States, has taken over as the President of the United States. He replaces Barack Obama, who led the most powerful country in the world for eight years from 2009 to 2017. His first speech as the 45th President of the United States contained all the aggression that marked his campaign. During it he said, “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.” One of the issues that Trump raised during his campaign was that he was going to end the practice of companies taking away jobs from Americans and giving it to those in other countries as it was cheaper to get the work done there. Trump is clear that he wants to end this though it’s not apparent now how he is going to go about it.
CAPTAIN COOL STEPS DOWN
CRICKET// Two years ago when he stepped down as captain of India’s test team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni caught everyone by surprise. Last week when he decided to hand over charge of the One Day International team to Virat Kohli, the change was equally sudden. Done with no fanfare, no noise-typical Dhoni style. And true to a man who keeps a low profile, Dhoni’s last match as captain was as head of the India ‘A’ team for a warm-up match against England. At every stage of his career, Dhoni has been the unlikely hero of the moment. He comes from Jharkhand, a state that is not famous for producing cricket players. In 2007 his selection as captain of the Indian team in the (then) brand new format of T20 cricket was surprising and so was India’s historic win over Pakistan in the final. He led the team to a dream win at the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup and along the way also made India a top test team.
PRIYANKA GANDHI VADRA AMONG CONGRESS’ STAR CAMPAIGNERS
ELECTIONS// The Congress has named Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on its list of 40 star campaigners for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly election. In a desperate bid to resuscitate her party fortunes, Ms Gandhi recently played an active role in weaving an alliance with the ruling Samajwadi party in the state where Congress got 105 seats and the SP 298. After the alliance was announced by the chiefs of the state units of the two parties it was declared that while the Samajwadi Party will have the lion’s share of 298 of 403 seats, Congress will contest the remaining 105.
The first phase of the seven-phased UP assembly elections will begin on February 11 and end on March 8, with counting on March 11. The list also has name of heavyweights like the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Raj Babbar, actress- turned-politician Nagma, politicians like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Rajeev Shukla, Sachin Pilot and Salman Khursheed. Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's names also figure among the star campaigners list for UP.
A long time demand within the party workers that Ms Gandhi should play a pivotal role in the functioning of the Congress, it is understood that Ms Gandhi will reach out to the party allies and carry forward her brother and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's message to the people of Uttar Pradesh but clearly does not want to overshadow Rahul Gandhi's political career. Though she has always been a part and parcel of the party strategy discussions, it is widely believed that she has the knack and ability to take, her grandmother, Ms Indira Gandhi's legacy to greater heights. Sources confirmed CNN News 18 that she will campaign only in the family bastions of Rae Bareli and Amethi. Ms Gandhi is expected to use her communication skills to connect to the masses. She would be the face of the party to do all the negotiations ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in 2019.
EUROPE FREEZES OVER
CLIMATE// The new year dawned cold for Europe as temperatures fell sharply in countries such as Poland, Greece, Turkey and Serbia. Rivers like the Danube have frozen over and cities are carpeted in a layer of snow. This is the coldest time of the year in Europe.
While northern Europe is always extremely cold in winter as it is close to the Arctic Circle, the southern part of the continent is experiencing colder than usual weather this year. The most affected are the poor, homeless and refugees. Over 60 people have already died due to the cold. In Greece, government officials shifted refugees from camps into empty hotel rooms until the cold spell ends. Countries like Romania had halted traffic on the Danube river as the slippery ice is too dangerous for boats. In some parts of Europe, flights also couldn’t take off due to bad weather.
People from 7 countries are barred from entering US for 90 days
BAN// Donald Trump signed a sweeping new executive order to suspend refugee arrivals and impose tough new controls on travellers from seven Muslim countries. Making good on one of his most controversial campaign promises, and to the horror of human rights groups, Mr Trump said he was making America safe from “radical Islamic terrorists.”
“This is big stuff,” he declared at the Pentagon, after signing an order entitled: “Protection of the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States”. Trump’s decree suspends the entire US refugee resettlement programme for at least 120 days while tough new vetting rules are established. These new protocols will “ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States.”
In addition, it specifically bars Syrian refugees from the United States indefinitely, or until the president himself decides that they no longer pose a threat.
ainly-Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. During the suspensions of the refugee and visa programmes, new rules will be devised for what Mr Trump as called the "extreme vetting" of applicants’ backgrounds. Some exceptions will be made for members of "religious minorities," which — in the countries targeted by the decree — would imply favourable treatment for Christians. Civil liberties groups and many counterterror experts condemned the measures, declaring it inhumane to lump the victims of conflict in with the extremists who threaten them.
Arun Jaitley I’m sure is many things to many people but what many people do not know is his personal as opposed to his public and political persona. And who better than to give you that inside slice of a man not known to mix the personal and the political at any turn. And so when his friend Suhel Seth tells you of a small incident in the hills of Nainital it brings into relief a side of this lawyer-politician that makes him seem so human.
Suhel remembers how many years ago when Jaitley was the Union Law Minister, he went to Nainital to inaugurate the new High Court that had been set up there. Since Suhel was a student at St Joseph’s, Nainital, he asked him if he wanted to visit the place. He arranged for Suhel to stay at the Raj Bhavan, along with him. When they entered the Raj Bhavan and the caretaker asked for the required payment, Jaitley was quick to take out the money and pay it. The caretaker was a man called Tewariji.
Later in the evening, when Suhel was hanging around the impressive Raj Bhavan, Tewariji did not lose the opportunity to come and tell Suhel how he had served so many ministers and VIPs but that not one had ever paid the ridiculously low fee of Rs 200 per night and he always had to cough up the cash from his own pocket. Jaitley was the first man to ever pay for it himself. With awe, Tewariji, Suhel remembers, told him that this man Jaitley would go very far. That he has.
You cannot but like Arun Jaitley, even if you don’t agree with his politics. The man is suave, intelligent, sparkling wit, razor sharp, amiable and often smiling. Even when he’s taking you down or out or even ripping apart his adversary, Jaitley does it with calmness and a half smile which is nothing but a smirk. He brings all these qualities to the table when handling his job – when he was the country’s top-notch lawyer or when heading the pecking order in the Modi dispensation.
He is a man who not only has shown an ability to deal with the complexities his job brings, but also balance the pragmatic with the political. More crucially, he has emerged as the go-to man for the government to interface with a variety of constituencies, from the media to the corporate sector to global investors all of whom matter a lot to the Modi administration.
Given that Arun Jaitley loves cricket and has been an administrator of the game as vice-president of the BCCI it would be apt to describe him with a cricketing metaphor—he’s an all-rounder. He can open the innings and also come further down in the middle-order; he possesses a safe pair of hands and most of all, is a master bowler of spin. Just in the last one year, since the BJP was voted into power with a tremendous majority, he has held varied portfolios, ranging from Defence, Finance, Information and Broadcasting and Corporate Affairs.
