AIADMK's Sasikala Reconciliation Problem
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22 FEBRUARY 2021 / `50 www.openthemagazine.com CONTENTS 22 FEBRUARY 2021 5 6 12 14 16 18 LOCOMOTIF OPEN DIARY INDIAN ACCENTS TOUCHSTONE WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY Hashtag democracy By Swapan Dasgupta In Shiva’s shelter The limits of knowledge By Jayanta Ghosal Punjab and protest By S Prasannarajan By Bibek Debroy By Keerthik Sasidharan By Nonica Datta 24 24 THE LAST MUTINY February 18th marks the 75th anniversary of the Indian naval mutiny. Although this episode is ranked among the many that make up the saga of Indian independence, it was one subverted by politics By Pramod Kapoor 38 OPENING THE FLOODGATES Yet another disaster in geologically fragile Uttarakhand pits livelihoods against ecology By Nikita Doval 38 44 44 THE ARTERIAL TIME BOMB Are the 30s and 40s the new 60s for heart disease in India? By Rahul Pandita and Lhendup G Bhutia 48 48 A TEMPLE LOST AND FOUND The discovery of a set of ancient ruins in Bhubaneswar and the damage done to it raise questions about how development work is undertaken around heritage sites By Amita Shah 54 58 54 58 62 64 65 66 THE AFTERLIVES UNDONE THE DARKEST HOUSE PAGE TURNER ‘FOR ME LUXURIOUS STARGAZER OF STITCHES In a new memoir, Priyanka Abigail Dean talks about her Nightwalking IS HAVING A GREAT By Kaveree Bamzai Celebrating the Chopra Jonas opens up bestselling debut Girl A By Mini Kapoor NEW PAIR OF BOOTS’ relationship between about life in Bollywood By Nandini Nair Michelle Pfeiffer on her Adip Dutta and late artist and outside it new film French Exit Meera Mukherjee By Kaveree Bamzai By Noel de Souza By Rosalyn D’Mello Cover by Saurabh Singh 22 FEBRUARY 2021 www.openthemagazine.com 3 OPEN MAIL [email protected] EDITOR S Prasannarajan LETTER OF THE WEEK MANAGING EDITOR PR Ramesh C EXECUTIVE EDITOR Ullekh NP India’s economy is firmly in the middle of a V-shaped EDITOR-AT-LARGE Siddharth Singh DEPUTY EDITORS Madhavankutty Pillai recovery and will recover to record 11 per cent growth (Mumbai Bureau Chief), in 2021-2022 after an estimated 7.7 per cent contraction Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair this year (‘The New Deal’ by Haseeb Drabu & Anil CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rohit Chawla Padmanabhan, February 15th, 2021). The projected ART DIRECTOR Jyoti K Singh SENIOR EDITORS Sudeep Paul, growth estimate has been termed ‘lockdown Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), dividend’; by following a stringent response to the Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval AssOCIATE EDITOR Vijay K Soni (Web) Covid pandemic, we believed in taking ‘short-term ASSISTANT EDITOR Vipul Vivek pain for long-term gain’. The latest Economic Survey CHIEF OF GRAPHICS Saurabh Singh notes that the global economy has been set back SENIOR DESIGNERS Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh in time by the pandemic-induced crisis but the PHOTO EDITOR Raul Irani Indian economy has inherent strengths that could DEPUTY PHOTO EDITOR Ashish Sharma allow it to bounce back strongly. Though we had a NATIONAL HEAD-EVENTS AND INITIATIVES conservative financial support during the initial such as waiver of road tax Arpita Sachin Ahuja AVP (ADVERTISING) phase of the pandemic, the Survey has nonetheless and cheaper insurance Rashmi Lata Swarup made a clear and strong pitch for the Government in the first year. But it is GENERAL MANAGERS (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) to loosen its purse strings to spur the economy with equally important to have a countercyclical fiscal push. India’s economic a comprehensive scrappage NATIONAL HEAD-DISTRIBUTION AND SALES Ajay Gupta approach is almost like the Indian cricket team’s policy so that commercial REGIONAL HEADS-CIRCULATION D Charles (South), Melvin George recent ‘caution with precaution’ approach Down vehicle owners have total (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Under. Our economy has judiciously gone from transparency and clarity. HEAD-PRODUCTION Maneesh Tyagi survival to revival. Bal Govind SENIOR MANAGER (PRE-PRESS) Sharad Tailang CK Ramaniam MANAGER-MARKETING THE OPPOSITION Priya Singh CHIEF DESIGNER-MARKETING It was amusing to read how Champak Bhattacharjee Minhaz Merchant needs CFO & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht DIVISION OF LABOUR Look at what privatisation did the opposition’s actions to CHIEF EXECUTIVE & PUBLISHER As they say, the government to IT and pharma. validate Narendra Modi’s Neeraja Chawla has no business to be in Bholey Bhardwaj instead of the merits of All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner business (‘The New Deal’ the latter (‘The Rage’, is prohibited. by Haseeb Drabu & Anil SCRAPPAGE HELPS February 15th, 2021). This Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf Padmanabhan, February The scrapped vehicle market is a dangerously simplistic of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, 