www.outlookindia.com April 21, 2014 `40 INDIA'S ANGRY YOUNG SUBSCRIBER COPY NOT FOR RESALE 8 904150 8000101 5 RNI NO. 7044/61 www.outlookindia.com In this issue... Volume LIV, No. 15 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Krishna Prasad EXECUTIVE EDITOR Bishwadeep Moitra What they said to us ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR Sunit Arora DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR Sunil Menon RIAZ KHOKAR, Former foreign secy DEPUTY EDITORS Uttam Sengupta, Satish Padmanabhan SENIOR EDITOR Pranay Sharma “If Modi wins, he’ll be prisoner to RSS. He’ll show POLITICAL EDITOR Saba Naqvi SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITORS no flexibility or pragmatism on substantive issues between us.” S.B. Easwaran, Manisha Saroop, Namrata Joshi, Anuradha Raman, Arindam Mukherjee, Lola Nayar ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sasi Nair PHOTO EDITOR Narendra Bisht POLL WALTZ 2014 ASSISTANT EDITORS Dola Mitra (Kolkata), Madhavi Tata (Hyderabad), Prachi Pinglay-Plumber, Prarthna Gahilote (Mumbai) 10 POST-ITS Events of the Week SENIOR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Pragya Singh 12 THE BOOTH Royalties in the Fray SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Debarshi Dasgupta JUNIOR ASSISTANT EDITOR: Saikat Niyogi 14 YOUTH The Untouched Angst PRINCIPAL CORRESPONDENT: Neha Bhatt SENIOR CORRESPONDENTS: K.S. Shaini (Bhopal), 20 RAJASTHAN Sikar, an Priyadarshini Sen CONTRIBUTORS: Minu Ittyipe (Kerala), Instructive Tale R.K. Misra (Gujarat), Sharat Pradhan (Uttar Pradesh), Showkat A. Motta (Kashmir) 22 MAHASAMUND The Battle of the PHOTOGRAPHERS Chandulal Sahus Jitender Gupta (Deputy Photo Editor) Tribhuvan Tiwari (Chief Photographer), Sanjay Rawat, Sandipan Chatterjee (Kolkata) 24 JHARKHAND Like Father, Like Son, Apoorva Salkade, Amit Haralkar (Mumbai) in Hazaribagh? (Senior Photographers), S. Rakshit (Chief Photo Coordinator), J.S. Adhikari (Senior Photo Researcher) 26 KARNATAKA Battle for Bangalore DESIGN Deepak Sharma (Chief Art Director), 28 ESSAY N. Ram Ashish Bagchi (Deputy Art Director), Leela (Senior Designer), 48 GOA Arun Sinha Rahul Awasthi (Chief Infographist), Sorit Gupto (Chief Illustrator), Devi Prasad, 50 VIDARBHA Battleground Resurrected Padam Gupta (Senior DTP Operators) CHIEF EDITORIAL MANAGER: Sasidharan Kollery 53 JAMMU Lured by Saffron? LIBRARY: Alka Gupta (Chief Librarian), Raj Kumar (Senior Library Assistant) 56 MADHYA PRADESH A Village 32 DIGITAL LIBRARY U. Suresh Kumar, Sajith Kumar Boycotts the Polls WEBSITE TEAM Sundeep Dougal (Editor, Websites), 58 MUMBAI NORTHWEST The Theatre Raman Awasthi (Project Manager), COVER STORY Suraj Wadhwa (Chief Graphic Designer), Shifts for Mahesh Manjrekar Praveen Upreti (Web Designer), Freya Dasgupta (Sr Sub Editor) 60 DARJEELING Bend it Like Baichung EDITORIAL CHAIRMAN: VINOD MEHTA 66 READ FACTOR Books of the President Modi? BUSINESS OFFICE Election Season PRESIDENT: Indranil Roy With his personalised, US presidential VICE PRESIDENTS Johnson D’Silva, Shishir Saxena, Vidya Menon INTERNATIONAL style format electoral campaign, SENIOR GENERAL MANAGER Narendra Modi seems to be calling all Uma Srinivasan (Chennai) GENERAL MANAGERS 44 Apprehensive in Pakistan the shots. In the final run, will he Kabir Khattar (Corp), Mohan Singh Bisht, Rashmi Lata Swarup, B.S. Johar (Subs), No one is quite sure what Narendra Modi as really be able to bend an enitre nation A.G. Subramaniam HEAD BRAND & MARKETING: Shrutika Dewan the prime minister of India would mean for to his will and ambition? Also, who’s ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGERS the country. And the Pak-bashing during the afraid of Narendra Modi...and why. Amit Vaz, Manoj Nair (West), Sushil K Menon (South), campaigning isn’t assuaging any fears. Anindya Banerjee (West), G. Ramesh (South), Rajendra Kurup CHIEF MANAGERS: Anuj Gopal Mathur, Shashank Dixit REGULARS 04 LETTERS 68 BOOKS SENIOR MANAGERS Nikhil Tanawade, Shekhar Kumar Pandey 70 FINE LIVING 72 GLITTERATI 74 DIARY ZONAL SALES MANAGER Vinod Kumar (North) Cover Design: Bishwadeep Moitra MANAGERS: Diwan Singh Bisht, Rupali Biswas, Vinod Joshi HEAD OFFICE AB-10, S.J. 