Probably the most important role he has played is as the de facto spokesperson of this government, robustly and efficiently not just defending its decisions but also explaining some of the U-turns the Modi government has had to take in the past few months
This ability to manoeuvre the treacherous political sands without appearing defensive or indeed needlessly aggressive is what sets him apart—like any good lawyer, he sets out to present the best possible defence of his client.
This is a more valuable skill than acknowledged. Jaitley’s colleagues in the government and in the party tend to come out fists flailing against the UPA and the Gandhi dynasty whenever they are asked a question. Jaitley doesn’t; he is critical of the Congress, but not in a way that sounds crude.
The articulate and suave Jaitley makes up for the crass public spokespersons of the party and provides assurance that the BJP bench has some people with the education and maturity to express the party’s and government’s point of view without getting into a slanging match. He rarely, if ever, displays a needless angularity in addressing an issue. That makes him well-liked by the media, which knows that he will give a good quote but also provide insights and information that is so sorely lacking.
Part of the reason for his widespread media popularity is, of course, his networking skills. A recent profile suggested that he had friends in the media and also in politics cutting across parties and ideologies which had helped him over the years. Perhaps that is the case, but if so, then this quality has helped this government the most since it is largely composed of novices who would otherwise find themselves at sea in the treacherous waters of Delhi. Jaitley is an invaluable man for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Jaitley successfully established his skills as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s troubleshooter when it comes to dealing with the opposition parties and finding solutions to outstanding policy matters. The finance minister has gone out of his way to demonstrate that he cannot be ignored and that he is the Prime Minister’s best bet when it comes to handling important policy matters and dealing with the opposition.
In a cabinet that seems under orders to stay out of the limelight and focus on their work, Jaitley seems to be an exception.
But then he always was an exception. He is the consummate suave Englishtelevision-type Lutyens insider in a cabinet led by a PM who takes pride in being antiLutyens. He was the one prominent BJP heavyweight who lost the Lok Sabha elections when a Modi wave propelled many non-entities to victory. The rumour was Arun Jaitley had decided to fight Lok Sabha elections because the PM wanted only “elected” representatives in his cabinet. He lost but still entered the cabinet as did the likes of Smriti Irani and Nirmala Sitharaman. Obviously, the PM holds him in high esteem.
He’s no Jaitley-come-lately
A BJP secretary and a name with little national resonance in the 90s Modi was a regular visitor to the Jaitley home. It was Jaitley who stuck by Modi post-2002 offering him legal help and tea and sympathy. When Amit Shah had to leave Gujarat in 2010 after the Supreme Court ruling he came straight to the house of Jaitley. A BJP politician recalls “there wasn’t a day these past years the two didn’t share a meal together.” As Jaitley himself told the popular TV courtroom newsdrama, Aap ki Adalat, that despite knowing that his own name was in the race, he batted for Modi as the BJP’s PM candidate early. So let no one doubt his loyalties.
Just call him Mr Congeniality
There’s nobody in Delhi who does not like Arun Jaitley. He’s on the first-name basis with everyone who counts for anything, across party lines. Sharad Pawar and he bond over cricket. When Mayawati wants to speak in a major debate, it’s Jaitley who obliges with an allocation. He even helps out Sharad Yadav when the latter is upset about the party office being moved from the ground floor to the third floor. Jaitely sounds quite like the lovable cuddly teddy bear with an unnamed Trinamool Congress member saying he should be the parliamentary affairs minister because “the select committee meetings are so relaxed because Jaitley knows everyone on a firstname basis.”
The making of Arun Jaitley
It’s not often that the man opens up to the media formally even though he’s known to have informal sessions where he regales the media with his penchant for gossip and humour. In a recent chat with the celebrated British author and historian Patrick French, Arun Jaitley gives us a rare peep into his family and the past.
“We were a Partition family,” he says. “They had nostalgia about Lahore and disliked Pakistan for having taken Lahore from them. It had left wounds. Families who suffered at Partition were conventionally Jana Sangh voters. They were critical of Nehru and even more of Indira. I remember my father thought they had suffered because of Nehru.”
Jaitley’s newly married parents had reached Delhi as refugees in August 1947. His grandmother had been left with six sons and two daughters when her husband,a mid-level railways officer, died in the 1920s. She strove to get them educated, and four of the boys ended up as lawyers. “It’s rare to be so keen on education,” says her grandson. “They brought their clothes and jewellery with them. Nothing else. In Old Delhi, they took various places on rent and were given a Muslim migrant’s house.”
Born in 1952, he says he had a protected childhood. But it was not easy. “Have you ever seen a Punjabi beggar? Punjabis as a community are an aggressive lot. They made shops on the pavements. They set up ‘camp colleges’. At that time, the High Court was in Simla and the Bar was divided between local lawyers, who were Banias and Kayasths and a few Muslims, and newcomers known as the ‘refugee bar’. Some, including my father, got offices in Chandni Chowk or Sadar Bazaar. Education was a top priority because of the Brahmin thing of my grandmother. My sisters and I were sent to convent schools, English-medium.” In the 1960s his father bought a small plot and built a house in Naraina Vihar.
It was in the courtyard of this house, on the night of 25 June 1975, that Arun Jaitley spotted a policeman speaking to his father. He was at the time an activist in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and had been picked by JP as the convenor of his youth committee. “I escaped out of the back door.” The next day, as president of the student’s union of Delhi University, he organised one of the only protests in the entire country. “We had 300 people. At that time, I did not even know the Emergency had been declared.” Then the police made mass arrests, across the city. “I was detained for 19 months between Ambala Jail and Tihar Jail.”
While some were torn apart by the experience of imprisonment, Jaitley seemed sanguine. “Jail is a state of mind. If you’re too anxious to be released, it impacts on your mind and body. If you’re in the struggle mode, you don’t give a damn. You read a lot, play volleyball, badminton. We had a few hundred political prisoners and were all segregated. You eat together, develop relationships. It’s like being in a hostel together.”
A political career
It was in the aftermath that he forged his political career. “In January 1977 I was released and plunged into the election campaign. I was the national convenor of the youth and students. I travelled around India. Lalu, Sharad Yadav, Nitish, Karat, Yechury, Parkash Singh Badal, JP himself, Acharya Kripalani, George Fernandes, Advani, Vajpayee, Nanaji Deshmukh – I have dealt with almost every one of them. I’m one of the few eyewitnesses in the present government of what happened.”
Forty years on, wrapped in a jamawar shawl while addressing the Rajya Sabha, having made plenty of money as a senior advocate, it can be easy to forget this tough side of Jaitley. The connections he formed early on stood him in good stead later. He says he first met Narendra Modi in the 1970s, “when he was studying in Delhi,” and was struck in the 1990s by his “organisational competence.” The relationship seems symbiotic. In the wake of the 2002 Gujarat riots, he gave Modi shrewd legal advice in his dealings with the judiciary and Election Commission. “In 2011, I told colleagues he will be the prime ministerial candidate.”
