'Cycle will go, motorcycle will come': In one UP village, many Yadavs are rooting for Akhilesh

Having raised five children, Savitri Yadav, a widow in her fifties, was at that stage of life when she could afford to sit back and bask in the winter sun, while her two college-going daughters and her daughter-in-law flitted around to manage the home and the kitchen.“Ameer gareeb banbe kariye.” The rich have become poor, Yadav chuckled as she declared her support for notebandi.

The family’s single-storeyed brick home is set amidst the fields, away from the main settlement in Baksha village, with just one other family as neighbours. Perhaps that explains Yadav’s independent streak. In the rest of the village, which lies 15 kms from Jaunpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh, even Brahmins who traditionally support the Bharatiya Janata Party complained bitterly of the hardship caused by demonetisation, as did many Yadavs.Abhay Kumar Yadav, a farmer, said it took him ten days to withdraw Rs 6,000 from the bank and he still owed the seed and fertiliser merchant Rs 4,300. “Have you seen any brick kiln owner in the bank queue?” he asked. “It’s only the poor who are lining up.”But Savitri Yadav could not stop gushing about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s farsightedness. “The rich have always oppressed the poor,” she said. “Look at these politicians, they take the votes of the poor. But after they win, they act like rajas. They shoo away the poor and welcome the rich, offering them chairs, giving them tea.” By demonetising bulk of the currency in circulation from November 9, Modi had taken the wind out of such black money hoarders, she said. “Raja rahin to baajaa baj gayin unka.”

But was she sure the rich had been laid low by demonetisation?

“Ab dikhaawati baajaa yaa asli mein baajaa, dikhaawati to baajaa bajat waa…” Whether it is real or fake, at least they appear to have suffered a setback. That’s enough to feel satisfied, she said.So strong was her conviction in Modi, she dismissed all talk of hardship on account of the cash crunch. “I haven’t seen but I have heard from my son that you can swipe cards to make purchases and transfer money using mobiles.”Kuldip Yadav’s unabashed embrace of Hindutva and support of Modi has created a rift with his old childhood friends, who say: “Yadav hoke Modi ka photo lagaate ho.” Despite being a Yadav, you promote Modi. His response: “Bhagwan Ram ko maanane waale sab hai.” 

Everyone believes in Ram.But it isn’t just Hindutva – Kuldip Yadav rationalises the difference between him and his school friends as the difference between the urban sophisticate and the rural illiterate who know no better. He also identifies Yadavs as “uchch jaati”, or upper caste, even though officially Yadavs come under the Other Backward Classes.Contrary to long-held assumptions equating caste identities with political parties, Uttar Pradesh is now seeing a greater “internal differentiation” within castes, academics Prashant K Trivedi, Surinder Kumar, Srinivas Goli, Fahimuddin write in a recent article in theEconomic and Political Weekly. These social and economic differences, they say, are “making it challenging to articulate a politics that reflects the aspirations of the entire community”.That partly explains why several young, aspirational Yadavs voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.

The BJP is hopeful of retaining some of those votes this time. But is that happening?There are indeed young Yadav men in Baksha who express admiration for Modi. Sarvesh Kumar Yadav, who teaches in a private school, credits the prime minister for the smart cities project and the surgical strike on Pakistan.But this time, things are complicated – there is a Yadav leader who embodies many of Modi’s perceived virtues. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is popular not just among the Yadavs. Whether in the Brahmin quarter of Baksha or the Harijan Basti, among BJP workers or BSP supporters, everyone seems to have only words of praise for him.

“Saaf suthra hai.” He is clean.

“Imaandaar hai.” He is honest.

“Padha likha hai”. He is educated.

“Kaam kiya hai.” He has worked hard.

