w w w.o p e n t h e m a g a z i n e .

c o m
PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY
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TOTAL NUMBER OF PAGES 68

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25 SEPTEMBER 2023 / ` 80
 CONTENTS
25 SEPTEMBER 2023

8 10 14 16

OPINION OPENINGS INSIDER SOFT POWER

Hating your own The peacock The great derangement
By Minhaz Merchant population explosion By Makarand R Paranjape
By Madhavankutty Pillai

6 LOCOMOTIF
Detachment of the unifier
By S Prasannarajan

18 OPEN ESSAY
Xi’s hidden agenda
By Brahma Chellaney

24 LEADERSHIP
Modi has changed India’s terms
of engagement with the world
by democratising G20
By PR Ramesh

32 THE MESSAGE
The summit demonstrated
India’s ability to influence
outcomes on the global stage
By Rajeev Deshpande

40 DIGITAL DIVIDEND
G20’s adoption of
the Indian digital public
infrastructure as a
global template boosts
Delhi’s stature
By Anil Padmanabhan

44 THE ATMOSPHERICS
Will millet pudding with
apricot compote shift
the epicurean focus
from DC to Delhi?
By Reshmi Dasgupta

48 52 56 59

CITIZEN KHAN LIVING CANVAS THE MAN ON THE HILL TASTING TIME
The reinvention of An art gallery at sixty Ecologist Madhav Gadgil Understanding India
Shah Rukh Khan as an basks in its glory as relives his fascination with the through its food and drink
action hero with a conscience a pioneering influencer natural world in his memoir By Mohit Satyanand
By Kaveree Bamzai By Shaikh Ayaz By Nandini Nair

60 62 65 66

CRIME CANON PLAYTIME WITH STREAMING STARGAZER

Paths of the psychopath BORIA MAJUMDAR SMART By Kaveree Bamzai
By Shylashri Shankar C’mon, it’s only a game

Cover Photograph by Getty Images

Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using products or services advertised in the magazine

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 www.openthemagazine.com 3


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The G20 summit showed the way for hosting a RNI NO. DELENG/2009/27862
REGTD. NO DL (S)-17/3354/2021-23
conclave of such importance (‘At Home In the World’,
September 18, 2023). All the world leaders made an
impact in the most eloquent way. Global hostilities
turned to consensus as amity became the central
theme of the G20 summit. Despite geopolitical
tensions, India has strengthened its position on the
world stage. The summit, expertly hosted by India,
signified a watershed moment for the nation. It
underscored India’s growing global influence. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s administration seized the
opportunity to showcase India’s burgeoning
economy and its increasing influence
in international affairs. guarantee stability. Planes
CK Subramaniam grounded, top management’s
salaries cut by 25 per cent and
employees’ wages delayed
WHAT'S IN A NAME? DIVISIVE FORCES are clear indications that
Though the transition from Udhayanidhi Stalin’s attack an airline is struggling to
India to Bharat is not a hasty on Sanatana Dharma generate adequate income.
move, it is clear that the was very aggressive (‘The These are also the results of
government has called a Existential Threat’, by diverting funds borrowed
special session of Parliament Sandeep Balakrishna, for the purpose of running
to rename the country September 18, 2023). He the company smoothly.
formally (‘Bharat, That Is claimed that Sanatana Had the diversion not taken
India…’, September 18, 2023). Dharma needed to be place, things could have
However, the buzz triggered eradicated. Sanatana been different.
a massive debate that only got Dharma has existed for Vasudevan
louder when President thousands of years and will
Droupadi Murmu’s dinner continue to do so. Divisive MASS APPEAL
invite to world leaders forces are keen on sustaining Music director Anirudh
attending the G20 summit divisions by exploiting Ravichander became a
referred to her as the society’s weaknesses. national sensation with his
“President of Bharat”. Even Inclusivity is what debut song (‘Hit Machine’,
as the Bharatiya Janata they are afraid of. September 18, 2023). His
Party (BJP) clarified that the MR Jayanthi ‘Kolaveri Di’ was an instant
Bharat tag was for pride and chartbuster. For the last
not politics, the objection by DREAMS GROUNDED decade, Anirudh has
Congress is nothing but to Flying high is possible consistently delivered hit
score a political point. The (‘The Fall and Disgrace of after hit. He is the massy
brouhaha over Bharat is to Naresh Goyal’, September version of AR Rahman.
grab the headlines when 18, 2023). But continuing to Both have a sense of what
elections are a few months do so is very hard and that is the audience wants and
away. Both names, India and probably the lesson learnt by know how to use music to
Bharat, have always been Naresh Goyal. He was touted elevate a scene. Anirudh has
used interchangeably as a role model for his growth composed music for over 35
in various texts and official from a modest beginning. films. He has worked with
communicationinEnglishand Hard work, continuous superstars from the south
Hindi, respectively. Every follow-ups and winning and with Jawan, he got his
political party, instead of clients’ hearts was his success big Bollywood break too.
playing politics to build vote mantra. But the greed to Now everyone is dancing to
banks,shouldunderstandthis. grow fast and outsmart his tune of ‘Zinda Banda’.
KR Srinivasan all competitors cannot Kanupriya
 LOCOMOTIF

By S PRASANNARAJAN

'HWDFKPHQWRIWKH8QLÀHU

T
HE MOTTO THAT captures the globalisation In this world, old descriptors of status have little value.
of Bharat has to be culturally compatible. So Take the leader of the free world, and think of how fast the
nothing could have been more evocative than term’s loftiness of Cold War vintage has worn off. America
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam as Delhi’s phrase for a may still be the world’s most influential country because
polarised world to hang on to at the G20 summit. of its economy and soft power—but an updated version of
When power stresses its civilisational content, and when the Wilsonian idealism is something a Joe Biden cannot apply
modernity of development and the rewards of democracy are on the world today, though his steady position on Ukraine is
expressed through soundbites mined from antiquity, the sto- a triumph of international morality over pragmatism of the
ry it tells is as much about the narrator as it is about the politi- inward gaze a Donald Trump would have preferred.
cal space he dominates. When Narendra Modi, the host of the America is not trapped in a new Cold War. It is a not a
summit, invoked the imagery of the world as one family in linear clash of ideologies; there is no singular rejoinder, like
Sanskrit, it was the penultimate touch in the self-portrait of a the Soviet Union in another time, to Americanism. Anti-
man who, since the very beginning of his public life, has been Americanism as sustained by the power and paranoia of the
appending the metrics of power. The world that descended ‘victim’ states has many variations today—a Xi version, a
on Delhi over a September weekend provided him with the Putin version, a Kim version… It is Putin, in his various solilo-
perfect stage to play the unifier—and the family sage. quies about Russian exceptionalism, who has rephrased anti-
As he stood there, with the wheel of time as backdrop, Americanism as a specific manifestation of his critique of a
welcoming his guests, we could not have missed the variety deranged Western value system. From the ruins of an empire,
of leaders that paraded past the motifs of an antique land, and still wallowing in lost glory, what he sees at home and
each one of those foreign visitors a beyond gives him no cheer. If it is a nation
statement about the world that dared diminished by history that hurts him at
the best intentions of the summit’s IT WAS NOT FOR POETIC home, what he sees beyond is the cause
outgoing presidency. They were all
there: Democrats weighed down by the EFFECT THAT MODI of the humiliation, a culturally inferior
but resourceful West. Putin’s war against
demands of democracy itself; autocrats INVOKED VASUDHAIVA Ukraine is also an argument against the
struggling for the kind of legitimacy KUTUMBAKAM; HE WAS West, the same entity with which he
that no democracy can offer; dictators
whose global influence is unrelated to
DETERMINED TO TURN IT argues Zelensky has struck a Faustian deal.
His anti-Americanism is a global expres-
a reign of unfreedom; and apostles of INTO A CATCHPHRASE FOR sion of a domestic frustration.
redundant ideologies and casual man- HIS INTERNATIONALISM. For Xi, America is an inspiration as well
ufacturers of the enemy. As Naipaul
would have said, the world is what it is.
THE WORLD ENDORSED HIM as an anxiety. He wants to achieve every-
thing America did—but with Chinese
Almost eight decades after World NOT JUST FOR BEING THE characteristics. His anti-Americanism is
War II, it is home to leaders who LEADER OF NON-CHINA, BUT part competition and part combat, and his
believe in the uses of war and leaders FOR BEING THE VOICE THAT style is both overt and covert. Xi’s China

OTHERS EXPRESSED TOO

who cannot afford to condemn it out- aspires to be the alternative superpower,
right—and the world is what the cult and he expands his spheres of influence
of national interest has made of it. LOUDLY OR TOO MEEKLY through coercion and assistance. Still,

6 25 SEPTEMBER 2023

China can’t be the other superpower, the Soviet Union of the
21st century, because it doesn’t trust its own people, and it is
too paranoid to stand in the vanguard of global leadership.
At the Delhi summit, both were absent for obvious
reasons. For Putin, waiting for the comrade from the
Hermit Kingdom was worthier than supping with those
Western grandees who treated him like a war criminal,
even though Delhi was certain to make him feel at home.
Xi knew what was at play and whom the leader of the West,
read America, was trying so hard to contain. He also knew
the strategic importance of the venue: India is being court-
ed for being non-China. A Xi-shaped hole at the summit
was the reminder of a world that still needed enemies—and
that the doctrine of fragmentation was a prerequisite for
the survival of the Xis and the Putins.
It was not for poetic effect that Modi invoked Vasudhaiva
Kutumbakam; he was determined to turn it into a catch-
phrase for his internationalism. The world endorsed him
not just for being the leader of non-China, but for being
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
Illustration by SAURABH SINGH
the voice that others expressed too loudly or too meekly.
Countries like the US and the UK, for instance, were okay
with the Indian way of taking a stance against Russia and
war without mentioning Russia—or without an open
endorsement of Zelensky. No single nation prevailed in the
Delhi declaration; India’s victory—as the authorship of a
Declaration belongs to the host—was in updating its dip-
lomatic independence as a global attitude of unity. It is not
refurbished non-alignment. It is about multiple alignments
without ideological affiliations. In another era, India’s
internationalism was ideological subservience in the name
of non-alignment and Third-World solidarity.
Moderation is an unlikely word the international
media will use to tell the Indian story under the rule of a
“Hindu nationalist party”, but that is the only word that
captures the spirit of the Delhi declaration. In a world that
swings between extremes, the new Wise Man from the
East has written a global philosophy about unity through
detachment. It’s a big deal. Q
www.openthemagazine.com 7
 OPINION Minhaz Merchant

Hating Your Own

What makes Hinduphobia acceptable at home and abroad

I
T IS DIFFICULT to tell haters from the hated. burst into the magazine’s editorial office and killed 12
When Sonia Gandhi, then Congress president, editors and cartoonists.
called Narendra Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, Most European publications now have a strict policy
“Maut Ka Saudagar”, was she the hater and Modi, banning even a hint of blasphemous editorial content on
the hated? Islam (though there are no laws against blasphemy across
When Modi taunts opposition leaders, is he the hater? Europe). Nobody wants to be the next Charlie Hebdo.
When Mani Shankar Aiyar called Modi “neech”, was he Islam has achieved with fear what Judaism achieved
the hater? through suffering.
None of the three will accept that they resort to hate speech. But matters are more complex than they seem at first sight.
Politics and religion bring out the worst in people. Fear may have made Islamophobia unacceptable. But for the West,
When the two come together, the mix is combustible. that is an unsatisfactory explanation. Why admit to fear?
DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin, son of Tamil Nadu Chief So, a new narrative is manufactured. It says that ordinary
Minister MK Stalin, took hate speech to a new level. The cas- Muslims are as much victims of terrorism as anyone else. They
es filed against Stalin Jr will wend their way through India’s must be protected from discrimination. Defending Islam from
clogged legal labyrinth. They will soon be forgotten just as Islamophobia is the West’s version of the Stockholm syndrome.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s taunt that all thieves have Fear is the key. Co-option is the justification. It preserves
the surname Modi has been largely buried the West’s sense of honour. But the line be-
in public memory after the Supreme Court tween co-option and complicity is thin.
stayed his conviction. Hinduism doesn’t What about Hinduphobia? Hinduism
As the 2024 Lok Sabha election nears, evoke either fear doesn’t evoke either fear as Islam does or
hate speech will receive a steroid boost. empathy as Judaism does. The Western
as Islam does or
Since Modi is the principal target of narrative on Hinduism is that it
the united opposition, Hinduphobia
empathy as Judaism oppresses India’s minorities.
will deepen. does. The Western Western media is far too sophisticat-
India is the only country in the world narrative on ed to not recognise that Hinduism is in
where an 80 per cent majority commu- Hinduism is that fact a tolerant, open-minded religion. If it
nity is the relentless recipient of hate. it oppresses India’s wasn’t, there would be ceaseless riots be-
Hinduphobia has still not achieved im- minorities tween Muslims (numbering 210 million),
munity from hate that, for example, Christians (30 million), and the majority
Islam and Judaism have acquired. Hindus (1,100 million).
Anti-Semitism became unacceptable after the It is safe to target Hinduism. Hindus don’t behead their critics.
Holocaust. Jews are protected legally and morally from They only protest, file legal cases and then get back to normal life.
hate speech. There are specific laws in several countries, in- There are no blasphemy laws in India. Hindus can pray
cluding Germany, against anti-Semitism. whenever they want, wherever they want, however they
What about Islam? It is well on its way to acquiring im- want—and if they so feel, not pray at all and be non-believ-
munity from hate speech. Unlike Jews, Muslims have nev- ers or agnostics or atheists. They’ll still be Hindu.
er suffered a Holocaust. Other religions are not so kind to non-believers.
In contrast, in Muslim countries ranging from Just as Islamopobia and anti-Semitism are unaccept-
Afghanistan to Iran, unspeakable atrocities are inflicted able for different reasons, Hinduphobia is perfectly ac-
on, especially, women. ceptable. Hindutva, a proxy for Hindu nationalism, is seen
In Pakistan, the medieval blasphemy law continues to by the West as more dangerous than Islamist extremism
trigger lynchings and targeted assassinations. and more condemnable than Israeli military attacks on
How has a religion, in whose name casual violence Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.
is inflicted, received protection from global censure? In India, since emulating the best practices of the West
Islamophobia, like anti-Semitism, is today unacceptable in is a step up the social ladder, Hinduphobia is seen as an
academia, in media, and in polite society. upper-class accoutrement.
The reason is a combination of fear and pity. No one has It of course is not. But hating your own is an old Indian af-
forgotten the fatal attack on the editorial staff of French fliction. It will take a little longer, as India regains its intellec-
satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In 2015, Islamist gunmen tual and cultural self-confidence, to erase the affliction.