“I am socially wedded to the middleclass family values of India, strong traditional family values. I am economically liberal. I’m conservative on issues dealing with sovereignty, terrorism and separatism. Then on the gay rights issue, I was one of the first people in the BJP to speak on this subject. If millions practice an alternative sexuality, then can you say it’s against the order of nature? You can’t have a situation where they are all locked up. On caste and religion, it is a matter of freedom of choice – I have a big heart. In my family even when children marry, we don’t ask the caste or community.”
Does he believe in God? Jaitley pauses. “My mother was religious and my wife is very religious. We have a temple in the house with multiple gods, portraits of the Golden Temple and all of that. I’m a practising Hindu but I’m not ritualistic. I do it at formal functions. I follow the customs.”
On his greatest weakness, Jaitley goes off on an extended riff about his favourite dishes. “I was originally a great lover of food but I have health limitations now. My preference is for north Indian food. I like Kashmiri, Punjabi, the Old Delhi food. I like Gujarati and the South Indian snacky food. And I very much like the old club menus, the legacy foods. Continental is otherwise not my great favourite. I like Chinese and Thai, among the internationals. But these days,” he says wistfully, raising his right hand to the sky with its fingers splayed, “I even have to carry my own food on aircraft, for health reasons.”
On his weakness as a person, Patrick French writes for the first time Arun Jaitley falls silent. He tries to think of a weakness, and then gives up. “I’ve never thought of it.”
NOVEMBER 8, 2016, will be a night few Indian will forget in a hurry. In a late evening broadcast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi startled the nation by announcing that the two big currency notes – Rs 500 and Rs 1000 – were going to be pulled out of circulation from that midnight. That night the nation barely slept dogged by the de/re-monetisation nightmare. The nightmare soon gave way to a daily struggle for cash and carry. There was no cash and nothing to carry. Work, markets, trading, agriculture all came to a grinding halt. After all, India is a cashdriven economy and without cash, nothing would move. Then why did a politically astute person like Modi suddenly impose such a decision on the nation? Was it the politics of business or the business of politics?
Barbara Harriss-White, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford, with decades of experience studying India’s vast informal economy, says that it was this part of the economy that was most hit by the decision to demonetise.
She is firm of the view that in this case, politics was put before economics because this demonetisation never emerged from an economics textbook.
She points out that for decades, the cost of fighting elections in large constituencies exceeded the official ceiling for election expenses so that India’s democracy is well known to be underpinned by untraceable funds. And over 75% of funds officially recorded as received by Indian political parties between 2004 and 2011 were from unknown sources.
After elections, the untraceable borrowing is repaid through a range of democratic malpractices and black market activity. A respectable academic paper has shown how this can be tracked in official data on the cement industry – vital for black real-estate – as the demand for cement dips regularly before elections when its funding is diverted to politics.
Barbara’s reading suggests that while notebandi may have threatened the cash reserves of opposition parties, for the BJP it was business as usual. The sudden announcement did not seem to have surprised the ruling party. The media reported unexpected large-scale land purchases outside future Smart Cities in advance of November 8 by ruling party members, and the use of co-ops – at least in Gujarat – to receive suspiciously huge deposits.
While the PM admits the need to reform political funding, the Bill to do this has languished before Parliament for two decades, thanks to permanent cross-party reluctance to discuss it. There’s no attempt to make party funding transparent. Political parties depositing non-legal currency notes in their accounts are exempt from income tax provided individual donations are below Rs 20,000.
Reports suggest that deposits of less than Rs 2.5 lakhs in political party accounts will “not necessarily be chased by the Income Tax”. India will have to wait for reform until the BJP feels secure in its funding. Well-discussed and obvious steps forward include tighter, un-corrupt audit, exemplary punishment for offences, and digitisation so there is the same trail for politics as for the economy.
As for the electorate, most of which earns between Rs 3,500 and Rs 7,500 per month, its conditions of political acquiescence and powerlessness and of economic hardship are well-established. It’s persistently reported to support the sharp increase caused by notebandi to its own routine distresses on the grounds that their dishonestly wealthy exploiters are said to be being exposed and hammered too.
Recent victories by the BJP in local and by-elections in Chandigarh, Maharashtra and Gujarat are used to support this proposition. While opposition party disunity is against the national interest, opposition to notebandi is branded antinationalist: in the PM’s words “political pujaris of black money and corruption”.
In a society as unequal, socially stratified and politically fractious as India’s, it is genuinely difficult to co-ordinate opposition to a policy that keeps constantly shifting its parameters and for alternatives when these are being closed-off as the policy develops. There have, however, been protests of outrage (for instance, the Salt Corporation women), grumbling by BJPvoting banias in Old Delhi (who may have things to hide), edgy mass responses at BJP political meetings in UP and a million strong protest the length of Kerala.
Looking at motivation, we must first be clear about the stated objectives. On November 8, the sudden illegalising of tender was officially said to be aimed at destroying corruption, black money, counterfeiting, and terrorism. On December 27, the PM declared mission accomplished.
However, this objective does not stand scrutiny – either in theory or in practice.
In the end, the politics of demonetisation will trump its economics. If Modi is able to convince the electorate that he has imposed this enormous burden on ordinary Indians in the interests of the country he will have won the political argument. On the other hand, if the political mood goes against the government, no amount of economic logic can save it.
There is one political gain that Modi has already secured from his monetary move. He has embedded himself firmly in the consciousness of almost every Indian across the length and breadth of the country. No other policy intervention since Independence has touched every citizen in the way this one has.
One can think of many politicoeconomic decisions that have had a wide social impact, like Indira Gandhi’s nationalisation of banks and P.V. Narasimha Rao’s termination of the licence-permit-quota raj. But even these major economic policy interventions did not have the kind of widespread social impact as Modi’s de/re-monetisation drive. Overnight, the name of the Prime Minister has become a household name across India.
In terms of branding and name recognition, this is a coup that every marketing manager dreams of. Hate him or love him, you cannot ignore him. Having lodged himself in the mind of every voter, Modi has to now make sure that the voter will prefer him to someone else the next time at the hustings.
Wanting a fitness regime but not getting the time or place to work out at a gym? Uncomfortable to be initiate fitness in a room full of flexing jocks and janes? Wanting some personal attention to make that start you have been delaying for long? Or simply wanting to get into a schedule comfortable to you or completely designed by you. Then fitness apps are the answer you’ve been waiting for. And for those who are already in the fitness zone these apps allow you to remain fit at your fingertip.
So here’s a shout out to all those who inhabit the fitness world – how about having the privilege of having a live-in trainer who could put you through the paces at all time of the day and night: Help you choose the healthiest options at a restaurant, travel with you as you mark the world with your footprint and give you important tips to lose weight after having binged at the New Year or Holi party. Sounds incredible? But it isn’t. Today there is a range of fitness apps doing just that — for free or at less than one-fourth the cost of a personal trainer!
Hatim Kantawalla, co-founder and chief product officer, Mobiefit Technologies, says: “Studies suggest that about 60 per cent people enrolled at gyms don’t use the facility. The motivation, costs and logistics are the main hurdles — and I have experienced this personally. The urban lifestyle is such that we want to but are not able to keep fit.” The idea of Mobiefit was essentially to stay fit without spending money.