Among the many initiatives of Akhilesh Yadav identified by people as evidence of his work: the Samajwadi Pension Yojana, monthly financial assistance of Rs 500 for people below the poverty line; Kanya Shiksha Dhan, scholarships for meritorious girls; cycles and laptops for high-school students; an ambulance service for emergencies and pregnant women, popularly known as 108 and 102; a responsive police helpline, popularly known as 100; and the immensely sought-after Lohiya Gareeb Awaas Yojana, which gives people more than Rs 3 lakh to construct homes.None of the initiatives are predicated on caste, which had helped buttress Akhilesh Yadav’s image as more than just a Yadav leader.But the Samajwadi Party worker in the village, Baba Yadav, is pragmatic. “People might praise Akhilesh, but there is always some anti-incumbency,” he said.As it happens, in the Malhani assembly constituency in which Baksha falls, the Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded a candidate from the Yadav community, Vivek Yadav. Young and affluent, with a political lineage, he has been doing the rounds of the villages in the run up to polls. “Whoever calls him, he comes,” said Abhay Kumar Yadav, approvingly. “Naya hai, yuva hai.” He is young and new. Not something that can be said of the current Samajwadi MLA, Parasnath Yadav, a veteran minister who is in his late-sixties.But most of all, what is keeping the Samajwadi workers anxious is the family feud that has engulfed the party, pitting Akhilesh Yadav against his father Mulayam Singh. In the event of a split in the party, all Samajwadi workers in Baksha are clear where their loyalties lie. “With Akhilesh. He is the future,” said Bharat Yadav, the crusty old man who is the de facto village pradhan, ruling in the name of his widowed sister-in-law Shanti Yadav who has been twice elected in the panchayat polls.But Baba Yadav is worried about the symbol. “If the Election Commission freezes the symbol, then the party will be in trouble,” he said.However, Bharat Yadav is confident of Akhilesh Yadav sailing through. “Cycle chali jayegi to kya, motorcycle aa jayegi.” So what if the cycle goes, the motorcycle will come, he guffawed.Even Kuldip Kumar Yadav, the self-avowed Modi bhakt, could not conceal a blush for Akhilesh Yadav. When asked who should be Uttar Pradesh’s next chief minister, he said without blinking: “Modi PM ban ke kaarnaame dikhaate rahein, CM bane Akhilesh.” Let Modi work his wonders as prime minister, may Akhilesh become the CM.Then, his inner politician came to the fore, and he corrected himself: “Hum apni sooch se nahi chal sakte na, janta ki bhi dekhni hai humein.” I cannot just go by my own thinking. I have to respect people’s wishes.Narendra Modi and Akhilesh Yadav are not the only leaders that the people of Baksha talk about. In the next story, those who want the return of Mayawati

Demonetisation may temporarily slow down the economy: President Pranab Mukherjee

In his New Year address to governors and lieutenant governors, he said the poor would need some help 'to alleviate their suffering'.

India reduces baby deaths but still has not met its 2012 targets

First, the good news: 37 babies died for every 1,000 that were born in 2015, two better than the government’s projections of an infant mortality rate (IMR) of 39 for that year, according to new data released last week. That’s a drop of 53% over 25 years.Now, the bad news: The target for IMR reduction was 67%; it has fallen 10 short of the target 27 that India agreed to under the 2015 millennium development goals, set in consultation with the United Nations. India has also not achieved the IMR target of 30 that the government itself set for 2012.To get an idea of India’s global standing, compare its 2015 IMR average of 37 with IMRs of 35 for 154 low and middle-income nations; 5 for 26 north American nations and 3 for 39 nations in the Euro area.There were wide variations in IMR–a bellwether of national health–across India, according to the latest reportfrom the Sample Registration System (SRS) bulletin, with smaller, more literate states reporting IMRs close to or better than richer countries and larger, poorer states reporting more deaths than poorer countries, indicating the uneven nature of healthcare.The overall improvement in IMR over a quarter century is likely linked to a variety of government interventions, including institutional deliveries and providing iron and folic-acid tablets to pregnant women, and rising incomes and living circumstances since economic liberalisation in 1991.