8 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
Visit your nearest Nature’s Basket or Spencer’s store
 OPENINGS
NOTEBOOK

The Day of the Peacock

T
HE ‘STATE OF INDIA’S Birds’ is a unique study, a all be responsible. “Such environments are favourable for
Citizen Science initiative in which field observations, peafowls, so they immediately move into them. You must
as many as 30 million, of 30,000 birdwatchers across have seen in the report how there were almost no peafowls in
the country were parsed to arrive at a trend of how Kerala 20 years back. But now they’re everywhere,” he says.
birds in India were faring. The last time this was done was The report has illustrations of Kerala’s maps with delineat-
three years ago. This year its report came out last month and, ed districts at different time intervals. In 1998, light green dots
all in all, showed that India was not turning out to be good in just two districts indicated the sparse presence of peafowls.
for birds. There were 942 species assessed based on data that By 2018, all the districts have these dots and many of them are
had been uploaded on the online platform eBird. They looked dark green, showing that the numbers are also very high in
at the change in abundance, the long-term trend over them. To people in the state, this is evident in how familiar the
30 years and the annual change over the last eight years. sight of peafowls has become in villages. Suresh K Govind, a
A press release on the study noted: “But the larger picture is zoologist and assistant professor with Christ College, Irinjal-
grim: 60% of species show long-term declines [out of 348 akuda, lives about 25 to 30 kilometres from the nearest forest.
species that could be assessed for Long-term Trend], and He says that 15 years ago there were no peafowls, and now
40% of species are declining currently [out of 359 species they wander in the compound of his house. But while these
assessed for Current Annual Trend].” birds present a beautiful addition to the landscape, they are
Within this bleak picture, there were however some not always a welcome presence. Farmers have a significant
exceptions, of birds that were actually thriving. And in this issue because they feed on crops. There have been a number of
category, a striking one happened to be the Indian national studies which showed the link between peafowls and damage
bird, the peafowl. Not only has its numbers increased but it is to crops but in 2018, Govind co-authored a paper published
now spreading into new geographical areas. Ashwin Viswa- in the journal Indian BIRDS that estimated precisely the dam-
nathan, a researcher who was part of the team helming the age that could ensue. They did an experiment. The Chulan-
study, says that it is due to a combination of circumstances. nur Peafowl Sanctuary, a 3.42 square kilometre forest that
The peafowl, for instance, has a straddles the districts of Palakkad
greater force of the law behind it. and Thrissur, is replete with a
It comes under Schedule-1 of the large number of these birds. They
Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, took four 10 square metre plots
the highest level of protection. Peafowls prey on snakes and of land near the forest boundary
“But, perhaps, more important as reptiles and the more their where agriculture happened.
to why there’s no directed killing numbers increase, there will be Two plots were enclosed with
of peafowl is because they have
cultural significance and, tradi-
a decrease of the latter. And the a metal fence so that peafowls
couldn’t enter, and the other two
tionally, are not supposed to be rise in population of the birds plots were open where they could.
killed. There is also some evidence doesn’t seem to be letting up. The former therefore served as
in Kerala, the Western Ghats and
the Himalayas that its prolifera-
The ‘State of India’s Birds’ a control group. Then the plots
were observed for a little under
tion might have something to do highlighted Kerala because it 400 hours. The peafowls, between
with the degradation of habitats.” has good documentation. But four to five on average, came at
Climate change, regions becom- Ashwin Viswnathan thinks that dawn and dusk and fed off the
ing a little drier than they used grains with their beaks in the
to be, more trees being cut, and the phenomenon would open plots and it led to almost
forests becoming degraded, could be the same in other states half of the yield being lost. “We

10 25 SEPTEMBER 2023

A peacock at Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan
came to the conclusion that about 46 per cent of paddy was
being consumed by the peafowls, and approximately `17,000
per hectare lost in that area,” says Govind. He attributes the
growing number of the birds to people becoming more aware
about wildlife protection laws, and not wanting to breach
them. “They don’t do anything against the peafowls and if
there are no barriers or constraints in a particular area, wild
animals or birds will come towards people,” he says. To farm-
ers, this means an actual loss in income and they don’t have
too much in their arsenal to prevent it. Govind says that they
use dogs but that has not proved very effective. The only thing
that works is to physically drive them away, which is very
time- and energy-consuming.
The helplessness and anger of farmers can sometimes go
out of control. In March this year, 39 peafowls were found
dead on a farm in a village in Madurai. They had no injuries
and the forest department suspected that they had been
poisoned. Last November in Thiruchirapalli, 15 peafowls
had also been found dead on a farm after grains laced with
rat poison were scattered on the field. The farmer claimed
that he did it to kill rats and not the birds, but in any case, it
was an indication of the complex direction that interaction
between peafowls and farmers could take. News Minute, the
online magazine that covers south India, did an article in 2020
that said how some farmers in Kerala were actually not doing
paddy agriculture anymore because of peafowls.
There are other consequences to this population explo-
sion, which humans might not complain about, but upsets
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
GETTY IMAGES
the balance of nature. Peafowls prey on snakes and reptiles
and the more their numbers increase, there will be a decrease
of the latter. And the rise in population of the birds doesn’t
seem to be letting up. The ‘State of India’s Birds’ highlighted
Kerala because it has good documentation. But Viswanathan
thinks that the phenomenon would be the same in other
states. “The increase is happening almost everywhere. The
reason we picked up Kerala for the visual representation is
because it is one of the states with the best long-term data.
Birdwatchers all the way back from the ’80s and ’90s have
been uploading their observations, so the [time] compari-
son can be made with confidence. Whereas in other places
where there’s been less birdwatching in the past, you can’t say
whether peafowls were not there earlier because nobody was
out there watching birds,” he says.
The increase in numbers would eventually have to plateau
and then reverse because there just wouldn’t be enough food
for all of them. “There is a lot of food still available but because
they are so large, they need a good amount. I would expect
that in the coming years, there would be some decline because
something like this just cannot keep growing. But where I
think the growth will continue are the areas still without
peafowls like the high Himalayas, the densest parts of the
Western Ghats. I’d imagine that until all of those habitats are
occupied, we’re still going to continue to see an increasing
trend,” he says.
By MADHAVANKUTTY PILLAI
www.openthemagazine.com 11
 OPENINGS
PORTRAIT USB-C
CONNECTING POINT
With the latest iPhone, the dream of one cable
linking all devices is becoming a reality
O UR LIVES HAVE for some time been a cluttered mess of cable cords
and their corresponding chargers; of digging through the jungle of
tangled wires in drawers to retrieve that one piece that might connect
with that one device. It may appear a trivial inconvenience, but has been a
universal source of daily agony in modern lives. This of course doesn’t have
to be so. There could be one cable that rules and connects them all. That if we
can have ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’, to borrow the G20 theme of
‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, surely we could have one cable for them too.
There has been a growing movement towards that future in recent
times. But Apple, the biggest phone manufacturer in the world, had held
out. While it switched to the USB-C cable for its computers and tablets, it
had stuck to its proprietary connector, called Lightning, for the iPhone. Last
year, when European regulators pushed for a change, the firm claimed such
mandates would stall innovation.
This week however it all changed, and the possibility of carrying one power
cable for all devices went from a pipe-dream to an inevitability. Apple launched
its latest phones, the iPhone 15 line, and instantly, the main talking point from
the event became the firm’s abandonment of the Lightning connectors, which
it has been using for over a decade, in favour of what looks like will become the
most common cable in our lives for the foreseeable future—the USB-C.
The USB-C, or more accurately the Universal Serial Bus Type-C, has been
around for some time. It is already used by most smartphone manufacturers.
Its biggest selling point is universality. It was created in such a way that you
could plug it in to most devices, whether that is a phone, a gaming console
or a headphone, to perform whatever task that might be, from charging the
Illustrations by SAURABH SINGH
12
device, transferring data between devices, to doing
both at the same time. One New York Times column
dubbed it “the Meryl Streep of cables”, capable of
playing any role better than any other choice.
The USB standard was introduced in 1996,
and as the first name in the acronym suggests, its
purpose was to create universality among devices.
But there have been multiple versions, from the
classic USB, the USB-B to the Mini-USB and Micro-
USB, each variation undermining its stated goal of
universality and standardisation.
The USB-C now appears poised to come closest
to achieving its original aim. It has already become
popular because it is a marked improvement on its
predecessors. It charges devices and transfers huge
amounts of data at much faster speeds, and because
it is reversible, it doesn’t matter which end of it you
stick up the device or the adapter.
Apple didn’t include the USB-C because it
will lead to more sales of its latest phones. (It
will probably be a source of consternation for
most customers currently using its Lightning
accessories.) Apple’s hand was forced because of
the European Union (EU) ruling last year that
makes it compulsory for a host of portable devices,
from mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, to
headphones, headsets, earbuds and many more,
to support the USB-C as a common charging
connector by 2024. (The deadline for laptops is
2026.) The high cost of making a different charging
technology only for the European region will
probably mean this one-cable-for-all maxim will
extend across the globe. The EU is doing all this to
reduce e-waste, but it says this ruling will also help
stem unnecessary costs for consumers. It claims that
about 11,000 tonnes of electronic waste is generated
annually by discarded and unused chargers, and
that this ruling will help bring around €250 million
worth of savings to customers annually.
Not all issues have been resolved. There is the
issue of semi-compartmentalisation, that while
your device will get charged to some degree using
a USB-C cable, for optimum fast charging, certain
manufacturers ensure that it occurs only when
paired with a specific type of USB-C cable and
charger. There is also the fear that with USB-C cables
looking identical, those of poorer quality might lack
the wherewithal to protect your devices.
Despite these fears, the advantages are
considerable. It will help reduce e-waste and costs.
And if you ever leave your cable behind, somebody
nearby will definitely have the same one.
By LHENDUP G BHUTIA
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 ANGLE
HUNGER GAMES
Why fasts are a political weapon
that becomes less and less
effective with repetition
By MADHAVANKUTTY PILLAI
I N THE POLITICAL firmament of
Maharashtra, timed to the height-
ening of the election fever of 2024
whose symptoms are beginning to
manifest, a new personality no one
was aware about even a few months
ago has arisen. This is Manoj Jarange
Patil and he is now spearheading the
demand for reservations to Marathas,
a powerful caste that any government
antagonises at their peril. The issue
itself is as old as Rip Van Winkle but
the present agitation is somewhat
different because there is now a face to
it in Patil. And he became that face by
the oldest weapon of the Indian politi-
cal establishment—the hunger fast.
He had been on the unsuccessful
edge of mainstream politics but, as
with many politicians who keep grind-
ing at the most competitive of arenas,
the moment finally arrived after he
recently went on a fast in Jalna. The
police decided to break it up and there
was violence and the issue snowballed
propelling Patil as a leader in this issue.
After two weeks of no food, he then an-
nounced that there would be no water
intake either and this total fast had just
begun when abruptly it was called off
by taking a glass of orange juice from
the hands of Chief Minister Eknath
Shinde. All in all, the fast lasted 17 days.
Patil says he has given one month’s
time to the government to fulfil the
demands and will remain in the venue
till then so that he can do it all over
again if necessary. Chances are nothing
much is going to happen. Those who
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
do fasting, even for health reasons,
know that the human body can go
without food for months and, in fact,
come out healthier so long as you keep
taking water. Long fasts only serve to
capture the public’s imagination as a
death-defying endeavour. But to abjure
water is to die very fast and no one
wants that, even Mahatma Gandhi,
the reason why he took water during
his fasts.
Patil upping the stakes and then
stopping the fast was probably a
tactical error because this is a weapon
that becomes less effective every time
it is repeated. The prime example of
that is Anna Hazare who moved a
nation during the India Against Cor-
ruption movement with one fast, and
then found eventually that there was
no magic left until he all but gave it up.
If the public are not convinced that the
agitator is willing to go the full
distance to death, then it ends up
being just a symbolic action. But even
so, the first one can still provide
momentum and how one capitalises
on it, is what separates instinctive
politicians from activists.
Arvind Kejriwal, for instance, used
Hazare’s fasts to launch a political
party and now governs two states,
while Hazare himself is out of public
consciousness. If there is someone
with such instincts within the Maratha
reservation agitators, then there can be
long-term fallout even if the history of
the movement so far is yet to make any
such promise.
IDEAS
FOSSIL FUEL
The Minister of Road Transport
and Highways Nitin Gadkari
made the case for a “pollution tax”
on diesel-run vehicles recently,
although he later clarified no
such proposal was under active
consideration. Such a tax may
have its benefits, but diesel has
already been rapidly losing its
appeal in the country. In the
passenger car category, till 2014,
diesel-run vehicles comprised
48 per cent of all cars. This is
because the difference in price
between petrol and diesel has
narrowed significantly, and
because of tighter regulations and
emissions norms that have made
diesel engines more expensive
to produce and harder to sell. In
the commercial vehicle category,
however, diesel-run models
dominate the space. The minister
is probably trying to get them to
switch towards alternatives by
suggesting such taxes.
WORD’S WORTH
‘Fire made us human,
fossil fuels made us
modern, but now we
need a new fire’
AMORY LOVINS
AMERICAN SCIENTIST
www.openthemagazine.com 13
INSIDER
B H A R AT M A N D A PA M

T
he showpiece of the G20 summit in New Delhi was the newly unveiled Bharat Mandapam. The
entire ITPO complex that has hosted trade fairs and state pavilions has been transformed into a
large and well-equipped conference centre and several halls that provide space for displays and
exhibitions. The break, as with other reconstructions like the new Central secretariat that is
coming up along Kartavya Path, is in form and substance. The heavy green marble architecture of
Vigyan Bhawan which has been the venue for domestic and international conferences in the past is a relic with
its amphitheatre-like main hall. The annexes are a warren of offices with plywood separators and wiring that
has been replaced several times. It was in fact a convenient place to house ‘commissions’ set up by the Centre
whose reports governments of the day had no intention to act on. The Bharat Mandapam is a modern building
with space for a sprawling media centre and stalls showcasing India’s art, culture and far-reaching initiatives
like the digital economy and technology. Despite attempts by some social media handles to create controversy
over water-logging at the new complex, the pumps and drains worked efficiently to clear the rain that came
down in buckets over the G20 weekend. A senior bureaucrat who had sulked about being given the “routine”
job of overseeing the ITPO upgrade must be ruing the missed opportunity.