The app has three different kinds of workouts. Mobiefit Run trains you to run 5 km in 30 minutes. The second, Mobiefit Walk is for those who are starting their fitness journey or recovering from an injury and the last, Mobiefit Body, helps to work out the entire body with zero equipment. There are 50 sets of exercises which you can do without using any equipment. There are 22 programmes which increase in intensity. The app also has a wide data bank of knowledge on common problems like back issues, diabetes, cardiovascular problems etc for you to access. There are injury prevention tips for people who are going to start running. More specific cases are discussed via a Skype session.
The app’s tools calibrate every activity – including how many kilometers a person walks/runs and the calories burned during this period. There are videos for indoor workouts and you can also log in the food that you eat to know your calorie intake. Only the 10k programme – where one learns to run 10 km in 60 minutes non-stop in three months carries a one-time fee of Rs 299.
Another app, Obino, was the outcome of its founder’s personal experience from battling weight. Ritu Soni Srivastava, the woman behind Obino, enrolled with a specialist to lose the 26 extra kilos that she had piled up during pregnancy. She decided to discard the specialist guiding her midway. While following the programme she lost seven kilos in three months and later she lost another 12 kg in six months by following her own thing.
To help others, she launched Obino, a doit-yourself app in August 2014. When users started coming back with queries, Srivastava got fitness experts on-board. Obino’s free version offers calorie counts of different foods and reminders (to drink water, to carry a snack etc). There are two paid programmes. The one which develops a diet and fitness plan, without a human interface costs Rs 499 per month. In the second one, which costs between Rs 999 and 1,799 – depending upon the number of months enrolled for, the user is connected with an expert at all times. The expert crafts a programme keeping in mind the user’s lifestyle problems.
As far as fitness apps go, one is spoilt for choice. Another app, Fitso, offers workout videos, a tracker that calculates the calories consumed and the distances covered during a run or while cycling. You can key in your fitness goals and it suggests workouts, which steadily increase in intensity. The app was launched by three IIT Delhi engineers — Saurabh Aggarwal, Rahool Sureka and Naman. The trio who are from the institute’s 2011 batch started the app after researching the existing products in the market.
The paid version of the app offers the option of a personal trainer and you can choose from a nutrition, running or fitness expert. “Most people can’t afford a personal trainer. In a gym, on the other hand, the trainers cannot give personalised attention as they have to deal with 100-200 people. And it is here that Fitso scores, as it can give you personalised attention at a marginal cost,” says Aggarwal. The trainer monitors your activity for the entire week, suggests the next week’s plan and resolves queries over the phone.
But if online training isn’t your cup of tea, Housejoy, can send trainers home! The app registers your statistics – weight, height, BMI as well as the problems and goal and sends a trainer depending on it. A course of 12 sessions with the trainer costs Rs 6,000.
Each app has its special feature, which can help you make a choice depending on what you are looking at. Fitso’s paid version allows the user to upload videos of his/her workout so that the coach can see it and ensure that the correct technique is followed during an exercise. Mobiefit regularly hosts competitions like squat, crunch or push up challenges and users can upload their videos and the winner is rewarded by Mobiefit. Housejoy offers a trial session with the trainer so that the user knows what a session will be like.
Obino, on the other hand, has the second largest Indian food data base with calorie counts. “You can inform the nutritionist of the cities that you are travelling to and the nutritionist checks the menus of the restaurants where you’ll eat and even suggest a meal through an email,” says Srivastava. It also creates a chat group with a main and a back up coach, a nutritionist and also your spouse – if one wants to.
So with the fitness app now in your palm, there can be no reason not to achieve your fitness goal. So go for it now.
LIKE MANY INDIAN, official traditions, the Union Budget too has its roots in the British Raj. On 18 February 1869 at 5:30 pm sharp, in order to coincide with noon in London, the British Finance Member of the India Council, James Wilson, presented the first Indian budget.
This set a precedent that is being followed in India to this day. The only cosmetic change the government plans to introduce this time is to advance the timing of the budget speech from 5:50 pm to eleven in the morning. Clearly, an exceedingly sensible step that ought to have been taken years ago.
However, more than the timing of the budget, what really needs to be changed is the very mindset that surrounds this annual exercise.
Shrouded in extreme secrecy since British times, the budget has traditionally been an occasion for dread. Who will the taxman axe this time is usually the question that has haunted generations of Indians.
Although the budget is more than just taxes and at one level reflects the fiscal mindset of the government and provides financial fuel to its policies, it is the issue of taxes that generally hogs the limelight and interests the common man.
The allocation of funds to various government departments for the average person is an academic ritual, both abstruse and of little practical consequence.
Financial allocations are more closely followed by business interests, departmental heads and NGOs who stand to benefit from them.
The sheer bulk of taxation and expenditure details that comprise the budget actually detracts from its larger purpose.
The focus of the budget ought to be its macro-economic impact, including issues such as the budget deficit, impact of overall investment, tax-GDP ratios and so on.
Instead, it is the small print of the budget that captures the public imagination and national attention, leaving the larger, and more important, issues to economists and financial experts.
The times, however, are changing and tax issues will hopefully be less in focus in future budgets. This mainly because the government’s powers to tax are being increasingly constrained in today’s environment.
Firstly, the specious instinct to constantly lower and raise taxes arbitrarily or according to the dictates of business lobbies or because of fiscal considerations is viewed poorly as such behaviour can severely damage business and consumer confidence.
The popular consensus the world over and in India is for a stable tax regime where sudden, arbitrary or punitive changes in tax rates are rare if not absent.
Sadly, the tendency of this government to impose taxes through dubious means such as surcharge, cess and various charges for public goods is a dark blot on the country’s fiscal scene.
The rates of direct taxes - income and corporate taxes - are a very political issue and have not generally been tampered with in any major fashion by governments in recent decades. These rates remain more or less stable and reasonable by world standards.
The government’s failure in the direct taxes area does not stem from rates but from its inability so far to expand the tax base and bring perennial tax dodgers into the taxation net.
One of the main areas affected by the budget is that of indirect taxes, chiefly excise duty (in the case of the Centre) and sales tax (in the case of the states).
Consumers and producers traditionally waited in dread to see how the budget would tax commodities. For decades, the government of independent India has carried on the horrible colonial practice of manipulating commodity and product prices through indirect taxes.
In the past, the colonial government manipulated taxes to favour the home country or milk revenues from a lucrative trade whereas today the manipulations are mainly due to lobbies.
Hopefully, the introduction of the general Goods and Services Tax (GST) will lower the tendency to continually and arbitrarily manipulate tax rates on various services and goods.
It is unlikely, however, that the GST regime will totally eliminate indirect tax manipulation as this is an instrument of influence in the hands of the political class.
The WTO (World Trade Organisation) agreement to which India is a signatory is the cause of another set of constraints. Unlike in the past, the government of India cannot tax imports as it pleases and in certain cases impose prohibitive rates of several hundred per cent (as was the case in wine imports).
