Is Narendra Modi's calendar working?
A Bhojpuri song for you if you can pronounce 'Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft'
1 by 9: The shock doctrine
Check. Sudha Bharadwaj, the IITian who gave up her American citizenship to defend the salt of India’s earth, has been in jail for over two years. Check. Sanjiv Bhatt, the IITian and IPS officer who spoke out against Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, has been sentenced to life. Check. Anand Teltumbde, the IIT professor, an MBA and PhD married to B.R. Ambedkar’s granddaughter, has been in jail since April for allegedly plotting to kill Modi.
Naturally, the release on bail of Davinder Singh, the Jammu & Kashmir police officer who was arrested in a car with Hizbul militants in January—because the super-efficient Delhi Police, which functions under the Union home ministry of Amit Shah, failed to file the chargesheet in the stipulated 90 days—has set off a furore.
The scary way in which the scales of justice are tilting, or are being made to tilt, is scarily evident, when a pregnant Safoora Zargar cannot bail, when a Sikh who set up a langar at the #ShaheenBagh to feed poor women is booked.
“It is easier to get bail if you were caught transporting terrorists than if you were part of a protest in India,” tweets Aakar Patel, the former executive director of Amnesty International.
Given the fasttrack trajectory of Sadhvi Pragya, has the BJP found a winner?
In 2007, the Canadian author Naomi Klein advanced the concept of ‘The Shock Doctrine’: when governments use “the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control.”
Klein was referring to the economy but nearly everything that is happening today in Indian public life can be easily explained by her theory.
2 by 9: Babanomics
Who owns Patanjali, the ayurvedic company which has benefitted from its proximity to the sangh parivar?
Renjith Thomas, who describes himself as a “software professional interested in social issues”, digs into the records to show that Acharya Balakrishna, the sidekick of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, owns 99.92% of the company.
Officially, Balakrishna owns 98.54% of the FMCG company reputedly valued at around Rs 10,000 crore. The remainder of the shares are held by six companies. Thomas shows that Balakrishna is the main shareholder in those companies too.
With feelings running high in India after Nepal ratified a controversial new map, Thomas’s findings came in for the #BoycottPatanjali hashtag. Acharya Balakrishna, you see, is a Nepalese citizen who was arrested in 2012 for using fake documents to obtain an Indian passport.
3 by 9: Situation vacant
Remember the exquisite artwork of India becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2024, painted by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh and Nirmala Sitharaman and Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal and heaven knows who else?
COVID and Ladakh may have distracted everybody’s attention from that lofty goal, but not the razor-sharp focus of the Uttar Pradesh government of Yogi Adityanath. To meet its part of the deal, UP is looking for a consultant to “boost up the GSDP of UP to $1 trillion in five years”. (GSDP is gross state domestic product)
As heart-warming as UP’s ability to set a goal and pursue it is (at least for meme creators), the situation is not conducive. Its current GSDP is Rs 15.42 lakh crore. To become a trillion-dollar economy, its GSDP will have to rise to Rs 70 lakh crore.
“Uttar Pradesh will need to grow at 30% to achieve this target in the next five years. It will have to grow at 16% to achieve this target in the next 10 years. At the present pace, this target can be achieved only in 2034-2035,” says professor Yashvir Tyagi, retired head of the economics department, Lucknow University.
You do know how many zeroes there are in a trillion, don’t you, unlike Sambit Patra?
4 by 9: We don’t need ‘know’
Half of literate India, maybe all of it, would probably give an arm and a leg to get “Harvard” on their business card. But for desh bhakts who think it is too downmarket, there is a new career option: witch-hunting those who go to “Oxford”.
After 21 years at NDTV, reporter turned presenter Nidhi Razdan announced last weekend that she would be leaving the pioneering television news company to teach journalism as part of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
And a minor cottage industry has sprung up to taunt the Kashmiri journalist, daughter of former Press Trust of India editor M.K. Razdan, and one of the few calm voices still left in the madhouse of mainstream television.
One lot exposing Harvard’s links with China.
Another questioning Harvard’s process in selecting her over other worthies.
And when you sneak in jihadi, naxal, George Soros, it’s mission accomplished.
5 by 9: туған күнің құтты болсын
How would you react if a rival country killed 20 of your soldiers? Well, Narendra Modi chose to “punish” Chinese president Xi Jinping by not wishing him on his birthday. Since 2016, Modi had never failed to greet Xi, even during bilateral disputes.
If that pique might seem understandable, well, what explains Modi not wishing Rahul Gandhi who turned 50 today, although he had dutifully wished him every year between 7 am and 9 am in the last five years?
The prime minister’s social media handlers have, however, found the time to wish good health to the first President of Kazakhstan, Elbasy Nursultan Nazarbayev, and remarkably over 39,000 people have “liked” Modi’s gesture.
We are all Kazakhs today?
6 by 9: The 6th best joke about China
Roshan Kishore, the data and political analyst of the Hindustan Times, now on a sabbatical, retells an old joke about Communist China, narrated (impossibly) by his JNU teacher, Prof Prabhat Patnaik.
A party functionary from the Communist Party of India (CPI) went to China on a visit. He was assigned a CPC guide to take him sightseeing. They went to a book shop, and the guide picked a book and told the Indian communist: “This author is the 6th greatest poet in China. You must read his book. I'd like to gift it to you”.
Next stop was an art gallery: “This painting is by the sixth greatest painter in China”. Next was a music concert: “The musician is the sixth greatest musician in China”. Next stop was an economics conference: “The one who is presenting his paper is the sixth greatest economist in China”.
By then the Indian visitor could not hold his curiosity. “How is it that everything you show me is the sixth best? What about the top five? Who are they?”, the Indian asked. “Oh, that's simple. I thought you'd know”, the Chinese communist said. “They are Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin and Mao.”
Check out this excellent episode of ‘The Seen and the Unseen’ podcast by Amit Varma with Roshan Kishore to understand politics, JNU style.
And to understand the pre-Ladakh mood in India about China, check out this Bhojpuri number downloaded by a billion Chinese-made phones.
7 by 9: Passion ka fruit juice
As India suddenly but not surprisingly finds itself surrounded by neighbours who it cannot see eye to eye with, a throwback to the past, through the late Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam, who recounts receiving a banana from across the border.
But let not COVID or China or Pakistan or Nepal or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, or any disaster around the corner, spare us from a spot of fruit chauvinism: 54% of all mangoes in India come from just three states, UP, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
8 by 9: Unmute the oars
The annual Oxford vs Cambridge boat race is one of the most competitive contests between the two Universities. Stalled this year by COVID, the race was held online, with rowers competing on rowing machines in their homes.
Cambridge won 2020.
And, finally
The dictionary meaning of metamorphosis.
Today Stanley Pignal learned
And I learned that Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra, the couple who were harassed for funding Tehelka magazine, invented ‘The Seesaw Effect’, on the relationship between the US dollar and commodity prices.
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