14 25 SEPTEMBER 2023

JAPAN’S OVERTURE
J
apan’s Prime Minister Fumio
Kishida was on his second visit to
India for the G20 summit, having been
here in March as well. His discussions
with Prime Minister Narendra Modi
GODTCEGFUGXGTCNUGEVQTUTGƔGEVKPI
the deepening relations between the
two nations but he made no bones
about the defence aspect when he met
the media in New Delhi. He pointed
out the joint military exercises and
made plain that the objective was to
deter the use of force in the Indo-Pa-
EKƓE+VKUGXKFGPVVJCVVJGNCVGUVŨOCRũ
to be released by China showing large
maritime tracts of its neighbouring
PCVKQPUCURCTVQHKVU\QPGQHKPƔWGPEG
has done nothing to ease the con-
cerns of several East Asian countries.
Kishida remains keen to nurture and
build on the ties envisioned by the
late Shinzo Abe who perceptively
understood the need to view the ‘Indo-
2CEKƓEũCUCUVTCVGIKEEQPEGRVCPF
found a willing ally in Modi.
THE RAZZLE-DAZZLE
T he ability of India’s G20 secretariat
to utilise the Indian presidency to
put on a great show should not come
CUCUWTRTKUG6JGƓTUVOGGVKPIQH)
sherpas held in Udaipur provided
ample evidence of Indian hospitality.
The hotels by the lakeside provided
seamless service and the cultural
galas were spectacular. The laser-
lighting of Delhi’s monuments that
attracted considerable praise (barring
the criticism from the usual suspects)
was much in evidence at the old
fort of Udaipur where a long parapet
was turned into a stage for Indian
dance spectacles and the backdrop
highlighted a mosaic. The food menus
at all the venues where G20 meetings
have been held have been top-class
with their special focus on millets. An
Indian touch has been visible even
in the spirits served to the delegates
with foreign single malts replaced by
homemade brands which, going by
the rate at which they were depleted,
seemed to have been rated highly by
the dozens of multinational delega-
tions that attended the deliberations.
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
Illustrations by SAURABH SINGH
XI’S STAYCATION
A fter having objected to various aspects of India’s organisation of
the G20 summit, including use of the phrase ‘Vasudhaiva Kutum-
bakam’ on the specious grounds that Sanskrit is not recognised by
the United Nations (UN), the Chinese delegation pretty much went
with the flow of events at the summit. With India having worked out
the contentious references to the Ukraine war with Moscow, there
was not much of a role for the delegation led by Premier Li Qiang in
the absence of President Xi Jinping. As things turned out China’s at-
tempts to rain on India’s parade did not work out and it was perhaps
fitting that Xi stayed away. If he had indeed shown up he would have
been in the shade with no major engagements but having to suffer
the US, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and France announcing the In-
dia-Middle East-Europe corridor which is a clear plan to counter, or offer an alternative,
to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). US President Joe Biden had a busy schedule
which also included the Global Biofuel Alliance driven by India, Brazil and the US,
with the event also attended by other dignitaries like Italian Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni. Having decided to stay at home, Xi spent his time with the rulers of
Venezuela and Zambia who are looking to restructure their massive debt to Beijing.
Hardly scintillating company for the head of the world’s “second superpower”.
between India and the UK, the much-
SUNAKS IN INDIA discussed Free Trade Agreement (FTA),
T
he visit of British Prime Minister is still nowhere near completion and
Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata is running a year behind schedule.
attracted notice for their several photo- It seems political factors, including
ops, including an early morning visit to the approaching election, might have
the Akshardham temple. The coverage resulted in Sunak going slow. But as
in the British press reveals that apart +PFKCPQHƓEKCNURQKPVQWVVJG(6#KU
from the deliberations of G20 and the what will really put India-UK ties on
bilateral with Narendra Modi, domes- the forward path and rejuvenate a
tic issues like the Rwanda plan that somewhat jaded relationship. Mean-
envisages sending migrants who land while, Akshata seems to have
up on British shores seeking emerged as the ‘living bridge’
asylum to Rwanda on a one- between Britain and India,
way ticket also came up.
Sunak sought the support
perhaps more than her
husband, going by the
of Italian Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni for a deal
photos in the British
press that paid some
he says is tough but fair. attention to her sar-
The main issue hanging torial choices as well.
POLITICAL NOTES
I n the midst of the high-profile presence of world leaders and a focus on global diplomacy,
there was some interesting domestic politics at play at Bharat Mandapam. Several chief
ministers of non-NDA states accepted the invitation to attend the grand dinner and this
included DMK chief MK Stalin who is rarely seen outside Tamil Nadu. Official photos of
the event showed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Modi approach-
ing each other and in the company of US President Joe Biden along with West Bengal Chief
Minister Mamata Banerjee. Kumar has avoided events where he would be sharing the
space with Modi after the break-up of the BJP-JD(U) alliance, choosing to send Deputy
Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav instead. Kumar has been a key mover
for an opposition alliance and it might be reading too
much into his presence to suggest a shift. While
Kumar may well be part of the INDIA alliance, some
of his close aides who are strongly opposed to BJP
might be watching their leader very closely.
Implausible as any realignment may seem,
Kumar has a well-earned reputation for
switching sides.
www.openthemagazine.com 15
 SOFT POWER Makarand R Paranjape
The Great Derangement
The vaunted rationalism of Dravidianism is a mask for the deepest prejudice
L
ET US FACE IT. Sanatana Dharma vs
Dravidianism is an unequal fight. Sanatana
Dharma is much more than a political ideology,
whereas it is doubtful if Dravidianism will survive
its political defeat and uprooting.
Is that why Udhayanidhi Stalin’s anti-Sanatani remarks
have been dealt with kid gloves—and hardly any blows—
by India’s print media. No surprise that foreign print media
outlets, which habitually highlight the negative treatment
of minorities in India, have failed to mention Stalin’s call to
exterminate Sanatana Dharma.
But why is it that from A to Z, we find that Indian print
media platforms have failed to take Udhayanidhi’s anti-
Hindu remarks seriously? What they have preferred,
instead, is to cover the BJP response to Stalin. This is in
contrast to what we find on TV channels or, even more so,
YouTube podcasts, which have been much more critical.
The most vocal and unsparing criticism has come, of course,
from social media. What accounts for the reticence of
Indian print media to condemn even the most hateful and
hate-mongering aspects of Dravidian politics?
I think the simple answer is the hangover over the so-
called secularist ideology which placed an interdiction on
any condemnation of anti-Hindu statements , as opposed
to zero tolerance for minority bashing. As to a robust
defence of Hinduism, that was out of the question. Barring
a few newer outlets that have emerged over the last decade
or so, most established newspapers and magazines are
helmed by the old guard, oversensitive to any accusation
of communalism. How to prove one is not communal? By
allowing criticism of Hinduism but not of other religions.
However, this is not the appropriate time or space to
examine how the Indian media reacts to the criticism of
different religions. Rather, we should turn our attention
to Dravidian politics, with its history of separatism and
anti-Sanatanism. Both have flourished through the double
standards, if not duplicity, of Dravidianism, its ruling
ideology. Therefore, instead of defending Sanatana Dharma,
as BJP leaders have tried to do, it might be a better strategy
to attack Dravidianism itself. The next elections, in 2024,
should therefore be fought not on the merits of Sanatana
Dharma but on the demerits of Dravidianism.
The attack on Sanatana Dharma must thus be seen not at
16
face value, but as part of a larger ploy. That is why it makes
much more strategic sense for BJP not to defend Sanatana
Dharma, especially when the attack on it is politically motivated,
if not philosophically shallow. They should, instead, attack
Dravidianism itself, as a pernicious ideology that has
imprisoned the hearts and minds of many in Tamil Nadu,
only as a way of maintaining the wealth and power of one
family. It should not be difficult to argue that Dravidianism,
besides being divisive and irrational, promotes enmity rather
than equality, domination rather than social justice.
Take Udhayanidhi Stalin’s analogy of Sanatana Dharma
to dengue, flu, malaria, and corona, now worsted by A Raja’s
likening it to HIV and leprosy, not to mention that it should
be eradicated like these diseases. No matter how narrowly
or incorrectly Sanatana Dharma is defined in such usage,
the comparisons are still odious, insulting, and hurtful. Can
the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) take the plea, as
Udhayanidhi did later, that his remarks were distorted and
that he is against all religions?
Not really. If that were the case, DMK should also be able
to say that Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, or, to come closer
home, Dravidianism itself, is akin to dengue, flu, malaria,
corona, HIV, or leprosy. Will they dare to say it? Obviously
not. Why? Not only because these religious and ideological
communities will not take such insults lying down, but
also because their target is only Hinduism or, to be more
specific, Hindutva, which is seen as BJP’s political creed.
Dravidianism, then, is a cloak to attack Hindutva.
One need not go so far as to show other contradictions.
For instance,Udhayanidhi’s mother, named after one of
India’s greatest and most cherished goddesses, Durga, who
is also a devout, temple-going Hindu. Or his own and his
grandfather’s, and the names of other members of his family
being of Sanskrit origin. Or that his brother-in-law, who is
called Sabareesan, which means the Lord of Sabari, that is
Sri Rama. The latter, tasting the jhoota or spit-smeared berries
offered by a Dalit such as Sabari, was defying whatever
we might associate with casteism today. Similarly, quite
contrary to its professed atheism, most of its leaders and
cadres are devout worshippers of Hindu gods and goddesses.
Karunanidhi himself, originally named Dakshinamurti, came
from a family of temple servitors. Till his last days, he was
known secretly to worship Lord Ganesha, his favourite deity.
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 Speaking of names, what can be stranger, if not
monstrous, than naming one’s progeny after one of the
greatest despots and mass-murders of our times, the “man of
steel” (for that is what Stalin means), who ruled the former
USSR with an iron—or shall we say steel—fist for nearly
30 years, from 1924 till his death in 1953? Stalin, besides
brutally and mercilessly murdering political rivals and
opponents, was reportedly responsible for killing 20 million
Soviet citizens. As if one Stalin in the former Soviet Union
were not enough! Now, there are two Stalins at the forefront
Illustration by SAURABH SINGH
TAKE UDHAYANIDHI STALIN’S ANALOGY
OF SANATANA DHARMA TO DENGUE, FLU,
MALARIA, AND CORONA. NO MATTER
HOW NARROWLY OR INCORRECTLY
SANATANA DHARMA IS DEFINED IN SUCH
USAGE, THE COMPARISONS ARE STILL
ODIOUS, INSULTING, AND HURTFUL
of Dravidianism, Chief Minister MK Stalin and son,
Udhayanidhi Stalin, minister for youth welfare and sports.
Dravidianism, as an ideology and political movement,
has been marked by caste hatred, anti-Brahminism,
irrational hostility towards Hindi, Sanskrit, and north
Indians, as well as instances of brutal oppression of Dalits.
In breaking idols, garlanding Hindu deities with slippers,
and calling for the killing of Brahmins, it has fostered an
apparatus of bullying and terror so that its opponents are
cowed down and frightened into silence or passivity. In
that sense, far from being egalitarian and equitable, it is
dictatorial in addition to being dynastic.
Its irrationalism is evident in altering the names of
streets, supposedly to erase the Brahmin caste markers,
while appropriating all kinds of honorifics to its own
leaders and surnames. Moreover, wiping caste names is
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
not the same as wiping out caste. Or, more pertinently,
foregoing reservations. Which it has championed even
among converts to Christianity, thereby undermining its
own argument that only Hinduism equals caste. Grabbing
and retaining power rather than social justice seem to be its
real objectives. Scapegoating Brahmins, a community that
does not usually retaliate, only shows its cowardice in that
it prefers soft targets to really strong adversaries.
Similarly, indecency and misogyny, rather than women’s
equality better characterise its treatment of women, from the
very days of its ideological founding father EV Ramaswamy
Naicker. How can we forget that it was Dravidian cadres who
tore the upper garments of J Jayalalithaa, who later wore full
body suits and armour to avoid such molestation, even after
becoming Tamil Nadu chief minister? Finally, its record of
oppressing the Schedule Castes and Tribes is possibly worse
than that of the Congress governments that it replaced. In
brief, instead of moving with the times, Dravidianism shows
itself ossified and incapable of reform, let alone criticism.
Dravidian separatism is also well-documented, with
maps of Dravidistan freely circulating right till the 1960s.
In fact, one of the reasons that C Annadurai separated from
Naicker was that he did not want Tamil Nadu to secede
from India. Naicker, we might remember, in addition to
supporting British colonialism, even sought MA Jinnah’s
support in his attempts to split India.. During the Round
Table Conference in London, the representatives of
Dravidian parties argued against granting India Dominion
Status and in favour of separate electorates.
Later, DMK became well-known for backing the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), to the point of
asking for the release of the murderers of former Indian
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Even today, in DMK-ruled
Tamil Nadu, portraits of Prabhakaran, the LTTE supremo,
don the same walls, side by side withthe Dravidian
pantheon of Naicker, Karunanidhi, and Stalin.
Dravidianism’s central plank, that of the racial, ethnic,
linguistic, and cultural conflict between Aryans and
Dravidians, has also now been dismantled on almost all
counts. Its anti-Sanskrit, anti-Hindi, anti-north Indian
politics has also ceased to be as relevant today as it once
was. Not knowing any other language has proved to be
an economic handicap rather than a matter of pride for
Tamilian youth, especially when they leave their home state.
The contradiction between the movement’s original
ideals and the ground realities in Tamil Nadu underscores
the need for a direct attack on Dravidianism. Rather
than defending Sanatana Dharma, the time has come to
attack Dravidianism itself for protecting and promoting a
family fiefdom much to the detriment of the development
and progress of the people of Tamil Nadu. Its vaunted
rationalism is evidently the mask of the deepest form of
prejudice. This is how the proponents of Dravidianism
ought to exposed at both the state and national levels.
www.openthemagazine.com 17
 OPEN ESSAY

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

XI’S HIDDEN AGENDA

And China’s itch to cut India down to size

THE G20 SUMMIT IN NEW DELHI, which brought presidents, prime ministers and monarchs
together, was a high point in Indian diplomacy at a time when rival China is grappling with multiple
crises, from a dramatic economic downturn to growing domestic discontent. The summit’s adoption
of a 37-page consensus document outlining the roadmap for a more sustainable and peaceful global
future underscored India’s burgeoning economic and geopolitical clout.
Few had expected the summit to be a success, given the international divisiveness. The war in Ukraine has created a deep divide
between the West and the Sino-Russian bloc. There is also a Western clash with a rising Global South. But by bridging global divides,
India helped build consensus.
The rising international profile of the world’s largest democracy comes at a time when India is positioning itself as a potential
mediator between the West and Russia. There is also growing Western recognition that India is well placed to serve as a key counter-
weight to communist China’s neo-imperial ambitions.
A fully agreed joint communiqué was not the only achievement of the summit. The real value of any G20 summit lies not in the
pious commitments that world leaders make (which are rarely honoured) but as a venue for bilateral, trilateral or even quadrilat-
eral meetings between the various heads of state or government. The New Delhi summit was no exception.
The discussions on the margins of the summit led to the announcement of an ambitious US-led plan to build a rail and shipping
corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe.
As part of the US approach to counter China’s decade-old Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through alternative arrangements, the
corridor proposal was portrayed by American President Joe Biden as a “real big deal” that would link Middle East countries by
railway and connect them to India and Europe through port interconnections, thus helping the flow of energy and trade, including
by slashing shipping times and costs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for his part, called the proposal “a big connectivity initiative”
that would permit “future generations to dream bigger”.
To be sure, the corridor initiative was not the only plan to counter the BRI that emerged from the summit. The US won the sum-
mit’s endorsement for reshaping and scaling up multilateral development banks like the World Bank and the International Mon-
etary Fund (IMF) by significantly boosting their lending capacities. This would help counter China’s predatory lending practices by
providing an alternative means of financing for infrastructure and development projects.
China’s lending binge has made it the world’s largest sovereign creditor to developing countries. Almost every Chinese loan
issued in the last decade has included a secrecy clause compelling the borrowing country not to disclose the loan’s terms—or even
the loan’s existence. Many African, Asian and Latin American countries have become ensnared in a debt trap, leaving them highly
vulnerable to Chinese pressure to pursue policies that advance China’s economic and geopolitical interests. According to one study,
the loan contracts give China “broad latitude to cancel loans or accelerate repayment if it disagrees with a borrower’s policies”.