India is committed to following the general agreement on rates and the government as a consequence will have less and less room to manipulate customs duties or impose punitive rates.
As customs duties decline and become ordered, the band available to vary them narrows. This should suggest to the government that the continual tampering with these rates is going to be counterproductive.
The other consequence of the WTO agreement on indirect taxation as a whole is the effect it is bound to have on the levels of taxation on domestic industry.
As customs duties have declined, continued high levels of excise duties have crippled the growth of several industries, electronics being among them. Due to this anomaly, it is cheaper to import entire systems than to import parts and make in India.
The greed for revenue has hitherto prevented the government from acting decisively in this area that requires urgent action. While financial bureaucrats continue to promise that they will “look into the matter”, very little changes on the ground and the make in India mirage keeps receding.
The budget thus needs to go beyond the taxation mindset and focus on larger issues through policies, incentives and the dismantling of bureaucratic roadblocks. If this happens the Indian budget would finally have bid adieu to its colonial past.
If you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you... —Friedrich Nietzsche
You can sacrifice a memory in a desert and eliminate it eternally, as post-modernism will tell you, with its exclusivity and power of knowledge and language. Memory is not a restricted ‘all white’ club of the elite. You can’t sacrifice a memory and eliminate it, because it will come back, again and again, like a memory and a sacrifice.
Like ancient Aleppo, a civilisational landmark, which is today as much a grotesque art installation as it is a war memorial crying saline, bloody tears: melted, turned into a volcanic lava of mass graves, brutalized, dehumanized, transformed into a multiple neo-architecture of rubble, wires, barbed wires, dynamite, land mines, bombs, gun shells, burnt out and destroyed walls, bombed out streets, by-lanes, homes, bedrooms, with the number of dead and dying, hungry and thirsty, raped and ravaged, as abstract and as unknowable like an abstract painting drawn by hallucinatory post-modernists celebrating the statistics of late capitalism outside the domain of all history and civilization.
Indeed, Aleppo is the truth of modern times which can never become a post-truth; it is the normalcy which denies the ‘new normalcy’ of all comfort zones of the rich man’s infinite war machine; it is the tragedy which is as tragic as bitter realism can ever claim to be.
Truly, it’s official. If there is nothing like truth, then even post-truth is metaphysical, like a Nietzschean abyss, suspended in time and space, across a highway to nowhere, condemned and exiled at the same time. Indeed, if Aleppo is the post-truth, then the world is an eternal paradise.
One can mix page 3 celebrities, titillation, nudity, cheap movies and pornography, bombs and headless bodies, suicide bombers and jehadis, massacres of innocents and the latest La La land awards, and all the hyperbole at once can become a sublime synthesis of truth, as if Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ was never created, or no one ever listened to this magical music.
Life is not a glossy cover. Even a thousand lies could not make Goebbels a prophet of truth, nor did the concentration camps of the Holocaust vanish into the blue, however, blind the world became even as Hitler and his Gestapo enacted a daily carnage, and the packed trains to the gas chambers rolled across the lovely landscape and railway tracks of Europe. Till 1941, the US did not even enter the war. While millions in Soviet Russia sacrificed their life to defeat fascism. Can you count the millions of dead Russians? Anyway, neither war nor peace impacts the US, geographically, or emotionally. It is as distant from the truth, as is a prophet from a miracle.
So let the refugees roll in inside Greece and Germany, let Aleppo, Mosul, Palmyra, the exiled towns and villages of the Kurds, enter new margins of invisibility, let the war cry drown Beethoven, but, no, you can’t sacrifice the reality and turn it into a lie. Between lies and propaganda, the world is forever watching. And, documenting. Recording. Remembering. Like the remembrances of things future.
This is because, like post-modernism, there is nothing like post-truth. And life is like this only.
You hear the birds and the children play early in the morning, that is the message of the first light and dew drops of dawn. You live one day at a time. Life beckons. The lines on the broken face of Zakia Jaffri, and her relentless struggle; it is the resurrection of hope, even as the memory of Gulberg Society, 2002 Gujarat, remains etched in her mind. Even if the nation has been compelled to forget it. Like the mother’s mind in the movie: ‘Parzania’. Waiting for her son.
You cross the river across Kashipur’s tribal villages in primordial Kucheipadar. Tribals call it the ‘Kashmir of Orissa’ because of its untouched, primitive, raw beauty. You walk upon the waters, like Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’, and you become a stone, like the three stones as a memorial on a mountain where three tribals were killed in police firing, protesting against the mining of their beautiful land, forests and rivers in the Eastern Ghats.
There are flowers in their hair, as the Dongria tribes celebrate their bio-diversity in the lap of nature, the hot spot of ecological treasure, their homeland called Niyamgiri. They too hate the mining mafia and they are steadfast and they are refusing to move. Like the native Indians in South Dakota, in this freezing cold; they will have to do another genocide to move them from their totems and taboos, in this anthropological backyard, whereby all natives in the Americas were eliminated and butchered. Sacrificed and eliminated from the vast landscape, like a post-truth theory.
There are Dalits who have stopped stripping cow hide in Gujarat because they are protesting against the lynching of their comrades by Gau-raksha vigilante groups of the Hindutva hate brigade. They are marching across, singing new songs of liberation. There is Rohith Vemula’s mother, breaking barricades, holding hands with the young, her eyes as dark and stoic as the eyes of the boys and girls marching with her. She is refusing to succumb. She, like Najeeb’s mother, refusing to accept defeat. Or, death.
She knows. She, like all of us, has read Rohith’s last letter, his dreams flying on the wings of insomnia, dream and liberation. She, like his mother, and the students, are asking: Where is Najeeb?
Hyperbole and lies can become fake news, paid news, comfort zones; they can help create an unquestioned empire of ‘manufactured consent’; they make false prophets and messiahs; they can help win elections; they can bring in a pseudo acche din or ‘Make America Great Again’, or Hitler’s Holocaust Utopia; they can subsidise the corporate and billionaires; but they will never compensate the originality of the bitter realism of life, and the infinite tragedies, hopes and dreams it creates.
There is a rainbow somewhere hiding behind that back-lane of the slum where the poor are conspiring to become full-fledged citizens with fundamental rights. There is a story lurking in Abhujmarh in the thick, incomprehensible forests of Chhattisgarh, from where Bela Bhatia is refusing to budge. There is a dark narrative unfolding as a public spectacle when a woman strips herself naked in front of the Reserve Bank of India in Delhi, holding two demonitised notes, eaten up by rats perhaps, after trekking for days to get a little ‘honest, hard-earned’ cash to feed herself and her child.
Om Puri’s Aakrosh and Ardh Satya are not far away; they are out there in black and white, in that back-lane, like a dark memory chasing another memory. If this world is not changing, it must change. That is the truth and there is no other truth.
