The Inside Story of How the Drug Trade Is Funding Terrorism in Kashmir
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www.openthemagazine.com 50 21 SEPTEMBER /2020 OPEN VOLUME 12 ISSUE 37 21 SEPTEMBER 2020 CONTENTS 21 SEPTEMBER 2020 5 6 12 14 16 18 20 LOCOMOTIF OPEN DIARY THE INSIDER INDIAN ACCENTS THE RACHEL PAPERS WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY The silence of the moderate By Swapan Dasgupta By PR Ramesh The power of pursuit Ageing in life and films By Jayanta Ghosal Ecological swaraj By S Prasannarajan By Bibek Debroy By Rachel Dwyer By Aseem Shrivastava and Aryaman Jain 26 GUNS AND POPPY The inside story of how the drug trade 26 is funding terrorism in Kashmir By Rahul Pandita 32 THE SEER WHO DARED Kesavananda Bharati did not win in court, but his 1973 case limited Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution. Indian democracy is indebted to him By Siddharth Singh 38 VIRAL ISLANDS As Covid-19 threatens ancient Andaman tribes, the choice is between protecting their health and their way of life by Lhendup G Bhutia 42 BAN AND BOON Domestic developers find an 50 opportunity in the government’s ban on Chinese apps By Amita Shah 32 46 SPIRIT OF THE TIMES The homegrown craft gin movement is only getting bigger 58 as more players jump into the fray By Nikita Doval 50 58 62 65 66 THE AURA OF ABSENCE ART inSidE THE STudio A CUT ABOVE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER NOT PEOPLE LIKE US A photographer captures The whimsical brilliance and Indian films make their mark at Sharon Stone on her new web Hot star on Hotstar the sorrows and stillness of a self-deprecatory humour of the Venice International series Ratched By Rajeev Masand city under lockdown Waswo X Waswo Film Festival By Noel de Souza By Kaveree Bamzai By Rosalyn D’Mello By Divya Unny Cover by Saurabh Singh 21 SEPTEMBER 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 3 OPEN MAIL [email protected] EDITOR S Prasannarajan LETTER OF THE WEEK MANAGING EDITOR PR Ramesh C EXECUTIVE EDITOR Ullekh NP What sets Mukesh Ambani apart is his uncanny sense EDITOR-AT-LARGE Siddharth Singh DEPUTY EDITORS Madhavankutty Pillai of deciding which businesses to stay out of (‘Mukesh (Mumbai Bureau Chief), Ambani: The Power of Intuition’, September 14th, Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair 2020). Today, businessmen are hailed for spotting the CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rohit Chawla right sector, product, brand, country or ART DIRECTOR Jyoti K Singh potential SENIOR EDITORS Sudeep Paul, personality—that is, knowing where Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), opportunities are. Ambani, in contrast, also keeps Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval AssOCIATE EDITOR Vijay K Soni (Web) himself informed about when to pull out or ignore ASSISTANT EDITOR Vipul Vivek sectors. He has a clear vision of the changing realities CHIEF OF GRAPHICS Saurabh Singh and bet his money on a digitally-enabled future. His SENIOR DESIGNERS Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh decision to slowly but steadily lower stakes in the PHOTO EDITOR Raul Irani petroleum business and staying away from automotive DEPUTY PHOTO EDITOR Ashish Sharma and aviation sectors will prove to be farsighted. Those NATIONAL HEAD-EVENTS AND INITIATIVES criticising his business practices as ‘obtrusive’, ‘abra- life without ever giving him Arpita Sachin Ahuja AVP (ADVERTISING) sive’, ‘cannibalising’ or ‘predatory’ do not understand his due. His dedication to the Rashmi Lata Swarup what a ‘dog eat dog’ world international business is— party was taken as granted GENERAL MANAGERS (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) especially if you are from the developing world. He has and no one in the family ever brought down the average costs of products, increasing reciprocated for his service. NATIONAL HEAD-DISTRIBUTION AND SALES Ajay Gupta the size of the market—which is the classic model of He was a deserving prime REGIONAL HEADS-CIRCULATION D Charles (South), Melvin George Adam Smith for increasing the wealth of a nation. He ministerial candidate. The (West), Basab Ghosh (East) has shown empathy for his beleaguered brother, Anil, party went as far as choosing HEAD-PRODUCTION Maneesh Tyagi by bailing him out in business and keeping him out of a puppet prime minister SENIOR MANAGER (PRE-PRESS) Sharad Tailang prison without taking over and curtailing the latter’s just to keep Mukherjee at MANAGER-MARKETING independence. His ‘cool head, warm heart’ approach is bay. He was always seen as Priya Singh CHIEF DESIGNER-MARKETING winning the day for him. a threat to the dynasty. His Champak Bhattacharjee Ashok Goswami conviction, resilience and CFO & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht resourcefulness had made CHIEF EXECUTIVE & PUBLISHER him a unique threat that the Neeraja Chawla party could neither fully All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner MUKHERJEE’S LONG WALK After the assassination of avoid nor accept. Never a is prohibited. Pranab Mukherjee, a legend Rajiv Gandhi, he saw India’s yes man, he is the kind of Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf of Indian politics, has left economy open up in fits and politician the Congress of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, behind great leadership starts before it finally took off. needs right now if it is even 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). lessons for all of us (‘In Having gone down both the remotely interested in Published at 4, DDA Commercial Memoriam’ by MJ Akbar wrong and right alleys of the convincing voters that the Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. and Sunanda K Datta-Ray, murky maze that New Delhi party can survive without the Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 September 14th, 2020). He politics is, Mukherjee knew family at the helm. To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to entered politics at a very where power flowed from. Chanchal Nandy www.openthemagazine.com or call our Toll Free Number crucial time just after the A less known trivia is that 1800 102 7510 Congress had seen the first he loved long walks, going, OPPORTUNITY or email at: [email protected] breach of its forts in state reportedly, 8 km daily. India’s ban on Chinese apps For alliances, email [email protected] elections when then Prime CK Subramaniam is a godsend for developers For advertising, email Minister Indira Gandhi (‘The End of PUBG’, [email protected] For any other queries/observations, made him a Rajya Sabha The Congress has lost a September 14th, 2020). The email [email protected] MP. He went on to serve as seasoned politician such rise of the US in the 19th-20th Finance Minister as well as Pranab Mukherjee at century was partly owing to Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing as the leader of the Rajya the worst period of its a ban on British products on initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using Sabha; the latter is a period history. His statesmanship, its soil. The rest, as they say, is products or services advertised in the magazine of his career less talked troubleshooting prowess and history. Those mocking the Volume 12 Issue 37 about but very significant in coalition management skills move must remember the For the week 15-21 September 2020 understanding his relations are what that party is in dire West has also raised security Total No. of pages 68 with politicians across need of right now. The party concerns about Chinese tech. party lines and generations. tapped him to the hilt in his Bholey Bhardwaj 4 21 SEPTEMBER 2020 LOCOMOTIF By S PRASANNARAJAN THE SILENCE OF THE MODERATE HE MODERATE HAS just vanished. No one has power with least accountability alone could bring change. The the time to mourn him. No one bothers to. It was the traditionalists surrendered; they became either cheerleaders or quietest of exits, through the backdoor of the hall of mute participants in the spectator politics of nationalism. No one illusions. It was inevitable; in the shrunken middle was more torpid than the moderate liberal democrat. of politics, his existence was getting precarious by He showed an absolute lack of faith in the moral system Tthe day, and his words, feeble and inconsequential, increasingly that sustained him throughout history as a stabilising force inaudible. It was not that he had lost the argument as, on his whenever ideologies veered to the extreme. We are there left and right, arsonists burned down the ancient edifices of again. New extremists have come to monopolise the public platitudes and pieties. He just stopped arguing; he stopped sphere and the moderate looks threatened. The rejoinder to the noticing the calcifications of his belief system in a world where populist strongman today comes from the progressive Left or the so-called outsiders were selling national greatness at a the guilt-ridden Right. The progressive borrows from the old discount. He took himself for granted, not realising that those revolutionary. He has radicalised dissent by demanding the who once stood by him had begun to see in him an easy abdicator. homogenisation of minds and the banishment of doubters. The How did he set in motion his own slow disintegration? Three progressive politics of social justice, in its visceral repudiation decades ago, when the ideology fell, when the revolution’s of reason and moderation, is not different from the populist last pretence became untenable, the moderate was the autocracy it’s fighting against. Progressives are the revolutionary natural winner. He was the liberal democrat vindicated by guards of a civil society. The guilt-ridden Right has a problem history’s most compelling street theatre on freedom. He was with their manners, not their cause. The moderate is too feeble to the truth after the lie, the reality after the fantasy.