18 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 Illustration by SAURABH SINGH

THE CONSTRUCTION OF NEW PERMANENT MILITARY STRUCTURES APPEARS

DESIGNED TO CONSOLIDATE CHINA’S EXISTING TERRITORIAL CONTROL AND DETER
ANY INDIAN OPERATION TO REGAIN LOST TERRITORY. BUT THE HECTIC
CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY ALSO APPEARS AIMED AT A BROADER STRATEGIC
MISSION—TO STOP INDIA FROM OPENING ANOTHER FRONT AGAINST CHINA
WHEN XI DECIDES TO MOVE AGAINST TAIWAN

XI’S ABSENCE WAS CHINA’S LOSS
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s absence at the G20 summit
drew international attention to China’s military and politi-
cal tensions with India. The two demographic giants have
been locked in a 41-month-long military standoff triggered by
China’s stealth territorial intrusions into Ladakh in April 2020.
With Chinese forces massed along the Indian border, it would
have been odd for Xi to visit New Delhi without taking the
initiative to defuse the border confrontation with India. In the
tense border crisis, India has more than matched China’s forward
deployment of forces. Consequently, tens of thousands of troops
on each side have been facing off along the Indo-Tibetan border.
By deciding to skip the G20 summit, Xi may have done India
a favour. It would have been particularly galling to India had Xi
visited New Delhi even as China’s border aggression continued.
The only way to end the military standoff is through a deal
to implement a sequential process of disengagement, de-esca-
lation and de-induction of rival forces. But no deal can emerge
unless the aggressor state is willing to settle matters.
One would have expected the Indian invitation to Xi to at-
tend the G20 summit to catalyse efforts to defuse the dangerous
border confrontation. After all, the risk of the military standoff
escalating to intense bloody clashes or even a limited border
war can no longer be discounted, given the largescale forward
military deployments by both sides.
Military-to-military talks were held at different levels a
few weeks before the G20 and BRICS summits. Indian media
reports on the talks suggested that there was some forward
movement to help defuse the border crisis in a gradual manner.
But, at the political level, Xi’s regime appeared to recoil
from concluding a deal with India. This was apparent from
the failure of the Xi-Modi talks on the sidelines of the BRICS

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 www.openthemagazine.com 19

 OPEN ESSAY
GETTY IMAGES
XI’S ABSENCE AT THE G20 SUMMIT DREW
INTERNATIONAL ATTENTION TO CHINA’S MILITARY AND
POLITICAL TENSIONS WITH INDIA. BY DECIDING TO SKIP
THE G20 SUMMIT, XI MAY HAVE DONE INDIA A FAVOUR.
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN PARTICULARLY GALLING TO INDIA
HAD XI VISITED NEW DELHI EVEN AS CHINA’S BORDER
AGGRESSION CONTINUED
summit in Johannesburg to achieve any progress towards
ending the military standoff.
Indeed, as if to underline its hardline stance, Beijing issued a
statement that undiplomatically claimed that the meeting
in Johannesburg took place at Modi’s “request”, a claim India
said was untrue.
The condescension inherent in that statement was appar-
ent from its implicit advice to India to put up with China’s
April 2020 land grabs in Ladakh so that the two countries can
“handle properly the border issue” and stabilise their relations.
Indeed, by regurgitating the same position that Beijing has held
for over three years, the statement signalled that China was un-
willing to climb down to some extent to help end the military
standoff with India that is now in its fourth year.
The plain fact is that Xi has been wearing his intransigence
on his sleeve. He created the border crisis by ordering the
stealthy territorial encroachments on key borderlands of
Ladakh. And now he refuses to reach a compromise settlement
with India to end the border confrontation.
20
Chinese Premier Li Qiang and
Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the
G20 summit, September 9, 2023
Simply put, the ball remains in
China’s court.
However, in ordering the intru-
sions into Ladakh, Xi seriously
miscalculated that China would be
able to impose the changed territorial
status quo on India as a fait accompli,
without inviting a robust Indian mili-
tary response. By locking horns with
China even at the risk of sparking a
full-scale war, India is openly chal-
lenging Chinese power and capability
in a way that no other country has
done in this century.
Embarrassed by the strong Indian
military challenge, Xi’s regime has
sought to exert greater pressure on In-
dia by deploying more Chinese forces
in offensive positions, by constructing
new warfare infrastructure along the
frontier, and by mounting infowar and
psychological operations against India.
All that, however, risks making a
permanent enemy of India. This
runs counter to China’s own long-
term interests.
It is apparent that Xi is caught in a
military crisis of his own making. His
efforts to compel India to buckle have
come a cropper.
Meanwhile, Xi’s regime has
stepped up its buildup of military infrastructure and capabili-
ties across the entire frontier with India, from the Aksai Chin
plateau and the Uttarakhand-Tibet border to the Sikkim-Tibet
and Arunachal-Tibet frontier. It is engaged in the frenzied con-
struction of new permanent military structures as if it were
preparing for war. Its construction activities are compelling
India to focus on expanding its own military infrastructure
along the Himalayan frontier.
The key question is: What are the strategic and military
objectives driving China’s frenetic construction activity along
the India frontier?
The construction of new permanent military structures
appears designed to consolidate China’s existing territorial
control, aggressively assert its claims to other Indian territories,
and deter any Indian operation to regain lost territory.
But the hectic construction activity also appears aimed at a
broader strategic mission—to stop India from opening another
front against China when Xi decides to move against Taiwan.
Just as China invaded India in 1962 during the US-Soviet
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
Cuban Missile Crisis, a Taiwan attack could offer India a
historic opportunity to settle the Himalayan border. China may
be seeking to constrict such an Indian option by creating new
warfare infrastructure on its side of the India frontier, including
boring tunnels and shafts in mountainsides to set up reinforced
troop shelters and command positions as well as underground
weapons storage facilities.
In any event, by digging in for the long haul and creating
a ‘hot’ border, China is doubling down on a more aggressive
strategy against India. There seems little prospect of a return to
the status quo ante along the frontier, even if a deal of sorts was
reached in future to ease military tensions.
A MORE DANGEROUS CHINA?
The dilemma that Xi faces is how to resolve the India border
crisis without losing face, especially at a time when China is
facing mounting challenges at home and abroad. The external
challenges extend far beyond India.
The fact is that, under Xi, China is turning into its own worst
enemy. It is picking geostrategic fights with all of the world’s
other major powers except Russia. This is possibly unprec-
edented in modern world history.
Xi, for his part, has shown an increasing appetite for taking
major risks, as the South and East China Seas, the Himalayas,
and Hong Kong show. He is willing to ruthlessly run rough-
shod over international law and norms.
Through his aggressive revisionism, Xi has counterproduc-
tively set in motion trends in the Indo-Pacific region that seem
The Indian flag near the Zojila Pass connecting Srinagar with Ladakh
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
antithetical to China’s long-term interests.
Australia has abandoned hedging and joined the AUKUS
alliance against China. India is being driven closer to the US
even as it seeks to maintain its strategic autonomy. Japan has
been shaken out of its complacency by China’s pursuit of Asian
hegemony. And people in Taiwan are increasingly embracing a
Taiwanese identity distinct from that of China.
Xi’s foreign policy is an outgrowth of his domestic despo-
tism. Under Xi’s leadership, the ruling Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) has established an Orwellian techno-totalitarian
surveillance state that seeks to bend reality to the illusions that
it propagates. Egged on by state propaganda, Chinese national-
ism has become feverish and vitriolic.
Yet, Xi’s domestic challenges are getting acute, from a re-
markable economic downturn to a battered public trust in the
party’s ability to manage the country. China is grappling with
worsening macroeconomic conditions and falling investor
confidence. Add to that picture high youth unemployment
and an ageing workforce.
Unless reversed, the economic slump over time is likely to
undermine regime stability and constrain China’s geopolitical
ambitions. The economic slowdown is already undercutting
the Communist Party’s rationale for monopolising power—
that only it can deliver rapid growth.
Biden, calling a stagnant China a “ticking time bomb”,
warned recently, “When bad folks have problems, they do bad
things.” In a reminder of that, Beijing released a new national
map late last month showing inside China vast swaths of
IN ORDERING THE INTRUSIONS
INTO LADAKH, XI SERIOUSLY
MISCALCULATED THAT CHINA
WOULD BE ABLE TO IMPOSE THE
CHANGED TERRITORIAL
STATUS QUO ON INDIA AS A
FAIT ACCOMPLI, WITHOUT
INVITING A ROBUST INDIAN
MILITARY RESPONSE. BY
LOCKING HORNS WITH CHINA
EVEN AT THE RISK OF SPARKING
A FULL-SCALE WAR, INDIA IS
OPENLY CHALLENGING CHINESE
POWER AND CAPABILITY IN A
WAY THAT NO OTHER COUNTRY
AFP
HAS DONE IN THIS CENTURY
www.openthemagazine.com 21
 OPEN ESSAY
Indian land and the territories of several other neighbours,
including tiny Bhutan.
The map, which drew protests from several neighbouring
countries, illustrates the “bad things” Beijing is willing to do.
One can expect more “bad things” from Beijing.
The party and the regime are now packed with men loyal
to Xi. The tightening grip of a dictator without checks and
balances, and with yes men around him, represents a major
Chinese weakness because it is likely to spawn more miscalcu-
lations. It could even lead to a ruinous miscalculation.
That risk is heightened by the fact that Xi seems to be in a
hurry to achieve what he calls the “Chinese dream”—that is,
achieve China’s global pre-eminence.
Withademographiccrisisdeepening,economicgrowthstalled,
and the global environment becoming increasingly unfavour-
able to China, Xi seems to have concluded that China has a nar-
row window of strategic opportunity to shape the international
order in its favour. So, his appetite for risk has perceptibly grown.
In this light, as China’s economic and geopolitical fortunes
AS CHINA’S ECONOMIC AND GEOPOLITICAL FORTUNES SINK,
THE RISKS TO TAIWAN AND INDIA FROM AN AGGRESSIVE
CHINA ARE BOUND TO INCREASE. INDIA THUS HAS TO BE
ON ITS GUARD. JUST AS MAO ZEDONG INVADED INDIA IN
1962 AFTER HIS DISASTROUS GREAT LEAP FORWARD
INITIATIVE, XI’S GROWING TROUBLES COULD TEMPT HIM
TO LAUNCH A MILITARY ADVENTURE AGAINST INDIA TO
HELP RESTORE HIS STANDING AT HOME AND ABROAD
AFP
The Nechiphu Tunnel under construction in Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh
22
sink, the risks to Taiwan and India from an aggressive China
are bound to increase.
India thus has to be on its guard. Just as Mao Zedong
invaded India in 1962 after his disastrous Great Leap Forward
initiative created a manmade famine that killed countless
millions of Chinese, Xi’s growing troubles could tempt him to
launch a military adventure against India to help restore his
standing at home and abroad.
When Mao launched his war against India, his mission, as
his premier put it, was to “teach India a lesson”. Xi may be itch-
ing to teach India another lesson in order to cut it down to size
and open the path to Chinese hegemony in Asia.
In military terms, defence generally has a significant advan-
tage over offence because it is easier to protect and hold than
to advance, destroy and seize. This is particularly true about
mountain warfare. In mountainous terrain, the defending
force can defeat an attacking force much larger than its own.
With one of the world’s largest and most experienced
mountain warfare armies, India is well placed, even without
fully matching China’s military
capabilities, to effectively defend itself
against any Chinese aggression.
The key is not to be taken by
surprise again. India failed to foresee
the 2020 Chinese aggression com-
ing largely because its foreign policy
was focused on befriending China.
Despite the 2017 Chinese capture of
almost the entire Doklam plateau,
India allowed the “Wuhan spirit” and
“Chennai connect” lullabies—like
the old Hindi-Chini bhai bhai pitch—to
lull it into complacency. The result
is that, for more than three years,
India has been locked in a costly and
dangerous military standoff with
China, after losing access to some
strategic borderlands in Ladakh that it
traditionally patrolled.
Deception, stealth and surprise
have long been the key elements in
China’s warfare strategy. If India were
to be taken unawares again, it would
prove extremely costly for it because
any Chinese military adventure
would likely seek to leave India
humiliated. But if India anticipates
and effectively resists an attack, China
will get a bloody nose.
Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and
the author of two award-winning
books on water: Water, Peace, and War
and Water: Asia’s New Battleground
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 FIRE BOLTT
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 COVER STORY

LEADERSHIP

Modi has chang

of engagement
by democratising
the summit to Delhi’s
can now set and st
GETTY IMAGES

24 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 Prime Minister
Narendra Modi
delivers the
inaugural address
at the G20 summit,
September 9, 2023

e d I n d i a’s t e r m s
with the world
G20 and leveraging
advantage. His India
eer bigger agendas
25 SEPTEMBER 2023 By PR RAMESH25
www.openthemagazine.com
I
COVER STORY

F DIPLOMACY WERE A FOOTBALL PITCH,

Narendra Modi would be its Jürgen Klopp. In 2011 and
2012, the German took Borussia Dortmund to two con-
secutive Bundesliga titles and in 2020, he ended Liver-
pool’s trophy drought in England by winning the Premier
League for the first time in 31 years. He is one of the most
successful managers of the modern game and widely re-
garded as one of the best exponents of ‘high press’ football.
The high-press game is being adopted by an ever in-
creasing number of teams and involves pursuing your
opponents in their half of the field and forcing them to
make errors to win the ball back. The strategy calls for
all team members to press in sync with one another
while adopting a high defensive line at all times. “Gegenpress-
ing”, or counter-pressing, invented by Klopp’s fellow German Modi with
British Prime
Ralf Rangnick and perfected by Klopp himself, has revolutionised Minister Rishi Sunak
modern football. and US President
Joe Biden at
Like Klopp, Narendra Modi used ‘high press’ on the diplomatic Mahatma Gandhi’s
memorial at
fieldintherun-uptotheNewDelhiG20summit.India’spresidency Raj Ghat in
year was practically written off by the West and the opposition at New Delhi,
September 10, 2023
home. This time, it was primarily on account of persisting acrimo-
ny within the group over the Ukraine war. No one gave Modi the
chance to clinch a consensus declaration without footnotes—or
even a declaration at all. But Modi surprised all at home and abroad
by managing a consensus on the first day of the summit itself,
forcing even opposition leaders here to grudgingly acknowledge
the triumph.
How did Modi manage such a historic achievement, knitting a
consensus among the contradictory interests of Russia, China, the
US and Saudi Arabia on issues as contentious as the Ukraine war?
TherewasnomagicwandbutModiisaleaderofdeterminationand
perseverance, and had a clear vision for India’s G20 presidency and
what needed to be done. This was outlined to the men and women
of Team Modi whom he assigned tough negotiating tasks.
Take the landmark admission of the African Union (AU) as a
permanent member, for instance, a long-pending demand first
raised by South Africa. As far back as June, Modi had shot off
letters to all G20 heads of state/government, insisting that AU be-
come a permanent member at the Delhi summit. When astute