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Enclave, New Delhi-110 029 Published for the week of April 15-21, 2014 Released on April 14, 2014 Total no. of pages 72 + Covers OUTLOOK 21 April 2014 3 Suman Shrivastava is a former bureau hazaribagh SUMAN SHRIVASTAVA chief of The Telegraph in Ranchi 2014 ELECTION Hazaribagh POLLWALTZ2014 Under the Fruit Tree Yashwant Sinha’s son Jayant hitches wagon to the Modi wave RAJESH KUMAR T’S been a role reversal of sorts for former finance minister Heat and dust Jayant Sinha on the campaign trail in Hazaribagh Iand three-term bjp MP from Hazaribagh Yashwant Sinha this Lok Sabha elections. While son Jayant Sinha (51) is out Hazaribagh constituency, covering the electioneering under the scorching sun, Sinha Sr monitors the Ram g arh district and parts of Haz ari b- agh district, has over 15 lakh voters. It war room set up at Rishav Batika, his sprawling farmhouse in returned Sinha Sr to the Lok Sabha thr- Demotand, six km away from Hazaribagh network’s India operations, to contest ice—in 1998, ’99 and ’09. The bjp cadre town. “Earlier, my wife, sons and daugh- the election. “I don’t need to guide him. relucta ntly admits Jayant’s candidature ter took care of my election management He’s worked hard in earlier elections and was initially a handicap. “But we are while I campaigned in the hinterland. knows the demands of the job,” Sinha overcoming it. Jab bhi koi naya ped lagate Now my son is out in the field and I am says, trying to drive home the point that hain toh woh kitna phal dega, ummeed into managing his campaign,” he says. “Jayant didn’t get this seat due to any- nahi laga sakte hain (You can’t predict the Sinha, now 76, says he is yet to decide body’s mercy, but on his own merit”. fruiting potential of a new tree),” muses about his future role in the party (nor is bjp supporter S.K. Singh. “Hum logon ki there any indication from the bjp lead- lachari hai. Sirf Modiji ke liye BJP ko vote ership). “All that Rajnath Singh (bjp dena hai. Pratyashi nahi dekhna hai chief ) said at a public meeting was that “Jab bhi koi naya ped lagate (We’re helpless, we’ll vote for Modi reg- he wouldn’t allow me to retire,” he says. hain toh woh kitna phal dega ardless of the candidate),” says Shyam Sinha Sr is cautious when talking about ummeed nahin laga sakte,” Gupta, another party worker. Jayant, who quit as MD of Omidyar muses a BJP worker. Going by his campaign so far, the 24 21 April 2014 OUTLOOK Former editor-in-chief of The Hindu, N. Ram is chairman essay N. RAM of Kasturi & Sons Ltd, which publishes the paper POLLWALTZ2014 Nearing Port, There’s No Abandoning Ship Let us not expect Modi to relinquish his ideological roots. The BJP’s poll manifesto points to the limits of his flexibility. “It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place.... Ye are grown intolerably odious to the nation.” —Oliver Cromwell, on dismissing the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653 UT of deference to the Election stares every Congressperson in the face. The heir presump- tive is consciously preparing the party for an effective Commission of India, I won’t quote the O fighting role in the Opposition, which presupposes an rest, the choicest parts, of the speech of ability, which he has not so far shown, to join forces with the Englishman whose talent for high- other parties on secular-democratic issues on which there is broad agreement. minded, inventive political invective has But what about the alternative? rarely been bettered. Cromwell’s inspired words capture The prospects of a ‘third option’—a combine of non-bjp, the intentions of Indians in this season of reckoning towards non-Congress players, mostly strong regional parties, sup- the party that has ruled at the Centre for a decade, which is ported from outside by the Congress and perhaps the itself unprecedented in recent times. Left—coming to the fore after the election and staking a That the Indian National Congress and the United claim to form the government seem to have receded, even Progressive Alliance government it heads have, through a if some political leaders haven’t abandoned the idea. combination of damaging and feckless socio-economic It’s almost guaranteed that after counting day, the presi- policies, unmatched levels of corruption, and the collapse dent will invite the elected leader of the single largest party of leadership and legitimacy, “grown intolerably odious to in the Lok Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party, to have the first the nation”, and that the political marketplace has down- turn at forming a government. The overwhelming probabil- graded the Congress’s stock to junk status, is beyond argu- ity is that leader will be ‘Vikas Purush’ Narendra Modi, ment. Every opinion poll, every indication from the ground, NaMo to millions of fans (blaspheming consciously or every portent in the polity spells out the ejection of the unconsciously for a higher political cause, but who are we, Congress from the seat of power on May 16.