And, yet, barbarism is routine. It comes back in an addictive cycle, like history repeating itself. Human nature, is it forever and instinctively inclined towards the Hobbesian phenomena of the short, nasty and brutish? Is it the new normal to kill thousands in a gas chamber and then go for a picnic with wine and sandwiches with your wife and kids? Or, is it, as true as ever, as German philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote — he, too, tried to escape the Nazi machine, he, too, committed suicide: “There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”
Surely, it’s official. Nothing is ephemeral. In the age of post-truth capitalism and manufactured lies, neither barbarism and xenophobia nor misogyny and racism are dead. The Ku Klux Klan is waiting at the next bylane of history.
Nor is the idea of human liberation dead; the longing for love, beauty, idealism, freedom of humanity — that longing too is alive and pulsating. The dialectic is real. As long as the human and social condition remains unchanged, the struggle to change the human and social condition will continue. Hate or like, the cliché remains: Hope floats.
Sipra Das was one of the first women news photographers to break into what was largely a men’s club in the eighties. I clearly remember Sipra in a sari and hair tied in a plaid rushing in and out of The Telegraph in Calcutta’s newsroom always seeming to be on a mission. We were young cubs too breaking into the world of journalism but what Sipra was doing was re-writing the rules of news photography in Calcutta. The photo department of Ananda Bazar Patrika had some big names and was all men and they guarded their domain against everything – imagine being challenged by a woman. One night on my way back from night shift I saw the iconic New Market on fire. I rushed home picked up my camera and spent the night shooting a historic moment when the more-than-a-hundred-years-old market was almost to be destroyed. The star photographer reached at sunrise. Being young and enthusiastic I told my editor of the exclusive shots I had taken as the only newsman on the scene. But the photos never saw the light of day – it was cleverly sabotaged.
Sipra Das was working against such odds when she was trying to make her mark but the gritty girl never said never and she proved herself with years of amazing work. Starting off on a borrowed Isolly II Sipra has shot for some of the biggest media houses in the country. Her determination within gave voice to a different vision of her art and craft. Her book on the blind gives us a completely different perspective into a dark world, turn the spotlight on something we have never stopped to look or think about.
The Light Within: A Different Vision of Life is the culmination of a 12-year-long project. Sipra’s photos also open our eyes to our own selves and surroundings. Sipra stumbled into documenting the perplexities, pleasures and pain of the lives of the blind in India.
One day, after staying at the hostel of the All India Confederation of the Blind, a teaching school, she toyed with the philosophical idea of “seeing from the heart”. The expression had been used by Jawahar Lal Kaul, the school’s then principal.
Das had not found any mirror on the hostel premises and was left with the question of “looking at oneself”. The blind can’t do that, but they have a vision decoded by their hearts, Kaul had told her. That triggered her interest in the subject.
Das’ pictures—symbolically all black and white—are an endearing mix of personal and political; her subjects are from different social classes all over India.
While the book has a few photographs of the well-to-do among the visually handicapped, like a beautician from Mumbai, Das has mostly trained her lens on the less empowered, turning them into unassailable heroes. From farmers to fishermen, feisty children, artists, performers, entrepreneurs, a midwife, doctors, lawyers, couples in love, even a coconut picker and a sightless photographer—her canvas is wide.
On the book cover is a smiling visually handicapped girl holding a diya. “Who says blindness is about darkness?” Sipra asks. A question her photographs answer rather well.
It was a crisp and clear afternoon at Rose Hill in paradise island Mauritius. The air was charged as a motley group of Indian expats gathered at the company guest house to watch the finals of the T20 World Cup battle between India and Pakistan. There were senior bankers, CEOs, officers, mediamen and their wives who kept up an amazing supply of the most delectable snacks going around. The setting was perfect, hopes high and in the hands of a long-flowing-haired wicket keeper-captain who had blasted upon the cricket scene of late.
Across the Indian Ocean in South Africa’s Joburg, it was the day Mahendra Singh Dhoni, MSD or fondly Mahi, would write himself into the book of cricketing legends. It was the last over and Pakistan needed 13 runs to win with only one wicket in hand and captain Misbah on strike with a fine 35.
Dhoni was about to surprise all by tossing the ball to a little known medium pacer from Haryana, Joginder Sharma. There was a kind of hush all over the world. But it soon came to be known as the MSD instinct. Joginder’s first ball went wide, the second for a mighty six; it seemed to be all over when a calm Dhoni walked up to Sharma and had a few words. The next ball Misbah scooped it up to be taken cleanly by Sreesanth. It was over; India had won.
Dhoni the captain-cricketer had arrived with his Buddha-like calm and his knack for winning. It was the day when the world of cricket got hooked to MSD much like the hallucinogen LSD. And the high lasted years.
Gut feeling and a sense of timing have always marked Mahendra Singh Dhoni's decisionmaking process in his illustrious captaincy stint and he once again showed that when he stumped one and all with his decision to step down as skipper of India's limited overs team at the very start of 2017.
No one knows whether Dhoni has read the poem 'Invictus' or watched Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman recite it in his deep baritone: "I am the Master of My fate, I am the Captain of My soul". The context of the poem may have been different but in spirit somewhere, Dhoni may find it eerily similar to his thoughts leading up to the decision.
No Indian cricketer since Sunil Gavaskar showed such poise, grace and sense of foresight as the flamboyant cricketer from Jharkhand stepped down from the limited overs captaincy via a BCCI announcement on January 4.
The most clichéd statement we hear from sportspersons is that "we don't play for records" but few believe in it.
But in Dhoni's case, two instances would sum up his philosophy that he does not play for records. When he retired from Test cricket, he was 10 short of completing 100 matches for the country but in his heart, he knew Virat Kohli was ready for the job. Dhoni went with his gut feeling.
Similarly, the first ODI against England on January 15 in Pune would have been his 200th match as captain but he would not bother. 90 and 199 are two telling numbers that tell the story. So, Dhoni did not care for records. He did not care much for the glory either. He always walked away letting his teammates bask in the moment – be it the T20 World Cup or the ICC World Cup where it is hard to find Dhoni among the celebratory pictures. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is as calm and unruffled a sportsman on the field as he is self-effacing off it.
With two World Cups (one 50-over and one T20) India won under his leadership, Dhoni will remain India's greatest limited overs captain and perhaps among India's top five ODI players along with Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Kapil Dev and Kohli.
Just like a film actor has some defining roles, Dhoni will be remembered for two decisions that made him the 'Captain Cool' for generations to come. The first was giving Joginder Sharma the final over during inaugural T20 World Cup summit clash against Pakistan.
The second was promoting himself ahead of Yuvraj Singh and winning that 2011 World Cup final in Mumbai. It was a man who had the guts and gumption to take decisions which could have gone awry and made him look silly.
There's a bit of gambler in many of us but MSD was a bigger ‘Punter’ than Ricky Ponting ever was. ‘Captain Cool’ or fondly called 'Mahi', Dhoni has rarely been seen angry on the field. Even in times of extreme pressure, he manages to keep his cool and perform, as well as help his team perform.