26
 COVER STORY
Indian diplomacy pulled off a speedy consensus on admitting AU,
he described it as “a significant stride towards a more inclusive
global dialogue.” In the televised inaugural session, Modi an-
nounced the move to make the 55-member African bloc the first
new member of G20 since its creation in 1999. “We look forward
to collaborative efforts that benefit not only our respective conti-
nents but also the entire world,” he said on X (formerly Twitter).
One diplomat described the development as “a diplomatic coup,
without a single shot fired.” After Modi asked AU Chairperson
and President of the Union of the Comoros Azali Assoumani to
join the others at the high table, Assoumani said, “I was about to
cry, it was a very emotional moment for me. We thought there
would be a debate and then a decision. But at the very beginning
of the summit, it was announced that there was a consensus on
our membership...”
Sometime during the Bali summit in 2022, Macky Sall, presi-
dent of Senegal and then head of AU, approached host and Indone-
sian President Joko Widodo to bring up AU’s long-pending perma-
nentmembershipofG20.Theobjectivewastoexpandtheplatform
and bring the mounting economic problems of the Global South,
often ignored, to the forefront. But Russia’s war with Ukraine had
cast its long shadow on the summit and edged other key issues
off the menu. It was then that Modi promised Sall that, no matter
what, he would ensure AU was admitted to G20 as a permanent
member during India’s presidency the following year. According
to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Modi told Sall at the end
of the Bali meet: “I give you my guarantee on this. Modi ka guaran-
Modi with Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, September 9, 2023
28
tee hai”. During the BRICS summit, Sall again reminded Modi of
the promise and expressed his happiness at the commitment and
speedy progress made by the Indian prime minister.
There’s an interesting backstory to this. When G20 was found-
ed in 1999 following the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, it was
then an informal forum for the finance ministers and central bank
chiefs of the most important industrialised and developing econo-
miesandmeanttofocusoneconomicissuessotheywouldnotspill
acrossborders.Formanyofthedevelopingeconomies,though,this
meant developed nations used the platform to essentially lecture
on how they should run their countries. Until the 2011 Cannes
meeting on the eurozone sovereign debt crisis—that is, when it
became clear there were sharp divisions within the European
Union (EU) itself when it came to resolving the crisis. Emerging
nationshavebeenwaitingalongtimeforpaybacktimesince.More
recently, with the Ukraine war overshadowing the key economic
agenda of G20, the Global South and more specifically Modi, were
focused on wresting the G20 agenda back for key economic issues
and preventing developed countries from hijacking the platform
with their geopolitical concerns.
The admission of AU is likely to significantly expand the
platform’s concerns to include economic problems confronting
the Global South, changing the balance between the erstwhile
colonies and colonisers, with India leading the charge.
India’s presidency of G20—a bloc that accounts for 80 per cent
of global GDP and 75 per cent of international trade—has centred
on issues like more loans to developing nations by multilateral
PIB
THE INDIA-MIDDLE
EAST-EUROPE
ECONOMIC CORRIDOR
WILL BE THE MOST
ECONOMICALLY
VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
MULTINATIONAL
INFRASTRUCTURAL
PROJECT THAT INDIA
HAS BEEN WAITING
FOR, PLACING IT AT
THE CENTRE OF THE
FLOW OF GOODS
AND SERVICES
AND ENERGY
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 Modi and African
Union Chairperson
Azali Assoumani
after the AU was
invited to join G20 as
a permanent member,
September 9, 2023
AS FAR BACK AS JUNE, MODI HAD SHOT OFF LETTERS TO ALL G20 LEADERS, INSISTING
THAT AU BECOME A PERMANENT MEMBER AT THE DELHI SUMMIT. WHEN ASTUTE INDIAN
DIPLOMACY PULLED OFF A SPEEDY CONSENSUS ON ADMITTING AU, HE DESCRIBED IT
AS ‘A SIGNIFICANT STRIDE TOWARDS A MORE INCLUSIVE GLOBAL DIALOGUE’
institutions, reform of the international debt architecture, regu-
lations on cryptocurrencies, and the impact of geopolitics on
food and energy security. Modi, whose government runs on the
inclusive theme of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, was insistent that
G20 work under India’s baton on a very inclusive Indian theme,
that of One World, One Family, or Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
I
F ADMITTING AU was a positive start and a phenomenal
achievement by India under Modi, there was more dem-
onstration of the incredible negotiating prowess of the
diplomats and ministers whom Modi trusted, handpicked
and assigned key tasks to. Modi’s coup—and it was definitely
that—which appeared to most concern the developed nations
was consensus on the wording on the Ukraine war. India has
consistently stuck to the view that this is a conflict, if a distress-
ingly escalating one, that is now threatening the food, fuel and
fertiliser security of several countries.
Over the last days of the summit, diplomats from Team Modi
worked hard to convince first the G7 nations, then Russia and
then China, having first got countries such as Brazil, Indonesia
and Saudi Arabia on board. According to Indian sherpa Amitabh
Kant, it took Team Modi 200 hours of hard negotiations, 300 bi-
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
AFP
lateral meetings, and 15 drafts to get a consensus on the wording
after which he told his counterparts: “That’s it. This is final; if
you have any other problems, please tell your leaders to take
it up with our prime minister. I pulled the weight of the prime
minister with me and we clinched it last [Friday] night.”
In the end, there was not even a mention of Russia in the
consensus statement even when recalling the Bali declaration’s
position on Ukraine. It was clearly a win-win for all members.
Russian representative and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
hailed it, maintaining that the West was unable to bully In-
dia into naming and shaming Moscow as it intended. Incred-
ibly, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President
Emmanuel Macron, too, saw the declaration, with its emphasis
on the territorial integrity of sovereign states (Modi himself had
repeatedly underlined at various earlier meetings including in
Uzbekistan that this “is not the era of wars”), as sufficiently reflec-
tive of their concerns on the issue.
Crucially, the declaration may have demonstrated a lower
priority attached by the US to the now prolonged war in Ukraine,
something India and other nations of the Global South anyway
view as a European problem inflicting its fallout on them. But
the situation could likely work for US President Joe Biden, too.
Biden is facing both an election year and diminishing popularity
www.openthemagazine.com 29
 COVER STORY
despite support on the Ukraine issue. As Jaishankar put it, “Bali
was Bali and New Delhi is New Delhi,” referring to the chang-
ing perspective on Ukraine in the one year between the Bali and
the New Delhi declarations. Diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla
emphasised that Team Modi, going by Modi’s own vision and
his guidance for India’s G20 presidency, achieved this success. It
is momentous in terms of India’s engagement with the world.
At the summit, it was not just the prowess of Indian diplo-
macy that Modi demonstrated. His ambitious plans for India
as a player on the trade and economic fronts were also best on
display in the MoU on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic
Corridor (IMEC) that will connect India with both Arabia and
Europe. This will provide the most economically viable alterna-
tive multinational infrastructural project that India had long
been waiting for, one that would place the country at the centre
of the flow of goods and services and energy from the East to the
West, a position it historically held for traders and travellers. Al-
though it is unlikely to happen overnight, once on track, it could
revolutionise India’s stature on both regional and global strategic
levels and in terms of trade connectivity. Such enthusiasm was
generated about this multi-nation, multi-modal infrastructure
project that Italy, a signatory to the Chinese-led Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI), plans to drop out of the latter while holding that
its decision would not impact its relations with China. But it is
indeed difficult to not read deeper into this. The IMEC could well
be that game-changer to rein in China.
T
HE ‘HARD PRESS’ tactic Modi has adopted at home, with
much success since 2014, has given him the heft to deal with
global powers. On his watch, the Indian economy has con-
tinued to break new ground; it lifted 450 million people out
of poverty; 800 million have been supplied with free foodgrain
from the government for the last three years; the implementation
of JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) saved the exchequer `3 lakh
crore; infrastructure projects are booming, with airports, rail, road
projects growing rapidly; the middle class is projected to grow to
730 million by 2030; per capita income is up from $1,500 to $2,500,
and GDP is at $3.5 trillion; 2.24 billion vaccines were supplied to
citizens through the world’s largest vaccination exercise during
the Covid pandemic; and no major terror attack has happened in
the last four-plus years.
None of these achievements in public policy and welfare
could have become milestones without the vision and drive of
Narendra Modi. The “tide in the affairs” of India was waiting to
be taken at the flood by an efficient leader at the helm.
The prime minister’s personal appeal made possible the
election of a stable government twice over, paving the way for
decisive political, economic and socio-cultural policies which
coalition governments just could not have pursued even if they
were well-versed in the basic template of governance.
It was Modi who selected the tech-driven policies that were
right for his government. He did not care where the seed ideas were
from and generated on which government’s watch as long as these
30
could be scaled up and made more efficient to ensure targeted and
leak-proof, corruption-free spending, thus freeing up more money
for essential public infrastructure and welfare. Deng Xiaoping,
the architect of modern China, famously said, “It doesn’t matter
whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” Modi
workedonthesamepremiseandeveryCentralschemeandproject
that was assessed as imperative for overall growth was fuelled by
technology and widened in scope and intent.
Imagine the upheaval in a country notorious for an economic
model where subsistence-level wages were passed off as monthly
pay. Thanks to the digital infrastructure, the government could
ensure seamless transfer of cash and food. Transfer of food to
hungry homes was regularised and made easy through the two
crucial pandemic years. The foresight on building an efficient
pan-India digital infrastructure also meant the spread of the
coronavirus could be checked. Nor was there any big law and
order situation of the kind seen in more prosperous countries
like China or unpleasant scenes of people queuing at soup kitch-
ens in affluent locales of the US. There was no largescale protest
against vaccine shots by sceptics as in Canada, the US and Eu-
rope, despite efforts by opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi and
Akhilesh Yadav to drum that up as an issue.
Under Modi, India emerged from the pandemic ready to do
battle for economic recovery. He was under relentless attack for
not loosening the purse strings to bolster the flagging economy.
Pundits in newsrooms—and after the exposure of Chinese fund-
ing for the Newsclick website , there is reason to suspect much
of it was perhaps inspired by Beijing—attempted to embarrass
him into spending more. But Modi refused to indulge in reckless
spending. Here, too, he used well-tested counterattack tactics in
politics. Those who went down the path of profligacy, includ-
ing the US, not just paid a big price but also exported problems.
To the Modi government’s credit, inflation has been lower
than that in key developed economies. Notably, inflation in India
was lower than that in Europe and the UK, especially since their
figures were impacted by Russian oil and gas supply. Worldwide,
the Ukraine war impacted many economies significantly on both
the food and fuel fronts, sending prices and inflation soaring.
Modi, however, leveraged India’s traditional good relations with
Russia and secured discounted prices for Russian oil in the thick
of global sanctions against Moscow. That move may have earned
India reproach from the West and the US initially, but Modi stuck
to his decision, grasping an opportunity that would help Indians.
That earned Modi the admiration of Europe and Washington,
allowing him to keep relations on an even keel with Russia and
the US, one of the rare countries to do so. At home and abroad,
however, Modi had to confront immense pressure to conform to
the worldview of liberals to unquestioningly side with Ukraine.
Despite that, his top priority was to secure safe passage home for
Indians in Ukraine. Thanks to the efforts of the Modi government,
even when Russia relentlessly pounded Ukraine, not discriminat-
ing between civilian and military targets, it paused the offensive
long enough to facilitate safe passage for Indians.
Today, India is the largest buyer of Russian oil because of
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 Modi hands over the
G20 presidential gavel to
Brazilian President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
September 10, 2023
INDIA MAY HAVE CHAIRED KEY G20 COMMITTEES
UNDER THE VAJPAYEE GOVERNMENT BUT 2023 WILL
GO DOWN AS THE YEAR INDIA’S CHAIRMANSHIP
DEMOCRATISED THE GROUP AND MADE IT,
AS MODI ASSERTED, A ‘PEOPLE’S G20’
timely moves by Delhi. But discounted oil from Russia is not
the only thing that has kept inflation in check. The government
has also been quick with price cuts and export restrictions on
food and fuel. The government cut LPG prices by `200, banned
the export of onions and non-basmati rice, clinched imports of
pulses to keep in check rising domestic prices as a consequence
of low supply.
India may have chaired key G20 committees under the
Vajpayee government but 2023 will go down as the year India’s
chairmanship democratised the group and made it, as Modi as-
serted, a “people’s G20”. This, not just in India but the world over,
with food, fuel, inflation, climate change and other people-related
issues getting top billing. Building on the basic foundation laid
by the Modi government’s achievements in the last nine years,
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
New Delhi’s hosting of G20 has sent out
the message that this hitherto seemingly
elitist platform is now led by a strong and
popular leader of a country on the rise,
with not just the largest population in the
worldbutalsoaskilledworkforceraringto
experiment and take calculated risks. To a
world that already knows that in India it
is dealing with a new force aiming deter-
minedly for a place at the global high table,
it is no surprise that the man at the helm
in Delhi is one who can leverage this op-
portunity for his country’s good. Modi has
already ensured that the world’s attitude
towards India changed. India is now not
one among the many emerging markets;
it is at the top. It now has the power to set
and steer the agenda.
Just how far India has come was em-
phasisedinarecentinterviewbytheprime
minister: “For a long time in world history,
India was one of the richest economies.
Later, due to the impact of colonisation
of various kinds, our global footprint was
reduced. But now, India is again on the rise.
The speed with which we jumped five
spots,fromthe10thlargesteconomytothe
fifth largest in less than a decade, has con-
veyed the fact that India means business.
PIB
We have democracy, demography and di-
versity with us. As I said, now a fourth D is
getting added to it—development. I have
said earlier too that the period till 2047 is
a huge opportunity. Indians who are liv-
ing in this era have a great chance to lay a
foundationforgrowththatwillberemem-
bered for the next 1,000 years!”
That is the extent and the depth of
India’s transition. Even if the country
had everything going for it, it could still
fall behind. India needed a leader like Modi to instil the self-
confidence in Indians that with so much going for them, they
were on a golden launchpad to success and greatness. By insist-
ing that what happened with India over the last one thousand
years was an aberration that showcased only its backwardness
and cultural diffidence, Modi made it clear that these were not
qualities hereditarily and indelibly embedded in us as a people.
Circumstances were against the subcontinent. The spells of
backwardness and subjugation were the afflictions of foreign oc-
cupation. Modi told Indians that they had irrepressible potential.
The inferiority complex, the fatalistic approach to life, and the
long humiliation were things of the past. The future belongs to
India. And it is not just India but the world, too, which recognises
the truth of his words.
www.openthemagazine.com 31
 COVER STORY

THE MESSAGE

The summit demonstrated

outcomes on the global stage
and making the group more
By RAJEEV DESHPANDE

32 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
India’s ability to influence
by bridging geopolitical divides
economically inclusive

G20 leaders at
Mahatma Gandhi’s
memorial at Raj Ghat
in New Delhi,
September 10, 2023

Photo PIB

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 www.openthemagazine.com 33

A
COVER STORY

FORTUITOUS TURN of events that saw India swapping its presidency

of G20 first with Italy in 2021 and then with Indonesia in 2022 resulted in
New Delhi heading the influential grouping at a time when it was uniquely
placed to influence its agenda and forge an unlikely consensus amid deep-
ening global conflict. The G 20 ‘troika’ comprising the nation preceding the
current presidency, the incumbent, and the succeeding one have a key voice
in fashioning outcomes. As it happened, India worked with like-minded
Indonesia (India had helped frame the Ukraine clause in Bali in 2022) and
Brazil and other ‘middle’ economies with shared interests to draft the geo-
political passages in the 83-paragraph G20 Leaders’ New Delhi Declaration
that seemed a bridge too far even as foreign dignitaries began to arrive in the
city last weekend. Yet, the G20 grouping that has largely been guided by G7
in its intent, actions and worldview since its inception in 1999 stood on the
brink of significant change.
That moment arrived when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on the afternoon of
September 9 that a consensus had been concluded on the summit declaration. Modi did not hide
his satisfaction even as the Indian delegation and other attendees broke out in applause. The cleft
between Russia and China, the new G2, and the US and the rest of the West, had after all been a
constant backdrop to India’s presidency right since the first meeting of G20 sherpas in Udaipur
last December. It had been evident from the start that the Bali declaration’s specific mention of
Russia as the aggressor against Ukraine was not going to be repeated in the New Delhi text. The
toughening of the Russian position, with China backing it up, within weeks of the Bali statement

left no room for doubt. Given the West’s anger against Rus-
sian leader Vladimir Putin and its active military support to
Ukraine, it did not seem likely that Western nations would
accept a diluted reference to Moscow either. But diplomacy is
often about finding a middle ground between seemingly irrec-
oncilable positions. And Ukraine will not be the first country
to feel hard done by the ebb and flow of global politics. External
Affairs Minister S Jaishankar put it pithily while responding
to a query on the absence of any mention of Russia when he
said, “[As] to the comparison with the Bali declaration… I would
only say Bali was Bali and New Delhi is New Delhi.” It was as
succinct an exposition of realpolitik as could be possible. A lot
can happen in a year.
The New Delhi outcome was not a complete surprise though.
There were more than a few straws in the wind. Speaking to the
media days before the summit, US National Security Advisor
(NSA) Jake Sullivan, asked about the Chinese role during India’s
presidency, said it was up to Beijing to decide whether it wanted
to play spoiler. “As far as the question of tensions between India
and China affecting the [G20] summit… really that’s up to China.
If China wants to come in and play the role of spoiler, of course,
that option is available to them.” It was a clear signal that the US
and by implication most other G20 members would work with
the host and that Washington did not want India to suffer an
embarrassment. If China’s carping over the use of Vasudhaiva
Kutumbakam (the world is one family) and other attempts to un-
dermine India’s presidency were carried too far, it would leave
the communist giant deeply isolated. It may not even have been
able to count on Middle Eastern nations it has been courting
assiduously through investments and other blandishments.
A favourable G20 troika was not the only factor working in
India’s favour. The winds of global politics aided India’s cause.
Its membership of various forums, including ones like the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) where both Paki-
stan and China are present, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China,
South Africa), the Quad (the US, Japan, Australia, India), and
I2U2 (India, Israel, US, UAE), provides a unique cross-cutting
presence. As the rifts over the war in Ukraine deepened, India
remained one of the few nations with a direct line to Moscow
which proved crucial in getting Putin to agree to several ref-
erences that he might have had reservations about in lieu of
altering the directly critical comments in the Bali text. The New
Delhi declaration strongly backs the Black Sea grain and fertil-
iser deal that Russia has been sabotaging and calls on combat-