Global comparison

Of 36 Indian states and union territories, the lowest IMRs were reported from Goa and Manipur with nine infant deaths per 1,000 live births–that is the same as China, Bulgaria and Costa Rica and one better than the consolidated figure for Europe and Central Asia, according to 2015 World Bank data.In contrast, Madhya Pradesh reported India’s highest IMR with 50 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, or worse than Ethiopia and Ghana and marginally better than disaster-wracked Haiti (52) and unstable Zimbabwe (47), but better than its 2014 rate of 52.Uttarakhand was the only state that reported a worsening in its IMR, from 33 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2014 to 34 in 2015.

Uncooperative federalism: Kiran Bedi bullying Puducherry’s elected government harms Indian democracy

The World Bank has bowed to Indian pressure on Indus Waters Treaty: Pakistan's former commissioner

On first official visit to coastal state, Portugal’s Goa-origin PM is sucked into a poll eve row

The Daily Fix: Demonetisation is the best argument for restoring the autonomy of the RBI

  The Reserve Bank of India’s note to the parliamentary committee on demonetisation confirms the worst suspicions about the policy. It was taken on a political whim, keeping the central bank out of the loop. On November 7, the RBI was “advised” by the government to consider demonetising high-value currency notes and by November 8, the prime minister had made his famous late-evening announcement. It was done with minimal preparation – as of November 8, the stock of Rs 2,000 notes was barely 6% of the currency drawn out of circulation. It also blows away the fig leaf sported by the government so far, that the decision to demonetise flowed from the RBI and was therefore rooted in monetary wisdom.In all this, the central bank comes across as an institution tragically flailing as tries to keep up with its political masters. That is, unfortunately, not an exaggeration because if demonetisation has revealed anything, it is that the autonomy of the central bank is all but gone. The government had already chipped away at it through structural changes last year, when the Centre decreedthat all decisions would be taken by a monetary policy committee, which would include the governor, the deputy governor and three other members from outside the central bank. The governor did not have veto power and the deputy governor was chosen by a committee headed by the cabinet secretary. It led to fears about government interference and that decisions taken by the RBI would be shaped by political, rather than monetary, considerations.The central bank, formed in 1935 as the custodian of the country’s monetary policy, had two main functions – maintaining the reserves and issuing bank notes. Demonetisation seems to have reduced the RBI to a mere printer of notes, with no real say in how much or when they should be issued. The bank’s discomfort with the policy has been apparent from the start, as it made frequent changes to cash withdrawal rules and exemptions. For weeks, as the country queued up outside banks and empty ATMs, RBI governor Urjit Patel maintained a stony silence. Even the monetary policy committee was forced to admit, a month into demonetisation, that it had hurt the economy, though the effects were probably temporary. For more than two months now, the central bank has been struggling to justify and plug the gaps in a policy it had no control over.Meshing larger legislative or administrative concerns with the decisions of the RBI may not always be a bad idea; many have argued for the virtues of inflation targeting, for instance. But demonetisation is an example of how and when not to do it. Indeed, with the grim effects of the policy playing out in various sectors of the economy, it is probably the best argument for restoring the autonomy of the RBI.

No WhatsApp For Babus, Said Puducherry Chief Minister. Kiran Bedi Just Nixed His Ban

Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi said that social media should be used by government officials

 Kiran Bedi, the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, has said that social media can and should be used by government officers to publicise and implement important schemes in Puducherry. To enable this, she has cancelled a ban declared earlier this week by Chief Minister V Narayanasamy on heads and members of government departments using Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook for official purposes.Explaining her decision on Twitter, she posted, "If Puducherry has to be a progressive UT, it cannot be retrograde in communications.the Lieutenant Governor had said that the WhatsApp group she created was essential: "I dramatically improved our information sharing. Meeting notices, minutes of meetings, news clips, photographs, even shared short videos, travels and tour notes, and more. Now there was even a space created for shared achievements missing so far. Most of all ideating."

 post on Twitter, she said, "Amazing how we choose to be retrograde. Some in position of power instead of using their position of influence to facilitate, do so to obstruct."Ms Bedi, who serves as the centre's representative, took charge of Puducherry in May last year. Her decision to over-rule the Chief Minster is likely to raise questions about whether she has encroached upon the government's turf - a complaint common for the Aam Admi Party government in Delhi.