It's not easy to express one's feelings explicitly when it comes to dropping legends but Dhoni knew that Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid could become liabilities on the field on big Australian grounds and hence he conveyed his feelings to the selection committee before the 2008 CB series. Both Gautam Gambhir and Rohit Sharma were revelations during that series, and that proved Dhoni's decision right.
Dhoni was not a technically gifted batsman but his temperament stood out and the 9110 ODI runs he has scored till now from 283 matches is a testimony of that. He has scored 1112 runs from 73 T20 International matches at an average of 35.87.
A player with a firm bottom hand grip, his signature 'helicopter' shot where he whips the ball in the block hole straight into the stands earned him fans aplenty. But then, how many players know the value of converting one’s into two’s and two’s into three’s.
Once he became captain, he curbed his slam-bang approach, pacing his innings to perfection. On slow sub-continental pitches when others found it difficult to manoeuvre, he did it with elan.
His keeping was questioned at the beginning of his career but in his later years, he developed his own distinctive style. The back flick run-outs are a treat to watch and he has been swift as anyone else on turning tracks.
Dhoni had an aggressive game but not in body language. He believed words like “revenge” are too strong to be used in sports.
And boy, he had a dry sense of humour, very distinctive and his own style. Once David Warner and Ravindra Jadeja had a war of words and Dhoni was asked about it at end of the match. He smiled wryly and said: "That's what happens when schoolboys graduate to college."
And he invited an Australian journalist, who asked about his retirement, on the dais after World T20 semifinal loss. Some found it funny and some rude but then Dhoni is Dhoni.
There's an old YouTube video of Dhoni singing the iconic Mukesh song “Main pal do pal ka shayar hoon” from the Bollywood film “Kabhi Kabhi”.
Well MSD is much more than a “Do pal ka shayar”. He's an entertainer par excellence. He is now running the last lap of his fantastic career. We should all enjoy till it lasts.
At the Press Club of India in Delhi, not long before he died, amiable actor Farooq Sheikh dropped by one night to promote one of his offbeat films made on a low budget with a young and unknown team. As we stood in the corridor, he crossed us, wearing a kurta, and with his typically sublime ‘Chashmebadoor’ look, gave us a smile and a twinkle in his endearing eyes. He was in his mid-60s and looked hale and hearty. It was an endearing moment because he was a much-loved actor in every Indian household. We could never imagine that he would soon pass by, suddenly, also of heart attack, in Dubai, December 27, 2013. His famous television show, which marked a certain genius in an overwhelming realm of TV utter mediocrity, was, ironically and beautifully named: Jeena isika naam hain. Literally, it would mean, Life is like this only.
In his television show, where he made a synthesis of the deeply personal and the cinematic with anecdotes, surprise guest appearances from the past of the protagonist, and a spoofy and joyful commentary, he once invited another great, Naseeruddin Shah. In between the usual banter, in which Naseeruddin poked fun here and there at Bollywood, he invited Om Puri, who was in London. I still remember the dark, bitter satire in Om Puri’s voice: “In Bollywood, they distribute all the good roles among their relatives. We are left holding a knife, or a stethoscope.” That was enough uncanny caricature and bitter realism to make Naseeruddin burst out in laughter.
You should see the young pictures of both these actors, both of them from the National School of Drama in Delhi. Thin, wiry, unshaved, emaciated almost — they looked like protagonists of a different planet – surely, they would never get a chance in ‘fair, chubby and lovely’ Bombay cinema. That Om Puri shacked up with Naseeruddin in his early and difficult struggling days in Mumbai, and that both of them broke all the prejudices and clichés of ‘good looks and chocolate heroes’ in Bollywood, symbolized the amazing heights which Indian parallel cinema reached in those eclectic and restless days of political and social rebellion and unrest in India
Together, along with magnificent actresses like Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Deepa Sahi and Ratna Pathak, they marked a glorious symphony unparalleled in mainstream or parallel cinema. Indeed, they mainstreamed the parallel with their amazing versatility and talent. Indeed, the two, Om Puri and Naseeruddin, were cast together as ‘witches’ in Vishal Bhardwaj’s epic Maqbool, based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth; it was a masterstroke of a kind. They carried the roles in stunning synthesis, two witches in a dark symphony of brute genius. Among all others who are mourning, today will truly be one of the saddest days for his old theatre and cinema buddy: Naseeruddin Shah.
I have met the great actor only once. And, yet, it seemed that I have known him for years, as if, he was embedded deep in our ‘cinematic consciousness’ like both, an everyday reality, and like a classical moment from an epic film. Sitting on the steps of India Habitat Centre’s guest house in Delhi many years ago, with a journalist, I told her:“Look, who is coming out of the car.” She became speechless. It was Om Puri, as simple and ordinary, and as solitary, he can be. With no trappings of a celebrity.
We stood up. It was our spontaneous standing ovation to a living legend of Indian cinema and theatre, who, later, also outclassed himself in regional, Hollywood and Pakistani cinema. She said, “We are your fans.” We were speechless, face to face with the actor. He smiled, his rugged, humane and weather-beaten face becoming soft and humble. He stretched out his hand, met us warmly. “It is cold here,” he said, in that baritone, staccato, deep, deep throaty voice. He touched her jacket. “This is a nice jacket,” he said. “I have caught a cold here in this cold.”
His voice lingered on the steps. We, who never had any obsession with a celebrity, were overwhelmed. Today, in the morning, she called up, “Om Puri is dead.” She remembered that meeting. It was a sad and shocking morning.
Among the several extraordinary films Om Puri made with Shyam Benegal and other filmmakers, there are two films which broke all boundaries of the image of anti-hero, and pitched the dark political underside of the Indian reality right upfront, with absolute transparency. These arthouse films became big mainstream successes. They were directed by one of the finest cinematographer and directors in Indian cinema, Govind Nihalani. Made in the early 1980s, in the post-Emergency and post-Naxalite movement era, it reflected the crumbling edifice of an unequal, ugly and brutish Indian democracy, which seemed to have betrayed all the ideals of the freedom movement.
‘Aakrosh’ and ‘Ardh Satya’, marked a turning point, in its suppressed anger, angst and rebellion, and the helplessness and tragedy which went into the unmaking of India’s young democracy. It also celebrated the volcanic explosion of eclectic rebellion, especially of the marginalised, the exiled and the condemned, like a society being ripped apart in full public view, whereby the brutalisation of the Indian political and justice system seemed to have reached its zenith. From the silent and speechless adivasi, whose eyes and face spoke with infinite suffering and anger, to the volatile and brooding cop who takes on the diabolical and dirty symbols of society, these two Nihalani films with Om Puri in lead (along with Smita Patil) broke the thresholds which divided parallel and commercial cinema. They became household names, acclaimed as great actors, throwing the nasty truth at the face of a society steeped in false consciousness and deception, even as the wheels of hunger, oppression and injustice rolled on.
In this genre, it is difficult to forget Om Puri in that short work of genius in black and white, etched on the screen by another master, Satyajit Ray of Bengal. Based on a classic by progressive writer and literary giant, Munshi Premchand, ‘Sadgati’ translated the infinite tragedy of a Dalit peasant, trapped in the shackles of a brutal caste society. Om Puri was made for the role, even as he cut wood, like the myth of Sisyphus, eternally condemned, without a pause.