34 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 India’s G20 Sherpa
Amitabh Kant and others
at the sherpas’ meeting
in Gurugram,
September 6, 2023
ants not to attack relevant infrastructure. In the context of the
Ukraine conflict, it notes that “all states” must refrain from the
threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition. The call for
a just and durable peace may be differently interpreted by Mos-
cow, but it is plain enough that G20 did not endorse or approve
Russia’s actions. Paragraphs 7 to 14 very much reflect India’s
position opposing violation of the UN Charter and territorial
integrity of Ukraine without explicitly naming Russia.
The reluctance of G7 nations in handing Russia and China a
major diplomatic win, if the New Delhi summit ended in failure,
is seen as a factor that prodded the West to accept India’s propos-
als on the declaration. But such an outcome may not have been
in Russia’s interests either. The backlash in India would have
been furious if Moscow was seen as the stumbling block, hurting
a nation that is already a pariah state. And for all its “no limits”
partnership with China, it would not be in Russia’s interests
either if Beijing faced fewer checks and balances despite their
shared animus towards the West. Russia has a long history in
dealing with China and is not unaware of its instinct to domi-
nate and dictate, particularly evident under Xi Jinping. Russia
has no incentive to injure its relations with India which, despite
a certain diminution, span important sectors like energy and
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
PIB
defence. India’s purchase of discounted Russian oil has worked
to the benefit of both countries.
If the stellar constellations appeared propitiously placed,
India worked hard to leverage its equities with developing na-
tions even as it sought to influence G7 to its ends. “One of India’s
priorities when it took over was articulating the concerns of
the Global South. India took their views on board and did so
through genuine and sustained dialogue. Their issues of debt
relief and global inflation were heard as part of a structured
consultation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s letter to G20
members seeking the African Union’s (AU) admittance as a per-
manent member was intended to make the grouping a genuine
round table and not just a cosy club where G7 framed the dis-
cussion,” Vikas Swarup, former Indian high commissioner to
Canada, told Open. The invite to AU was not a gimmick but a
purposeful response to the deep distress many nations in the
continent are facing in the wake of the inflation in wheat and
energy prices due to the war in Ukraine along with the devas-
tating impact of climate change causing repeated droughts, de-
stroying crops, livestock, wildlife and human livelihoods. The
promise to re-imagine the functioning of Multilateral Develop-
ment Banks (MDB) and expand finance for climate change does
www.openthemagazine.com 35
 COVER STORY
not add up to an executive decision. The complex changes have
to be carried out by organisations like the World Bank where the
role of the US is critical. But while the translation of G20 pledges
into actual action is a challenge, the norm-setting is nevertheless
important. “[W]e call on the MDBs to undertake comprehensive
efforts to evolve their vision, incentive structures, operational
approaches and financial capacities so that they are better
equipped to maximize their impact in addressing a wide range
of global challenges while being consistent with their mandate
and commitment to accelerate progress towards Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs),” states the declaration. There are
in fact several paragraphs on MDBs calling for newer hybrid
finance and a greater say for developing nations in prescriptions
to combat poverty and debt.
PIB
36
The flawless organisation of the summit itself and the grand
dimensions of the newly inaugurated Bharat Mandapam at
Delhi’s Pragati Maidan were an achievement in themselves
involving a logistical feat and technology-enhanced security
measures. While the summit served to showcase India’s suc-
cesses in providing digital public goods and burnished its
reputation as a rising power, it is useful to evaluate what the
G20 presidency meant for the country’s more consequential
relationships. The consolidation and expansion of India-US
ties during Modi’s state visit to the US in June provided an early
indicator of the cooperation Washington extended in bringing
about a consensus declaration. Though a shared concern over
China’s rise animates India-US ties, there is a larger investment
in a partnership that both feel is important for the world order
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
THE CONSENSUS DOCUMENT
they are invested in, even as India displays its strategic autono-
my as it did with regard to Ukraine. The dysfunctionality of the
WAS NO DOUBT THE RESULT OF UN Security Council (UNSC) and the stalemate within the P5

INDIA’S EXTENSIVE DIPLOMATIC

provide India room to leverage its equations with the US and
also utilise commonalities with middle economies in G20 to
ENGAGEMENT WITH ALL G20 NATIONS its advantage. The summit ended with a strong reiteration of

AT A BILATERAL LEVEL AND ITS

India-US ties. The India-Russia relationship, too, has sustained
with Putin continuing to see Modi as a friend even if not an
POSITION AS A GROWING ECONOMY ally. The bridge that India provides him is important for Russia

IN A WORLD BESET WITH although this may involve a wink or two as India has made it
amply clear that the war in Ukraine could not have happened at
UNCERTAINTIES. THERE WAS INDEED a worse time when the world was just about emerging from the

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE shadow of Covid. But as Modi’s hearty handshake with Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov showed, the successful adop-
tion of the geopolitical paragraphs meant a lot to both nations
and Moscow possibly appreciates the safe passage it got in a
hostile gathering.

B
The launch of the
Global Biofuels Alliance ARRING THE YEAR when Covid held the world in
at the G20 summit, its deadly grip, Chinese president Xi Jinping has not
September 9, 2023 skipped any G20 summit. His absence at the New Delhi
meet was interpreted as a reflection of the poor state of
India-China relations as also a desire to take the sheen off India’s
show. The preparedness of Western nations to step back from
the Bali formulation and Russia agreeing to the amended text
did not leave China much to object to. In hindsight, Xi might
have an added reason to skip the summit. He would have al-
most certainly had to face questions on supporting the Rus-
sian invasion of Ukraine in bilateral contacts that could not
have been avoided. In a world obsessed with balance-of-power
scenarios, India’s projection as the ‘voice’ of the Global South
inevitably challenges China’s positioning on this score. This is
despite China’s lead in its outreach to this segment powered by
the massive lending capacities of its state-run companies and
banks. China’s outbound FDI in 2022 is estimated at $140 bil-
lion which is an increase over previous years and is despite the
slowdown of its own economy. India’s increased engagements
with the Quad, which China calls an Asian NATO, the I2U2
partnership, and now the India-Middle East-Europe Economic
Corridor, are unambiguously alternatives to a China-led order.
The strategic implications of the ‘non-traditional’ pathways
cannot be missed. “Connectivity is as important as defence
equipment. We have seen how vaccines and finance have been
securitised. So India’s choices have a strategic dimension that
both sides are aware of,” a former Indian diplomat who has
served in the UN said. There are no upsides in the India-China
relationship. Rather, India’s success and gain in stature sits
poorly with Beijing that has concluded its southern neighbour
is getting too big for its boots and needs a rap or two on the
knuckles. As India continues to develop options that will make
the terms of engagement with China more even, the jostling
is likely to intensify. Commentators who harp on the need for
India to improve ties with China fail to consider the need for

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 www.openthemagazine.com 37

 HIGH ROAD TO EUROPE
GE RM A N Y
F R A NC E
I TA LY
GRE E C E
Piraeus
Graphic by SAURABH SINGH
W
HEN PRIME MINISTER
Narendra Modi and US
President Joe Biden
co-chaired a special
event on September 9
to announce an MoU on the India-
Middle East-Europe Economic
Corridor (IMEC), the occasion did
not lack in ambition. But the political
imagination animating the scheme
for an 8,000km-plus sea-rail-road
corridor is even more daunting. It
seeks to revive parts of an ancient
commerce and trade trail with a
contemporary vision that is steeped
in the geopolitics of the day.
With the leaders of Saudi Ara-
bia, UAE, Mauritius, Italy, Germany,
France, the European Union (EU) and
38
The India-Middle East-Europe
Economic Corridor will revive
an ancient trade route for the needs
of the 21st century
IS R A E L
Haifa
AI Haditha
UAE
Haradha Jabel Ali
Riyadh
S A UDI AI Ghuwaifat
ARABIA UAE
SEA ROUTE
the World Bank also attending the
event, the US statement outlined the
vaulting scope of the corridor, stat-
ing that the intent was to link Asia
and Europe to commercial hubs,
lay undersea cables, export clean
energy, set up telecommunication
grids, drive trade and strengthen sup-
ply chains. The obvious alternative
this poses to China’s Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI) needed no stating.
China welcomed the initiative, noting
that it should not become a “geopo-
litical” tool, blithely ignoring similar
concerns about BRI with its model of
'LMRIWIXIGLRSPSK]ERHƼRERGI
The proposal seems to have
raised the hackles of Turkey, with
Recep Tayyip Erdogan stating that
INDI A
Mumbai
TRAIN ROUTE
the country could not be bypassed
by any such route. The plans for the
corridor to pass through Greece
could not have enthused Erdogan.
As the plan takes wing, it offers
more opportunities for India’s manu-
facturing and digital enterprise and
varying levels of skill sets besides a
strategic connectivity. The corridor
will promote India’s efforts to pres-
ent itself as a reliable supply chain
partner. Interestingly, India is part of
the Mumbai-St Petersburg multi-
modal link that runs through Iran.
The proposed Chennai-Vladivostok
maritime corridor will connect India
to the Russian Far East and run
through the South China Sea,
Singapore and the Malacca Strait.
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 COVER STORY

Modi with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, September 9, 2023

GETTY IMAGES
RUSSIA HAS NO INCENTIVE TO INJURE ITS RELATIONS WITH INDIA
WHICH, DESPITE A CERTAIN DIMINUTION, SPAN IMPORTANT SECTORS
LIKE ENERGY AND DEFENCE. INDIA’S PURCHASE OF DISCOUNTED
RUSSIAN OIL HAS WORKED TO THE BENEFIT OF BOTH COUNTRIES

reciprocity and the changed political temper in Delhi. China
did all it could to undercut India and the summit’s success was
a resounding setback for Beijing.
The Delhi declaration is an unusual instance where coun-
tries with sharply conflicting views have declared their satisfac-
tion with the results. The consensus document was no doubt
also the result of India’s extensive diplomatic engagement with
all G20 nations at a bilateral level and its position as a growing
economy in a world beset with uncertainties. There was indeed
something for everyone. The restructuring of international
finance and MDBs suggested by emerging economies has some
benefits for the US and other Western economies. The hybrid
or blended finance options can allow them to retain a major say
in these institutions while encouraging borrowing nations to
leverage the lending to raise private finance. Projects like the
Middle East corridor provide the US with an avenue to remain
engaged in a region where it has sought to contain its footprint.
Countries like India can deliver the technology and human
resources needed for project implementation. The scheme pro-
vides smaller Gulf nations a salience and a larger country like
Saudi Arabia an opportunity to be seen as setting the agenda in
the region. Navigating the world, Jaishankar said in a recent me-
dia interaction, requires a sharper awareness of how it works.
In the run-up to the Delhi summit, India’s diplomats astutely
recognised that nations like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil,
and even South Korea, despite unease over Russia’s overtures
to North Korea, are invested in the Indian partnership. There
was, in the end, sufficient support for a position that did not
accept the maximalist line advocated by Western nations ahead
of the summit.
The long hours spent in fashioning the phrases and formula-
tions that finally found acceptance were backed with an ultima-
tum of sorts, with Indian negotiators making plain the boundar-
ies set for them by Modi. This meant negotiations did not stretch
on endlessly, turning crisis management into the main news of
the day. The anti-climactic denouement well before the summit
concluded strikingly underlined India’s emergence on the big
stage and Modi’s ability to leverage its strengths.

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 www.openthemagazine.com 39

 COVER STORY

DIGITAL DIVIDEND

G20 members’
adoption of the
Indian digital public
infrastructure
as a global
template for
developing nations
is a big boost to
Delhi’s stature
By ANIL PADMANABHAN
GETTY IMAGES

40
External Affairs Minister
S Jaishankar and
Finance Minister
Nirmala Sitharaman
address the media at the
G20 summit in New Delhi,
September 9, 2023
 COVER STORY

O
N AUGUST 28, 2014, 509 million Indians did not On September 9, the summit meeting of the G20 group of
own a bank account. That was the day the Union countries in New Delhi unanimously voted to adopt the Indian
government launched the Jan Dhan (no-frills bank DPI as the global template for employing DPGs to do public good
accounts) Yojana. Nine years later, they do—trans- at population scale.
forming India from the most unbanked country to This is a huge leg-up for India and the very game-changing
among the most banked in the world today. idea of DPGs.
Broadly, the staggering gains of financial
inclusion accruing from the ongoing Jan Dhan
programme as of August this year are as follows: DATA DEMOCRACY
• 50.09 crore Jan Dhan accounts opened (as of August 9, 2023); To its credit, NDA, ever since it took charge in 2014, boldly under-
• 55.6 per cent (27.82 crore) Jan Dhan account holders are took an ideological pivot in the development strategy. It gradu-
women; ally started to place greater emphasis on empowerment over en-
• 66.7 per cent (33.45 crore) of Jan Dhan accounts are in rural titlement—the continuation of the rural employment guarantee
and semi-urban areas. scheme only confirms that instead of making a binary choice,
According to a research paper published by the Bank for In- NDA preferred both options, but with a greater preference for
ternational Settlements (BIS), the bank of central banks head- empowerment.
quartered in Basel, Switzerland, this scale of financial inclusion This ability to walk the talk on teaching people how to fish,
will normally take a country 47 years to achieve. And this in turn instead of handing them fish, was made possible because of the
would require per capita income to grow from $5,000 to $20,000. DPG framework that Aadhaar spawned. Combined with a strate-
How did India manage this incredible makeover in financial gy universalising material basics like electricity, housing, cooking
inclusion? gas, and so on—for long considered a privilege—it has succeeded
Is it an outcome of the reinvention of the public policy frame- in achieving unprecedented socio-economic transformation.
work? Not really. This, despite the mission-mode efforts of the Effectively, the DPG framework has enabled India to forge a
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance ‘Data Democracy’ wherein a billion-plus people are taking ad-
(NDA). Yes, that was a necessary condition, but it required some- vantage of their digital footprint to make verifiable claims, and
thing else to complement this effort. digitally access services, products and opportunities.
This is the much-overlooked weapon, newly acquired, in the The brilliance of India’s DPG framework is that all these
public policy arsenal, which when wielded effectively has proved digital blocks are interoperable—unlike platform apps like
to be transformative in the change that it ordained. Amazon and Facebook which restrict users to their domain. Think
And this instrument is Aadhaar—the foundational identity of them like the wooden building blocks for children. Similarly,
owned by 1.3 billion Indians. Its legal ring-fencing and accelerated these DPGs can be mixed and matched to solve for more functions.
adoption since 2014 enabled banks to employ eKYC (or Know The list of DPGs include Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for pay-
Your Customer electronically). Exactly why In-
dia managed a record financial inclusion in the
nine years since. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, president of Africa’s largest economy Nigeria, at the G20 summit
Aadhaar is also India’s first digital public good
(DPG). A DPG is nothing but an open digital high-
way which anyone can use. Every DPG solves for
a specific function—like Aadhaar did for foun-
dational identity. All these DPGs together have
a moniker: Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).
By banking half-a-billion people in just nine
years, India provided very compelling proof of
concept for the use of DPGs to leapfrog devel-
opment. And this was no one-off achievement.
Two years ago, India delivered two billion-plus
Covid-19 jabs seamlessly employing another
set of DPGs.
Not surprising then that the world sat up and
took notice. According to a 2016 study by McKin-
sey Global Institute, digitalisation in the finan-
cial sector increases productivity and economic
growth—adding a potential $3.6 trillion to the
GDP of emerging economies.

