www.openthemagazine.com 50 2 NOVEMBER /2020 OPEN VOLUME 12 ISSUE 43 2 NOVEMBER 2020 CONTENTS 2 NOVEMBER 2020 5 6 12 14 16 18 20 22 LOCOMOTIF OPEN DIARY THE INSIDER INDIAN ACCENTS TOUCHSTONE OPINION WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY The trial By Swapan Dasgupta By PR Ramesh Reimagining An American Left, right and By Jayanta Ghosal Mao against then and now the Gita folk tale nowhere Nehru By S Prasannarajan By Bibek Debroy By Keerthik Sasidharan By Minhaz Merchant By Iqbal Chand Malhotra 28 HOW ILL IS INDIA’S 28 HEALTH SECTOR? With government hospitals overburdened, bottomlines of private ones wiped out, and an insurance system that seems to be unable to wrap its head around the pandemic, Covid-19 has laid bare India’s health infrastructure By Lhendup G Bhutia 34 BE PATIENT Being non-Covid patients in the time of a pandemic By Nikita Doval 16 5 38 DOCTORS JUMPING BORDERS With the disruption in corporate hospitals, underpaid medical professionals and neighbourhood nursing homes are stepping into the breach By V Shoba 22 44 PUNJABI RAP Political brinkmanship in Punjab has taken a dangerous turn after the farm reform laws By Siddharth Singh 56 48 LETTER FROM LAHORE Land without small mercies By Mehr Tarar 52 52 56 60 65 66 BEHOLDEN TO THE ‘THE TIDE IS SHIFTING AWAY FROM THE INVISIBLE OTHER HOLLYWOOD REPORTER NOT PEOPLE LIKE US FATHER FIGURE MALE SUPREMACY’ What makes us who we are? Ewan McGregor on his A new beginning Sofia Coppola on her departure Parvathy on the Kerala Increasingly in popular culture new docu-series Long Way Up By Rajeev Masand from reflective character studies film industry it is who we are opposed to By Noel de Souza By Rajeev Masand By Ullekh NP By Kaveree Bamzai Cover by Saurabh Singh 2 NOVEMBER 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 Despite opposition parties being in disarray and EDITOR-AT-LARGE Siddharth Singh DEPUTY EDITORS Madhavankutty Pillai Rashtriya Janata Dal founder Lalu Prasad serving (Mumbai Bureau Chief), a prison term for a multi-crore fodder scam, the Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair electoral fight in Bihar that looked like a onesided CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rohit Chawla affair at the beginning for the BJP-Janata Dal (United) ART DIRECTOR Jyoti K Singh SENIOR EDITORS Sudeep Paul, combine has become tough as we near the voting dates Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), (‘Bihar 2020’, October 26th, 2020). The main reason is Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval AssOCIATE EDITOR Vijay K Soni (Web) the poor performance of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ASSISTANT EDITOR Vipul Vivek over the past five years. If you look at the questions CHIEF OF GRAPHICS Saurabh Singh in the latest opinion survey also, you will see that SENIOR DESIGNERS Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh while people still prefer him to anyone else, they are PHOTO EDITOR Raul Irani also complaining about him individually, not the DEPUTY PHOTO EDITOR Ashish Sharma coalition. That should give the BJP some hope. Nitish NATIONAL HEAD-EVENTS AND INITIATIVES Kumar rose in Bihar politics as a whiff of fresh air with the right backing Arpita Sachin Ahuja AVP (ADVERTISING) and promised to transform the state but got waylaid of the BJP’s leaders, she Rashmi Lata Swarup in between. He made prohibition his main plank could be the much needed GENERAL MANAGERS (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) but that has not helped grow the economy of Bihar. alternative in Tamil Nadu Instead, the Bihar government is losing revenue to politics. If the BJP doesn’t get NATIONAL HEAD-DISTRIBUTION AND SALES Ajay Gupta both neighbouring states and smugglers. The LJP, the it right this time, it will be REGIONAL HEADS-CIRCULATION D Charles (South), Melvin George Congress and the RJD are full of discredited leaders. a longwinding road ahead (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Nitish Kumar has become a shadow of himself and for them. With the current HEAD-PRODUCTION Maneesh Tyagi his agenda of growth and development seems to have EPS adminstration’s poor SENIOR MANAGER (PRE-PRESS) Sharad Tailang taken a backseat. It’s a sorry state of affairs where no performance and DMK’s MANAGER-MARKETING matter who wins—Lalu’s son Tejashwi or Nitish once MK Stalin, Kamal Haasan Priya Singh CHIEF DESIGNER-MARKETING again—Bihar ends up losing. and Rajini still struggling to Champak Bhattacharjee Bholey Bhardwaj become relevant, Khushbu CFO & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht could be the real alternative CHIEF EXECUTIVE & PUBLISHER Tamil voters are looking for. Neeraja Chawla It’s now or never. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner WAITING FOR DEATH TAMIL TWIST Ashok Goswami is prohibited. Much as we may yearn ‘to The B JP has finally got a Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf cease upon the midnight face to activate its cadre in Switching parties is a way of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, with no pain’, we may not Tamil Nadu for the electoral of life in Tamil Nadu politics 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). really end up being fortunate race (‘Getting It Right’ by By and actor Kushbu Sundar Published at 4, DDA Commercial enough when our turn Maalan Narayanan, October has perfected the art by now. Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. comes (‘The Sense of an 26th, 2020). The party’s plans She has had a lacklustre Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 Ending’ by Arun Shourie, to rope in Rajinikanth has career in both the DMK and To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to October 26th, 2020). Yama’s not yielded any results as the the Congress. Now, the BJP’s www.openthemagazine.com or call our Toll Free Number emissaries are not known actor chose to float his own arrival on the Tamil scene 1800 102 7510 to be kind nor do they come party. Khushbu Sundar who has given her new opening or email at: [email protected] sequentially. So probably, could not shake the Congress and a third chance to turn For alliances, email [email protected] we should remember the much may be better placed into reality the part she has For advertising, email maxim that ‘preparedness in the BJP because the former been dreaming of. Let us [email protected] For any other queries/observations, is all’. Truly, being organised party is in a shambles in the wait and watch how the email [email protected] in death, as in life, is crucial state. The BJP doesn’t have BJP fares in the next Tamil to a peaceful end. Writing a any history there and may Nadu elections and whether Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing will can indeed be liberating strike a chord with the voters it is able to grow beyond initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using because it gives us a glimpse who are fed up of AIADMK’s elections. Whoever wins, products or services advertised in the magazine of our own end. Once we and DMK’s shenanigans. party-hopper Kushbu is Volume 12 Issue 43 have our after-plan ready, Though Khushbu is no having a field day trying her For the week 27 October- we can, like passengers in a Jayalalithaa, she is no political luck out again 2 November 2020 Total No. of pages 68 lounge, soak in the moment. Sasikala either. She has and again. Sangeeta Kampani a clean track record and CK Jayanthimaniam 4 2 NOVEMBER 2020 LOCOMOTIF By S PRASANNARAJAN THE TRIAL THEN AND NOW EFORE 2020, THERE was 1968. Then: The streets Sorkin, a courtroom drama becomes a verbal arena where the erupted in counter-cultural romance of what Le Monde kinetic force of dialogues is matched by the moralism of the called the “bored” generation. In Paris, they occupied self-conscious idealist. As a scriptwriter and filmmaker (the universities and factories and invited Sartre for repertoire includes The West Wing, The Newsroom and The Social philosophical input—and old icons of communism Network), he is the polemicist of here-and-now, carrying within Bwere worthy of being there on the wall and the placard. That was him an overabundance of headlines-driven rage. In The Trial, the a time when capitalism and imperialism were synonyms for dramatisation of moral crime and predetermined punishment evil, a time when the guardian of Gallic essentialism, Charles de parades the idealists, bigots and conspirators from the year that Gaulle, had to temporarily flee the Republic. In the religion of America believes it’s reliving today. protest, conscience conditioned by ideology was the only temple. Here they are. The hippies, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Elsewhere, in the United States, it was a war and an played with comic irreverence by Sacha Baron Cohen and assassination that brought dissent to the street. Vietnam was Jeremy Strong (of Succession) respectively, come to the court one the wrong war for a generation angered by the extra-territorial day dressed as judges, and Hoffman never misses an opportunity terror of the imperium, and the foot soldiers dying in the faraway to defy the system with some of Sorkin’s best lines. Tom Hayden swamps and jungles of Vietnam mostly came from the working (Eddie Redmayne), the ideologue, is a conflicted soul waiting for class and the Black community. The war was not unsolicited validation. He will have his moment, even if it’s at the expense of martyrdom; it was sacrifice to please the wrong god.