Tax collections for 2016-2017 will exceed Budget estimate of Rs 16.3 lakh crore, says Arun Jaitley

Uttar Pradesh: Bahujan Samaj Party announces nomination list, names 100 candidates

Party chief Mayawati declared 36 tickets for Muslim members.

Green court's order for an audit of buildings in Delhi is a new frontier in the fight for clean air

Indoor air quality receives far less attention even though a significant portion of the population spends 90% of their time inside.

As if by tradition, this year’s firecracker-laden festival season gave way to a rather sombre, introspective period. Delhi, once again, was asking itself what to do about its air quality, a condition now described as catastrophic. Amidst the usual crop of recommendations, and a robustSupreme Court ban on November 25 on the sale of firecrackers in the National Capital Region, there was a rather unorthodox entrant into the discourse. Two days before the top court’s order, the National Green Tribunal, responding to a petition on Delhi’s toxic air, directed all government buildings in the city – including offices, hospitals, schools and colleges – to be subjected to a minimum environmental audit.

The green court, motivated by the “fundamental right to a clean environment”, sought an assessment of the solid waste, sewage, and outdoor and indoor air quality systems of such buildings to ensure “that no hazardous result follows in relation to public health”.Are the environmental conditions of buildings relevant to the crisis of outdoor air pollution? Intuitively, as a measure to improve air quality, this directive may seem beside the point. Air pollution is caused, in varying measure, by widely dispersed sources – road dust, construction activities, waste burning, vehicle emissions, diesel generators, industries, power plants, brick kilns, and biomass-based cooking. Of these, only a handful have a direct relationship with operational building structures. Why, then, is the tribunal directive even worth noting?

There are two reasons for this: the audit will, even if partially, further the current information base on air-quality data; and somewhat unconventionally, in laying emphasis on buildings, the order enables analysis on a variety of environmental issues, despite their lack of direct relevance to air quality.

Benefits of an audit...First, the proposed audit will help monitor and make available data on air pollution that is sourced in and co-related with building use, such as particulate matter – tiny particles suspended in the air, many of which are hazardous to health – released from diesel generators or harmful chemicals that are a result of untreated sewage. More so, it aims to include measurements of indoor air quality, which has often received far less attention even though a significant portion of the population typically spends more than 90% of their time indoors. 

Such an audit will help identify areas within buildings that are prone to higher concentrations of pollutants, which is especially valuable when there are vulnerable populations involved such as in hospitals and schools. Children are often asked to stay indoors during high pollution days. Yet, ill-operated and unventilated buildings can lead to unhealthy indoor conditions as well. An ably designed audit will be able to point to these connections.Second, it opens up the space for information to be collected on other issues, beyond air pollution, that are relevant to the environmental impact of buildings. 

For instance, it will likely bring forth data about energy consumption through lighting, heating and cooling among others. Given the scale of India’s real estate growth, such data is key to inform urban planning and the country’s energy future. Analogously, an audit that tracks waste streams can help promote the segregation and recycling of material such as paper, plastic and metals that, if properly disposed, can divert from further accumulation in Delhi’s immense landfills.Ultimately, the order sets a precedent for examining the multiple dimensions through which the built and the natural world interact, often with a serious environmental footprint. Buildings have long lives, and once constructed, can lock in consumption and activity patterns within them. One example is built-in central air-conditioning, without options for natural ventilation, in glass-clad structures preferred by contemporary real estate developers. Given the transitions taking place in infrastructure – by some estimates, two-thirds of India’s buildings that will exist in 2030 remain to be built – the tribunal’s measure could be an important starting point to reconsider consumption patterns with the potential to prevent unintended lock-in to unsustainable pathways.