42 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
ments, CoWin for the vaccine, One Nation
One Ration Card to enable beneficiaries
BY BANKING
access subsidised foodgrains anywhere in HALF-A-BILLION PEOPLE
India, and so on.
The beauty of this unique digital econ-
IN JUST NINE YEARS,
omy being forged by India is twofold: one, INDIA PROVIDED VERY
it is based on an open digital architecture.
COMPELLING PROOF OF
In other words, it provides a state-of-the-art
digital highway that anyone, government CONCEPT FOR THE USE
or private sector, can use to create innova- OF DPGS TO LEAPFROG
DEVELOPMENT. AND
tions either for mass or niche use. Second,
it enables universal access by lowering the
cost of onboarding, thereby building for in- THIS WAS NO ONE-OFF
ACHIEVEMENT
clusion and scale, something so critical for
India with a population size of 1.3 billion.
X FACTOR
The outcome of India monetising an individual’s identity and
using it to democratise access to payments, health, social wel-
fare, and most recently, Covid-19 jabs is proving to be a game-
changer—including for women’s empowerment. As each of
these gains feeds off each other, it triggers a reinforcing effect
which only accelerates empowerment.
Take for example the Jan Dhan-plus initiative undertaken
by the Women’s World Banking and the Bank of Baroda (BoB).
It was launched initially as a pilot by BoB in cities, including its
branches in Chennai, Mumbai, and Delhi in 2019. The initial
success inspired BoB to expand the programme to its rural and
peri-urban branches located in the Shahjahanpur region of
Uttar Pradesh (UP). By March 2022, there was enough evidence
to suggest that this programme could be scaled. Consequently,
it was rolled out in the entire state of Uttarakhand and western
UP after drafting two other banks, Indian Bank and the Union
Bank of India.
According to the World Bank, the pilot has since grown into a
programme and has reached over 12 million women customers
as of April this year.
Significantly, the pilot programme showed that these
customers reported over a 50 per cent increase in their average
bank balances in less than six months of their being brought
under the pilot programme. This improved financial status drew
the attention of business correspondents cross-selling micro-
insurance and pension schemes—the attention this received
in the rest of the community led to a doubling of enrolment for
the Jan Dhan-plus pilot.
Based on the initial success, the Women’s World Banking
and BoB estimate that this could engage 100 million low-income
women in savings activities, which in turn could result in the
public sector banks (PSB) attracting approximately `25,000 crore
($3.1 billion) in bank deposits.
The government has leveraged this financial inclusion to
weave a targeted safety net for those at the bottom of the pyramid.
It did so by combining the Jan Dhan account, Aadhaar and mo-
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
bile of an individual to create an ‘economic
GPS’ to identify the beneficiary—JAM.
The gains from this have been
staggering.
USING JAM
As a result, by the time the Covid
pandemic struck, India had a faceless
public delivery system—based on JAM—
in place. Since social contact was frowned
upon for most of the first two years of the
pandemic, delivering public goods would
have been a challenge without JAM. To put
it differently, India, like several other coun-
tries, would have been devastated.
JAM enabled massive Covid relief as cash transfers from the
government in the first two years of the pandemic.
These direct benefit transfers (DBT) rose from `2.4 lakh crore
to `3 lakh crore in 2020-21. It is one of the reasons India fared
better compared to other countries in providing Covid relief.
A collateral gain from all of this is massive savings to the
exchequer.
Cumulatively so far, DBT has saved the exchequer about
`3 lakh crore—that is twice the size of the first Covid relief
package and thrice the annual budget for the rural employment
guarantee programme.
CRITICAL MASS
To be sure, it is not just India that has been creating DPGs. Other
countries too have been experimenting with similar initiatives.
The big difference though is that India’s DPG framework is
more versatile, transparent and can solve for population scale
challenges—like inoculating one billion-plus Indians with two
rounds of vaccines. Most importantly, it allows the private sector
to innovate on these public digital rails—within the guardrails
of regulation which is embedded.
Examples of other countries include Argentina, which
launched Payments by Transfer (PCT) to promote open and
universal digital payments; Bangladesh uses eKYC linked to
‘Parichay’, their national identity equivalent of Aadhaar, to make
welfare payments to 30 million beneficiaries; the UAE has intro-
duced a UAE Pass as its national identity; and you have Pix, an
instant payment method in Brazil which allows customers to
use a QR code to pay for the purchase of services or goods.
It is clear that an idea of India has won global appreciation.
The endorsement by G20 means that it has got sanction for adop-
tion in other countries, especially developing countries seeking
to emulate India and leapfrog development.
Anil Padmanabhan is a Delhi-based journalist who
writes on the intersection of politics and economics in
his weekly column ‘Capital Calculus’
www.openthemagazine.com 43
 COVER STORY

THE ATMOSPHERICS

Will millet pudding

with apricot compote
shift the epicurean
focus from DC
to Delhi? Neither
monkeys nor
naysayers’ gripes
about food and
décor could spoil
the party
By RESHMI DASGUPTA
IMF Managing Director
Kristalina Ivanova
Georgieva-Kinova joins
44 a dance performance
at the airport,
September 9, 2023
 Photos GETTY IMAGES
British Prime Minister
Rishi Sunak and his wife
Akshata Murty at the
Akshardham temple
in New Delhi, Akshata Murty plays football with schoolchildren
September 10, 2023 at the British Council in New Delhi, September 8, 2023

G20 spouses at
a lunch at Jaipur
House in New Delhi

US President Joe Biden

takes a selfie with
Bangladesh Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina and her
daughter Saima Wazed,
September 9, 2023

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 takeswww.openthemagazine.com
a selfie with his partner Jodie
45Haydon
and Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
September 9, 2023
 COVER STORY
J
UST BEFORE THE G20 summit in India,
Chandrayaan-3 got to the moon for less than
what it costs to buy two houses in Lutyens’
Delhi. But some people insisted on looking at
the proverbial finger rather than the celestial
orb both times. Thus, carping about “moon mis-
sions while millions go hungry” was followed
by concern over G20 ‘issues’, such as monkeys,
dogs and ‘monumental’ excesses. India-that-is-
Bharat increasingly has that effect on some people.
Little wonder then that as world leaders prepared to land in
New Delhi with their delegations, the New York Times decided
to run a story about an underpublicised major concern: mon-
keys. The detailed report, co-written by its correspondent from
Seoul, informed readers that India’s capital had “wild mon-
keys” that “steal food and chase pedestrians”, “invade” minis-
tries and even the Prime Minister’s Office, “attack” patients in
hospitals and “romp” inside Parliament.
In other words, world leaders were warned that they were
about to land up in the Planet of the Apes, aka Bharat. The
intrepid reporters even got an Indian academic to hypothesise
that a “monkey disruption” could give the opposition “fodder
to attack” Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hurt his party’s
prospects in the coming state elections. He even conjectured
that if any monkeys were killed—by security forces?—India’s
“Hindu majority” would be irked too.
The paper must have been relieved then that the summit
A selection of the food, including millet dishes, on the menu at Bharat Mandapam
Courtesy CHEF KUNAL KAPUR
46
went off with nary a simian showdown to report, presumably
thanks to the G20 organisers’ excellent bandarbust. Major poten-
tial international incidents, not to mention domestic political
disasters, were averted by the simple and economical measure
of hanging life-size paper cut-outs of langurs, the traditional
enemies of monkeys, in the likely conflict zones. Call it the
Chandrayaan Principle.
Had someone got the bright idea on time, attention may have
also been drawn by the foreign media to “packs of wild dogs”
roaming the city attacking people, as the desi phenomenon of
‘street’ dogs (not strays or abandoned ones) is little understood
by outsiders. But before they thought of it, the narrative changed
to cruelty by municipal workers while moving those dogs to
shelters, so a chance to reiterate that it was a jungle out there in
Delhi, was lost.
The civic authorities did, of course, reinforce the old trope of
tigers on India’s city streets by dotting key venues and roads with
carved stone lions and elephants amid potted jungle greenery.
But the endless rows of cheek-by-jowl planters—unfortunately
made of white plastic instead of a G20-compliant, planet-friendly
material—marked with the unmistakable initials of the Public
Works Department quite spoilt the effort to evoke a ‘jungle by
the Jamuna’ vibe.
Most of the ‘beautification’ initiatives were regarded by sec-
tions of the media and social media as mounting evidence
of India’s descent into Bharat. Mumbai’s iconic Gateway of
India being gussied up for the soigné attendees of Dior’s
ALAMY
AP
25 SEPTEMBER 2023

Artefacts on display at Bharat Mandapam
Fall 2023 show in March was one thing, but Delhi’s Qutab
Minar wreathed in bright colours for a new sound-and-light
show for the plebs? Just not on. How could India’s heritage be
appropriated by Bharatiya aesthetics?
Most Bharatiyas who ventured forth to have a dekko of the
décor and bandobast for G20 neither knew nor cared about such
elite reservations, of course, judging by the milling crowds and
selfie activity around lions, lit-up lampposts, painted flyovers
and gurgling fountains. This underscored the general principle
that public interest increases these days in tandem with the
amount of opprobrium heaped on something (or someone) by
the commentariat.
Predictably, sensibilities were offended by the “inauspi-
cious” Nataraja at Bharat Mandapam, even if the same
aficionados admired the one installed at CERN in 2004. They
were also affronted by the “gaudy” murals on civic infrastruc-
ture outside the “Lodhi Art District” although flower bedecked
Raj Ghat passed muster as did foreign leaders and spouses
donning traditional Indian attire. The ubiquitous Earth and
Lotus G20 logo just about scraped through too.
But their evolved tastebuds vicariously revolted against the
millets and vegetarian fare served to world leaders and delega-
tions, instead of India’s fabled biryanis and kormas. What on
earth is a jackfruit galette, they raged. Who eats millets, they
bristled. Modi is Gujarati but President Droupadi Murmu is a
tribal so how can she host a vegetarian dinner for foreign guests,
they fulminated, unable to swallow that our First Citizen and
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
PIB
First Adivasi is actually shakahari.
But the food—and the company—was inviting enough for
even President Joe Biden to turn up for the vegetarian ratri bhoj,
though he had skipped dinners at the conclaves of G7 in May,
NATO in July, and G20 last year. Without Jill around though,
ol’ Joe may not have noticed that the menu bore an uncanny
resemblance to what was served at the White House state
dinner for Modi in June this year: millets, mushrooms, and a
cardamom-scented dessert.
Would millet pudding with apricot compote shift the epi-
curean focus from DC to Delhi? Will jackfruit become the new
tempeh and put Portobello mushrooms and Western ‘plant-
based meat’ industries on notice? Could millets become the
new quinoa? Such were the conversations buzzing around the
banquet, but long-distance commentators came to the gristly
conclusion that India’s meaty culinary repertoire was being
inexorably Bharatised—vegetarianised.
What truly got their goat, however, was the undeniable
evidence that neither monkeys nor relentless gripes about the
décor, aesthetics, traffic restrictions, menus and entertainment
hindered or deflected attention from the successful conduct
of the largest conclave of major heads of state and government
in India since the summits of the Indira-Rajiv era in the 1980s.
Consequently, the dated India versus Bharat narrative is about
to begin a new chapter.
Reshmi Dasgupta is a Delhi-based journalist
www.openthemagazine.com 47
SALON CINEMA

CITIZEN
KHAN
The reinvention of Shah Rukh Khan as an
action hero with a conscience