Pakistani journalist and peace activist Beena Sarwar interviewed Pakistani director Nabeel Qureshi in September 2016. His second film, ‘Actor in Law’ starred the veteran Indian actor He said, “The experience of working with Om Puri ji was like a dream come true. Getting a chance to work with such a legendary actor in just my second film is an honour for not just me but all the co-actors as well. He is very humble, down-to-earth and very professional. I always considered him as an international actor, and not just a Bollywood actor.”
Those who have seen Om Puri with another superb actress, Helen Mirren, in ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’ directed by Lasse Hallstrom, will testify to his international status. Indeed, directed by Damien O’Donnel, ‘East is East’, where he plays a Pakistani Muslim patriarch living in Britain, is a classic of its own kind. No one else but Om Puri could have lived and translated these characters with such pulsating realism on screen.
Om Puri worked across the language spectrum in India: From Malayalam to Punjabi, Kannada and Marathi films. From Shyam Benegal’s historic television series based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s book, ‘Discovery of India’, to Bhisham Sahni’s ‘Tamas’, to sundry commercial movies, this journey was still unfolding. That it was cut short by a heart attack, is a reminder of both the fragility and ephemerality of life.
Good people die early, as the saying goes. Here was not only a good man who walked on earth and on celluloid, he was also a genius craftsman of the word, silence and image, mixing imagination and realism, brilliance and simplicity, like a documentary film becoming fiction, and vice versa.
Writes documentary filmmaker Rakesh Sharma in a post on facebook (his film, ‘Final Solution’ on the Gujarat Genocide, too, is a classic): “So many memories, especially from the rather intense couple of years we spent together on ‘Discovery of India’ in the late 1980s. I am unable to believe Om is no more, that I'll never hear his baritone bellowing ‘Kaise Hain Panditji’ or, feel his warm bear hug again! I’m too overwhelmed now to recount any memories or share anecdotes. Rest in peace, Om! The incredible legacy of your work will live on.
The year 2016 for the Saudis will be memorable for all the wrong reasons: war, regional insecurity and a fiscal crisis. Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud's second year witnessed serious financial difficulties for the kingdom for the first time in decades, a war with neighbouring Yemen that isn’t likely to fade away and continuing low oil prices.
With the war-machine consuming money at an alarming rate, rising unemployment at home and other negative economic indicators pulling the kingdom down, the house of Saud had to act. After resisting oil production cuts for years, the sheikhs in Riyadh rustled up support to finally press for global oil output cuts.
Consensus at Vienna
At a meeting in Vienna on 30 November 2016, OPEC members met and agreed to cut oil production. It wasn’t an easy decision as most OPEC oil producers experiencing years of low prices since 2014 have been severely impacted by falling revenues and yawning budgetary deficits.
Not unsurprisingly, the decision came after months of negotiations with not just OPEC members but other major oil producers, including Russia which is the world’s largest oil producer. A total of 11 oil producing nations agreed to cuts.
The final agreement required the major oil producing states to cut production by about 1.2 million barrels per day (mbpd) from January 2017 onwards. Several nonOPEC producers have agreed to contribute to lower production to the tune of 0.6 mbpd.
The three countries that agreed to major cuts are Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. Together they agreed to take on two-thirds of the cuts while the rest are spread among seven other producers.
Iran is the one country that has been exempted from cuts chiefly because its production has been mostly below 4 mbpd from the time Western sanctions were imposed in 2011. This is an Iranian victory because the Saudis had been insisting that Iran contributes to the cuts. In the end, continued Iranian defiance paid off as Riyadh searching for a consensus was forced to accede to Tehran’s argument that it was already suffering due to Western policies.
Libya and Nigeria, the two other major world oil producers, were also exempt from the cuts primarily because they cited severe economic disruptions due to various factors beyond policy control. These two countries are free to actually expand production.
Expected Impact
The jury is still out on what impact the production cuts pact will have on oil prices. Oil producers are optimistic and claim that prices will climb back to pre-2014 levels. But many analysts argue that peak prices are unlikely due to several factors.
Firstly, analysts argue that a 1.2 mbpd cut in overall oil production by the major producers is not a significant figure given that world oil production currently stands at somewhere above 97 mbpd (end-2015) estimate, perhaps even at 100 mbpd by some calculations as precise figures are not available.
Therefore, the cuts work out to about a 1.2 per cent cut. This is far from huge especially given the fact that production levels are up from 2014 when prices were at its peak.
Just how modest the cuts are can be judged from the fact that Saudi Arabia’s production levels as per the 30 November accord are set at 10.1 mbpd as against its current estimated production of 10.5 mbpd. However, even this is 800,000 barrels more than the country’s production level in 2014 (9.7 mbpd).
This is roughly the case with the other producers, most of whom have raised production in the last couple of years. This means that production levels are unlikely to fall to pre-2014 levels.
The biggest challenge to the November pact will come from the United States which has been steadily ramping up production of shale oil and thus contributing to a gradual but significant long-term rise in global oil output. Some experts opine that US shale oil production could go up by as much as 500,000 bpd during 2017.
Brazil and Canada too are increasing production capacity at a faster rate than the US and together the three countries will add substantially to the total available oil in 2017.
Moreover, China, one of the world’s biggest oil consumers, is facing a continued slowdown and decreased oil consumption. At the same time, it is planning to push up domestic crude oil production to 200 million tonnes by the year 2020.
Overall demand for oil too is expected to ease with the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimating that global demand increase will decline to 1.3 mbpd in 2017 from 1.5 mbpd last year.
OPEC Power
The larger geo-economic question is whether OPEC and Saudi Arabia in particular, will continue to hold the key to set global oil prices?
The answer, in short, is no.
The very fact that the Saudis had to enlist the support of non-OPEC countries, particularly Russia, for its production cut decision proved that OPEC is no longer the all-powerful cartel it once was. Therefore, it is unlikely that the latest accord will transform global energy equations.
The Iranian victory over Saudi intransigence was another indicator that the Arab sheikhs no longer have a controlling influence over oil producers, even in the region.
This leads to a problem of compliance. Everybody at Vienna pledged cuts but will they stick to the set targets, especially if prices don’t rise as anticipated? This remains an open question and could effectively nullify the effects of the output cut decision.
December 2016 output was down by more than half a million bpd mainly because of cuts by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE. Inventories too were drawn down. Prices rose but volatility in prices might not signal a substantial continuous rise.
The cartel members are trying to ensure that the pact holds and their members are assembling in Vienna once again to monitor compliance.
Efforts to enforce solidarity amongst oil producers could well be an exercise in futility as the world, particularly the West, fast moves away from conventional energy sources.
Intractable differences between key producers especially the sheikhs of Arabia and the mullahs in Iran. As well as the dire need for revenues could also mean the end of the geopolitical power of the oil cartel.