Implementation is key

Much will depend on whether the audit is ably designed and implemented. The National Green Tribunal had called upon the Ministry of Environment and Forest and Climate Change, and the Central Pollution Control Board to draw up a set of guidelines for the audit in two weeks. Yet, so far, none have been made available to the public. As the details unfold in the coming weeks, the results will hinge on two factors.First, the comprehensiveness of the scope of the audit guidelines. At the least, it must aim to raise awareness among building inhabitants, and provide recommendations to improve practices relating to the environment, such as for energy, water or waste reduction. Ideally, the audit should also unpack the relationship between building operational practices, environmental pollution levels and exposures, and their effects on social and economic welfare such as on the health and productivity of inhabitants.Second, the guidelines, when released, should have clarity about compliance procedures, with responsibility given to an agency with requisite capabilities. The latter is central to success, as the multi-sectoral nature of the challenge requires for the auditor to have technical knowledge of buildings, but also of its solid waste, sewage, energy and air quality systems. A coordinated approach that transcends departmental divisions to garner such a cross-section of expertise will be needed for the exercise to be useful. The task is not trivial, but if undertaken effectively, it will set a precedent for how we engage with the structures we inhabit the most.

 Film actress turns to film maker

butyfull heroine Twinkle Khanna rurns producer

It was reported last month that actors Akshay Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan will share screen space after 10 years in a film directed by R Balki. Though all three of them own huge production houses in Hari Om Productions, AB Corp Ltd. and Hope Productions, they have roped in a producer to back their project. 

Why the flops ‘Dil Se’ and ‘Johnny Gadaar’ were game-changers for Bollywood

    Dil Se, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Manisha Koirala, bombed at the box office, but created a couple of significant shifts in Bollywood with its excursion into a troubled territory overrun by armed insurgents and the Indian Army, and in the creation of a female lead who is the antithesis of a goody-goody, plastic-pretty heroine…

It travels to the north-east (for a mainstream film, that was a first), to the insurgency-hit jungles, where our hero Amar (Shah Rukh Khan as an All India Radio executive in another of his handful of ‘realistic’ roles) is in Assam on assignment, gathering on-the-ground impressions about the state of the nation. He manages to reach an extremist leader for an interview, and we get a few constructed but revealing glimpses of one of the most long-drawn, vexed conflicts in the country.

I have a sneaking, abiding fondness for Dil Se, despite its flaws: to me it will always be a magnificent failure which speaks to me every time I watch it.Amar spots a girl on a dark, rainy platform, her cowl blowing back in a gust of wind. The sight of that face, tight, controlled, waiting not for a prince charming but, as is later revealed, for a member of her rebel group, is riveting. Not just for the very struck Amar, but also for us. There are a series of striking images in the movie, very much a Mani Ratnam trait, and sometimes those images are meant solely to create an intake of breath at the pure gorgeousness: he is the kind of film-maker who asks that we sift through those images to get to the point he’s making.

Koirala proves that a leading lady doesn’t always have to be a simpering doll. Her mysterious Meghna is a beautiful woman, not entirely impervious to a lover’s overtures, but who is already spoken for. She is not wedded to another, but to a cause. She is a member of a ‘terrorist group’ working to strike a blow against ‘India’, which is seen as a violent aggressor in her native north-eastern state. Her interactions with Amar ricochet between desire and dread, creating a few of the most passionate scenes between a man and a woman in Hindi cinema.

The other female lead is played by the debutant Preity Zinta, in the first of her several ‘bubbly girl’ roles. She gets to play a Malayali, which is a stretch for her to execute and for us to believe. But as just a young girl, fun-loving, open, frank, Zinta was a fresh-faced delight, with the best line in the film: Are you a virgin? she asks her fiancé, played by Shah Rukh Khan. He splutters into this teacup. And we laugh out loud.