15th, 2021). Let the private is pegged at around Rs 40,000 and falsely comforting 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). sector run businesses while crore (‘No Roads for Old Cars’, explanation of all that is Published at 4, DDA Commercial the Government frames February 15th, 2021). Besides happening. All opposition Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. policies conducive to running creating job opportunities, to Modi cannot be Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 businesses. Finance Minister it would also spur growth dismissed as coming from To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to Nirmala Sitharaman has in the commercial vehicle just a clique of political www.openthemagazine.com or call our Toll Free Number shown insight with her and car industry as vehicle opponents, disenfranchised 1800 102 7510 future-oriented worldview on replacement will become power brokers and or email at: [email protected] how to run India’s businesses. the need of the hour. With ‘venomous’ journalists. For alliances, email [email protected] Her divestment target of vehicles being one of the More importantly, unlike For advertising, email Rs 1.75 lakh crore in 2021-2022 main contributors to air bureaucratic and governance [email protected] For any other queries/observations, is ambitious. There is no need pollution, the scrappage systems, cultural and email [email protected] for banks to be owned by the policy will reduce pollution. sociological changes have a Central Government, milked Carbon dioxide emission is momentum of their own. Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing as they are for political gains. expected to fall by as much Rahul Gaur initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using The Reserve Bank of India as 17 per cent. Needless to say products or services advertised in the magazine needs to tighten norms to the Government will have All the rage is the result of Volume 13 Issue 7 ensure they remain healthy. to disincentivise older the fact that Modi is the For the week 16-22 February 2021 India needs to unlock its vehicles on the roads and Disrupter. Unlike others, he Total No. of pages 68 potential by giving more incentivise buyers to does not follow a script. freedom to the private sector. comply with new norms Ashok Goswami 4 22 FEBRUARY 2021 LOCOMOTIF By S PRASANNARAJAN HASHTAG DEMOCRACY EMOCRACY. FREE SPEECH. Social Media. They the bad and the worst exist in perfect harmony. Governments make the new political whirl and we wonder: want only the good. Which means the new media will have to be As the gaze of the panopticon sharpens, are we gagged and downsized. They call it regulation. shrinking into manipulated data, or into some Second, our moral outrage. It’s competitive outrage by the behavioural specimen in a remote laboratory, or, Left and the Right. In the US, for example, it’s the Left that’s Dworse, cyber zombies? There’s too much going on currently out getting agitated over cyber conspiracies—QAnon and more— there, making yesterday’s conversation—and moral choices— of the unhinged Right. The previous president was their real fire redundant by today’s reality. Take these. An American president thrower, his every tweet a call to arms. After his exit, the danger has has been exiled by Twitter, with no hope of a homecoming not diminished for the Left. His acolytes and their mouthpieces somewhere in the future. So is the fate of others who have are a threat to the new order in which dissent is a conservative echoed him. Facebook, too, has its own blacklist, which includes calumny and the dissenter is the one worthy of online shaming and the same ‘insurrectionist president’, though it has said that inevitable execution. Elsewhere, it’s the Right that plays victim to banishment may not be permanent. And we have been told the Left’s online propaganda. What unites the victims, no matter that some elections are won—or subverted— from which side of the ideological divide, is power. by Russian-speaking cyber troglodytes. Even It is as if the struggle for and the maintenance of as social media sites vacuum out corrosive power can brook no inconvenient social media agents—no matter mighty or trashy— interventions. A disruption of the righteous order governments of all ideological hues demand has to be avoided. Some of the current apostles actions against their social media tormentors. of social media cleansing include those who Big Tech is watching you with the same intensity cheered it as the only channel of freedom and with which governments are watching your dissemination of news when streets erupted in tweets and posts. Democracy and free speech places such as Tehran and Cairo. Power turns every are not ensured by constitutional provisions romantic into a pragmatist. and political civility alone. Arbiters of our What I find more relevant is the third factor: behavioural impulses and mediums of our instant thoughts the parallel democracy of social media.