The set-up is impressive. Shah Rukh is good. Koirala is believable, even though Mani Ratnam has her dance in the arid vastness of Ladakh with SRK, both wrapped in miles of flowy drapes. But the tension it manages to create unravels, and the climax is a cop-out: the suicide bomber (based, presumably, on the female suicide bomber who killed Rajiv Gandhi) is detected, and deflected by her true love. It ends with the lovers being blown up while encased in a tight embrace: if they cannot live together, they will die together.A braver film would have taken it to a more chilling conclusion. But Ratnam needed to play safe to keep the CBFC happy: an anti-India character with ill intent towards the ‘unity and integrity’ of the country could not be allowed to get away. Which is why the end is less a bang, as my review says, and more a whimper.

And who can forget SRK and Malaika’s impossibly agile waist swaying on a train to the strains of ‘Chhaiyyan chhaiyyan’? That one spectacular song-and-dance, if nothing else, is the lasting legacy of a film whose epitaph could well read ‘it failed, but at least it tried’.

Johnny Gaddaar (2007)

A character in Johnny Gaddaar is shown reading a James Hadley Chase novel. The book is both a notifier and apt metaphor. It tells you exactly the kind of film you are getting into: the universe is something Chase would have recognized right off the bat – the lights are neon, the characters are suitably lowlife; the feel is, as I said in my review, grimy, grotty. These little people do not have big ambitions. They are after some money, enough to fit in a suitcase. They have small-time jobs.

Basically, they are small-time crooks who get by planning and executing small-time scams. These are not characters you find centre stage in Hindi cinema, even though there may have been an early precedent, Dev Anand’s small-time gambler in Guru Dutt’s Baazi (1951). But you are never left in any doubt that Anand’s character is a hero, even if a little soiled around the edges. He occupies the screen fully, and our attention.Small-time cons in Bollywood are mostly fringe people. They are not full-fledged mobsters. They play small parts, lurking on the sidelines, waiting for the spotlight to fall on them. Bollywood doesn’t pay them much attention because they are not heroes. They are not noble. They are not mythical. They are not powerful. They are lowlifes with dirt under their fingernails, lurching from one dodgy ‘job’ to another, playing footsie with the fuzz. They fly by night; during the day they have jobs which are poised on the cusp of respectability.

And they are neither handsome nor pretty, or they would have been in an Abbas–Mustan film (like Race), in which the characters are all uniformly greedy or vile, but they are so good-looking that you know they exist merely to decorate a film.Johnny Gaddaar is a thriller, yes, but it is not like any familiar Bollywood thriller. It is not gangster. It is not a murder mystery, though there is a killing which gets it going. It refuses to be boxed into a single recognizable category – crime-caper, noir and pulp. It borrows elements from all of these. Its characters are con men: calling them goons would be a stretch. The closest I could come, off the top of my head, for a sort-of-similar flick, would be Stephen Frears’s The Grifters, which also revolves around cons and cash.Director Sriram Raghavan isn’t shy about his inspirations.

It isn’t just James Hadley Chase, whose slender paperbacks, with those distinctive covers with underclad women, were so popular in the 1960s and ’70s. Raghavan also borrows from Parwana (1971), in which Amitabh Bachchan plays a killer with an ingenious plan, in getting Neil’s baby-faced baddie to create an alibi for himself, just the way Bachchan’s character does.Raghavan’s penchant for the dark and twisty found expression again in Badlapur, in which revenge is served ice-cold. (An in-between misstep was Agent Vinod, a self-serious, deadly dull spy expedition starring Saif.) ButJohnny Gaddaar remains my favourite of his films: it is pulpy, squelchy, deliciously depraved, and sure-footed all the way.Excerpted with permission from 50 Films That Changed Bollywood 1995-2015, Shubhra Gupta, HarperCollins India.