48
 By Kaveree Bamzai
O WE LOVE our stars
more when they crash
m individuals and as a nation. “Shah Rukh
and burn, fall to the
an
earth, and seemingly
ea
se
self-destruct? In his
la
last movie before 2023,
S
Shah Rukh Khan was
fl
flying high, so high
th
that he had reached the
m
moon. In what seems
likealifetimeago
like a lifetime ago, audiences rejected
both him and Zero, the 2018 film that
put him there. It took two movies, one
where he plays a Pathaan, and another
where he is a jawan, to endear him to In-
dia again. In Pathaan, which made `1,050
crore at the box office in January this
year, he is neither Hindu nor Muslim,
merely an orphan found abandoned in a
cinema hall, In Jawan, which has made
`574 crore at the box office in five days,
he is Bharat ka nagrik (a citizen of India),
a soldier in one avatar and an IPS officer
in another, teaching us to ask questions
before we cast our vote. As he says, be-
fore uttering the all-important Jai Hind,
ungli karo, sawaal pucho.
At 57, after an early start in Hindi cin-
ema as a psychopath, and a long career
as a romantic hero, Shah Rukh Khan has
recast himself as an action hero, who
provides equal opportunity offence to
the women in his life—after first duly
losing to them in fist fights. He is selling
the idea of himself as its perfect citizen.
Onscreen, he fights villains who don’t
believe in Bharat Mata, and tattoos Maa
Jagat Janani (Mother of the Universe)
on his shaven head. Off screen, he
praises Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
achievements, from the new Parliament
building to the successful G20 summit.
Onscreen, he threatens terror so farmer
loans can be waived, and government
hospitals can be properly equipped.
Offscreen, he endorses voting in the
General Election and criticises social
media polarisation.
Filmmaker and long-time friend
Mahesh Bhatt says when political,
economic, and religious leaders no
longer offer any solutions to the
crises that the nation confronts, the
SHAH RUKH KHAN IN JAWAN entertainer feels that it’s time to take
over and reimagine who we are as
has done exactly that, and it is why
Jawan has touched a chord in the people
of not only India but all over the world,”
he adds.
But it is more than that. The profes-
sional resurrection is shadowed by a
personal narrative. Shah Rukh Khan
has also endured the most public of
humiliations—a drug charge against his
son, played out on 24x7 news channels,
treated as a spectator sport. It is an
allegation he fought legally, silently,
uncomplainingly and won, but not
before his son had to spend more than
20 days in jail. As the nation watched
a helpless mother visiting her son in
jail on Diwali, it was not how the script
was supposed to be written for a man
who cheerfully calls himself the best
and declares quite confidently that he
is the last of the superstars. He had been
called “anti-national” before and had
been asked to go to Pakistan, both deep
wounds for the son of a freedom fighter,
but he swallowed that poison pill.
When it seemed that agencies were after
his son, it was a crisis of faith for him. It is
no surprise that the loudest applause in
a movie studded with smart one-liners is
reserved for the older Shah Rukh saying
to the villain: “Bete par haath lagane se
pehle, baap se baat kar (Speak to the father
before laying a hand on my son).”
The resurrection is all the better
because the vilification seemed so
complete. Professionally, the chinks in
the golden armour had begun to show
in a stellar career stretching over three
decades. The films, after Chennai Express
in 2013 (Mumbai film industry’s first
“south” movie) had ceased to work their
magic at the box office. The famous
ability to articulate sharply would get
him into trouble, whether he was asked
about growing intolerance in the coun-
try or whether he made rude jokes about
his colleagues at film awards events.
Even the romantic hero onscreen, the
lifeline of many women around the
world, was looking a bit jaded, and
when he repeatedly called himself
“ganda” (dirty) in Jab Harry Met Sejal
www.openthemagazine.com 49
 CINEMA
(2017), as he romanced a much younger
Anushka Sharma, it evoked sniggers
rather than admiration at his
ironic self-jab.
It took a four-year absence from the
big screen, peppered only by glimpses
in My Next Guest with David Letterman
on Netflix and in some desultory ads,
for the country to long for him again.
As Shrayana Bhattacharya, author of
Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s
Lonely Young Women and the Search for
Intimacy and Independence, says: “The
love for Shah Rukh is not new, it was
always there. He means too much to too
many people in different ways. The way
of expressing love in public has been
invigorated thanks to his new films that
speak to our contemporary anxieties
about the country. Earlier, fandom
would show its strength at birthday
celebrations outside his home, Mannat.
Now it is in the movie halls. Fans and fan
clubs really organised themselves and
banded together through the 2020s.”
In that again, perhaps Shah Rukh was
one of the earliest adapters to the ways of
the southern film industries, where film
stars let their fan clubs do the marketing
for them. There is an SRK Universe Fan
Club, which organised first-day-first
shows of Pathaan in over 200 cities in
India. There are Teams SRK in 12 cities in
India and elsewhere in the world. These
are all organised displays of love, designed
for cameras, whether it is boys creating a
gymnastic pyramid or another set bath-
ing his film poster in milk.
But that is also not the complete
story. Shah Rukh Khan is a tale that has
been told several times over. A young
man from Delhi, known for portraying
Captain Abhimanyu on television,
descends on Mumbai, and takes it by
storm almost instantly, terrorising
viewers with a trifecta of roles where
he played a disturbed, reclusive young
man consumed by obsession or
hatred. Baazigar, Darr, both in 1993,
and Anjaam in 1994. And then just as
India was discovering its diaspora, he
played the good NRI boy, following
the good NRI girl all the way to her
pind in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge in
50
SHAH RUKH
KHAN IN
PATHAAN
IT TOOK A FOUR-YEAR
ABSENCE FROM THE BIG
SCREEN, PEPPERED ONLY BY
GLIMPSES IN MY NEXT GUEST
WITH DAVID LETTERMAN ON
NETFLIX AND IN SOME
DESULTORY ADS, FOR THE
COUNTRY TO LONG FOR
HIM AGAIN
1995, setting up India’s obsession with
Punjabi weddings and Swiss holidays
for the next decade.
But more than an actor, he also
became a smart entrepreneur, notes
author Balaji Vittal, whether it was his
movies, his production house, or his
cricket teams. His marketing strategy
was precise, notes Vittal. “Target the
mass market who would get satisfied by
the loud and the beautiful, the superior
technology, exotic locations and the ex-
tras—cameo appearances of other stars.
The star line-up in the Om Shanti Om
(2007) title song was just the beginning.
Practically every film had superstar
cameo appearances—Priyanka Chopra
and Rajinikanth in Ra. One (2011),
Hrithik Roshan in Don 2 (2011), a host of
his female co-stars in Zero, Salman Khan
in Pathaan, and Sanjay Dutt in Jawan.
This was just like the chef delighting
you with a complimentary glass of
champagne. Or a clothing store giving
you am unexpected gift voucher.” Add to
that was the financial muscle. Simulta-
neous releases in hundreds of theatres
using financial clout squeezed smaller
budget films out of the theatres. Jawan
released across 4,000 screens globally,
700 more than Pathaan.
“This love for the new Shah Rukh
Khan is not merely about the actor who
tiptoed into Bombay 30 years ago. This
is the awe for the brand that is dazzling-
ly global and yet very much made in
India,” says Vittal. Or as Bhatt says: The
movies are a byproduct of the brand.
What is a hero, after all, asks Bhatt.
Someone who dares to speak and do
the things we cannot. In a world where
everything is crumbling, he makes you
believe that something is right with the
soul of India, says Bhatt. “History is not
important, mythology is,” says Bhatt. His
character, Azad, is a Krishna-like charac-
ter who is crusading for the victim, telling
her the power lies within her, not in a
self-serving way, but for the greater good.
The villain, played by a menacing
Vijay Sethupathi, is a creature of our
times—a greedy corporate tycoon
who profits from the miseries of
common people.
Globally, ageing actors do indeed
gravitate towards becoming action su-
perheroes, and a franchise with the pos-
sibility of sequels, as both Pathaan and
Jawan indicate. And he is pitting himself
against the very best. As he cheekily tells
Amitabh Bachchan in a new masala ad,
he is both “action hero and the king
of romance”.
With the forthcoming Dunki,
about illegal immigrants, in a saga that
criss-crosses the world, directed by
Rajkumar Hirani, expect the star to burn
brighter. Expect the hero to become
more mythic, as he performs his various
roles for us the audience in real life as
well—the devoted father who battles
for justice for his son, the playful dad
who watches his daughter bloom in the
spotlight, the husband who supports his
wife’s creative endeavours, the helpful
co-star who makes sure everyone on
set feels valued, and the actor who
resurrects himself, from a deshdrohi to
a deshbhakt, from a victim of hate to an
ambassador of love.
And above all, the son who writes a
love letter to his freedom fighter father,
long gone, and a father who sends a re-
assuring message to his son, that he will
stand by him, no matter what. Q
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 WHEN THE OTHERS GET
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 ART

L I V I N G C A N
A n ar t galler y at sixt y bask s in it s glor y as a pioneer ing in

52 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 V A S P
ROFESSIONAL anniversa-
ries may not drive business,
but they do provide an
opportunity to look back
f luencer By Shaikh Ayaz on the highs and lows of
the journey, allowing one to mark the
special moments as a Frostian reminder
of the road taken and the one not taken.
Like many others, the good folks at the
Chemould Prescott Road gallery —
formerly known as Gallery Chemould
— have always commemorated mile-
stones with kaleidoscopic exhibitions
that reflect their distinct history and
legacy. On September 16, this quintes-
sential Mumbai institution will turn
60. To mark the occasion, it will host a
four-show series across three different
venues. Shireen Gandhy, director of
the gallery, has broken with tradition
this time by teaming up with younger
curators who are part of the “Chemould
family” and are familiar with its illustri-
ous past. The first of these exhibitions,
CheMoulding: Framing Future Archives,
will preview on September 15 at the
Chemould Prescott Road gallery. This
two-part show has been curated by
Shaleen Wadhwana, the 32-year-old
ex-director of sales and strategy of the
gallery, who is now a researcher work-
ing independently as a curator and
educator. The two other shows are titled
Remembering and Continuum. The former
strives to honour past glories through
staff memories while the latter will
reimagine the future through the eyes
of Shireen’s 29-year-old daughter Atyaan
Jungalwala and Sunaina Kewalramani,
who co-founded Chemould CoLab in
2022 to nurture emerging artists.
While curating CheMoulding:
Framing Future Archives, Wadhwana
delved extensively into the Chemould
archive, combing through 15,000 items
such as letters, catalogues, photographs,
awards, invitation cards, press clippings,
photographs, telegrams and rare docu-
mentations from India and elsewhere.
“We have looked at the archive through
four paradigms — the history of pre-In-
dependent India and the birth of Indian
contemporary art, history of the Gandhy
family, which is a part of Chemould’s

THE END AS AN APPEARANCE

BY RITHIKA PANDEY (LEFT);
SHIREEN GANDHY (RIGHT)
WITH HER DAUGHTER
ATYAAN JUNGALWALA

“WHEN I LOOK
BACK AND ASK,
‘WOULD I HAVE
DONE ANYTHING
ELSE WITH MY
LIFE?’ I DON’T
THINK SO. I FEEL
TOTALLY ROOTED
WHERE I AM
AND I WOULD DO
THIS A HUNDRED
TIMES OVER. I
BELONG TO THIS
GALLERY. IT’S
MY HOME”
Shireen Gandhy
director Chemould Prescott Road

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 www.openthemagazine.com 53

 ART
story, and the history of Bombay and
how these four intersect through artistic
responses to emotion, nurturing, society
and self,” Wadhwana explains. Bringing
together over 30 artists who have shared
close ties with Chemould down the
decades, CheMoulding aims to stimulate
a unique and meaningful dialogue
between different generations of artists.
The exhibition will pay homage to vet-
eran artists, such as Tyeb Mehta, KH Ara,
MF Husain, Bhupen Khakhar,
Rummana Hussain and Jangarh Singh
Shyam, while also attempting some-
thing novel by inviting contemporary
names like Jitish Kallat, Shilpa Gupta,
Anju Dodiya and Varunika Saraf to
respond to personalised curatorial
prompts from the archive. According to
Wadhwana, cues given to artists varied
from “letters and personal memories
of their first meeting with Kekoo and
Khorshed Gandhy” to even “the old
Gallery Chemould floor plan!” While
some artists have offered their take in
the form of video installations, others
have expressed it through embroidered
textile artworks.
“Our anniversary exhibitions are
always difficult but this one was excep-
tionally challenging. We were worried
that we would be cutting into the or-
ganic flow of an artist’s career trajectory
by asking them to create work espe-
cially for us,” notes Shireen, who since
taking over the gallery’s reins from her
parents in 1988, has been instrumental
in making Chemould Prescott Road a
major force in the contemporary art
scene. She finds it hard to believe that
over half a lifetime has been spent on
the job already and while acknowledg-
ing that she misses her parents dearly,
one surmises that she has a certain “the
show must go on” optimism about her,
a quality that seems to have served her
well. Despite having more than three
decades of experience as a full-time gal-
lerist and countless exhibitions under
her belt, Shireen remains unassuming
and even admits to being nervous about
CheMoulding. “I am a calm person, but
I imagine anybody would be anxious
about, ‘Okay, so how will this thing
54
turn out?’ Every exhibition is a new
adventure.”
For all the adventure and excitement
that running a gallery may entail,
Shireen Gandhy (59) reveals that a life in
art was the last thing on her mind while
growing up.
In Citizen Gallery, Jerry Pinto’s biog-
raphy of Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy
published last year, the author relates a
family lore stating that Shireen “recog-
nised a Ram Kumar painting at the age
of four.” In other words, she was born to
art. Yet, she maintains, “I didn’t realise
art was in my genes for a long time. After
college, I had the possibility of pursuing
art history in Baroda. In all honesty, I was
not academically inclined and didn’t
want to stay in Baroda. Bombay was
much more fun and I wanted to enjoy
my life here.” Shireen, who enrolled at
Bombay’s elite, all-girls’ Sophia College
and later earned a degree in art adminis-
tration at City University in London.
She turns nostalgic when we meet
at her cosy back office in the Chemould
Prescott Road premises, which has a view
of Gothic buildings nestled along the old
district of southern Mumbai. “Now when
I look back,” she says, sipping tea, “I won-
der if I had done things differently. For ex-
ample, if I had gone to Baroda (Maharaja
Sayajirao University) Gulam Mohammed
Sheikh would have been my teacher. Can
you believe I blew that opportunity?” She
throws her head back and laughs, “I feel
super regretful now.”
S HIREEN IS THE youngest of the late
Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy’s four
children. Her family and Gallery Che-
mould is largely credited for sparking
the birth of modern art in India. In art
circles, the Gandhys’ close relationship
with the Bombay Progressive Artists’
Group is particularly legendary. The sto-
ry of Chemould — and how it came to be
called that — starts with Kekoo Gandhy.
Born into a wealthy Parsi merchant fam-
ily in 1920 (he passed away in 2012 at age
92), Kekoo’s “encounter with modern
Indian art happened by accident,” as
Jerry Pinto observes in Citizen Gallery.
SEE YOU IN DREAMLAND BY TARINI SETHI (LEFT);
And here’s Kekoo’s elder daughter
Behroze Gandhy, a filmmaker based
in London, summing up her father
in similar terms in her documentary
Kekee Manzil. “Papa,” she declares in it,
“was a bit of a chancer who freewheeled
through life with no grand plan, relying
on random encounters and quirks
of history.”
One story has it that back in the 1940s,
Kekoo’s life took an unexpected turn
after a chance meeting with a gentleman
named Roger Van Damme who was a
Belgian war refugee and picture frame
manufacturer. Soon after, they became
friends and decided to establish what
would become Asia’s largest picture
framing factory. It took a foreigner like
Van Damme to see market potential for
a picture-framing business in a country
where practically every home offered
a pride of place to gods and goddesses.
And so, was born the Chemical Mould-
ing Manufacturing Company Private
Limited in 1941. Although the framing
business was a roaring success there was
one snag. Kekoo was getting increasingly
drawn to what lay inside the frame —
art. In 1963, the dreamer took a timely
leap and opened his own gallery. There
weren’t too many commercial avenues
back then. Indeed, none that showcased
modern art. Among the few that did
exist, there was Dhoomimal Gallery, set
up by Ram Babu Jain in Delhi in 1936 and
then, there was the Jehangir Art Gallery,
Artists’ Centre, Taj Art Gallery and artist
Bal Chhabda’s Gallery 59 in Bombay that
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
BUILDING TILES IN THE GLAZE ROOM BY PALLAVI SEN
patronised creativity in visual arts. Just a
few months before Chemould came into
being, Kali Pundole, who owned a watch
shop in Flora Fountain, established the
Pundole Art Gallery. Chemould was a
portmanteau of ‘chemical’ and ‘mould-
ing,’ which served as a reminder of the
Gandhys’ framing business and the
name stuck. By all accounts, Bombay
was a crucible of art and commerce in the
years after independence and against this
cultural backdrop Gallery Chemould
sprang to life. The original gallery was
located on the first floor of the Jehangir
Art Gallery, and it quickly became a
popular destination for artists and collec-
tors. (It wasn’t until 2007 that it moved
to its present address and was renamed
Chemould Prescott Road, following a
protracted legal dispute involving the
rented Jehangir space).
One of the 60th anniversary exhibi-
tions, Remembering, will run at this old
stomping ground for which long-time
Chemould collectors like Czaee Shah
and Harsh Goenka have loaned pieces
from their collection acquired from the
early days of the gallery.
K EKOO GANDHY WHO is
described as “God’s good man”
by former supercop Julio Ribeiro in
Citizen Gallery, wasn’t exactly the most
business-savvy candidate to head a
gallery. It’s a good thing then that his
wife Khorshed — more practical than
he was — joined him subsequently in
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
managing the day-to-day operations. At
a time when there was no art market, his
people-friendly nature and networking
skills enabled him to assemble an un-
rivalled network of collectors. He even
befriended struggling artists such as
MF Husain, Tyeb Mehta, VS Gaitonde,
and many others. The Gandhys initially
supported Tyeb Mehta by providing
him with a stipend, so that he could
paint freely. Of them all, Kekoo was
perhaps closest to MF Husain whom he
admired greatly. But that didn’t stop the
Gandhys from criticising him
when Husain sympathised with
Indira Gandhi during the Emergency.
The usually polite, yet strong-minded
Khorshed stepped up and voiced her
disapproval in a letter to Husain. The
Gandhys were ardent supporters of free
speech and one of the most important
lessons that Shireen has learnt from
her parents, she says, “is not to be afraid
to take risks and stand up for what
you believe in.” True to their founders’
mission, Chemould has provided a
platform to politically outspoken voices
over the decades — such as Bhupen
Khakhar’s depictions of homosexual-
ity, Nalini Malini’s series on the Babri
mosque demolition, Atul Dodiya’s take
on Mahatma Gandhi and more recently,
Varunika Saraf’s powerful indictment of
historical violence. “Creating spaces that
can continue to showcase art fearlessly
is something that Chemould Prescott
Road continues to do and Chemould
CoLab is trying to do. Kekoo and
Khorshed would have loved to see
how this generation, my generation, is
shaping up and would have continued
to nudge us in the directions that speak
truth to power,” says Wadhwana.
At the Jehangir Art Gallery,
Remembering will take viewers on a
week-long journey down memory lane
with an eclectic mix of public program-
ming while Continuum, on the other
hand, will spotlight younger artists from
the Chemould CoLab roster. What’s
more, CheMoulding: Framing Future
Archives is being presented in two parts,
allowing it to remain at the Chemould
Prescott Road gallery for an extended
period — almost until December end.
In all, Wadhwana says that the 60th
anniversary celebrations will serve as
a perfect ground “for understanding
how we arrived here, and where we
are going. A crucial moment to reflect
on intergenerational responses to the
world around us. We are in 2023 and if a
cultural institution like Chemould has
been around for 60 years, it already is a
micro-history of Bombay, of India, of the
art movements and of how these relate
to the world. It was important for us to
study this history and understand the
role we have played in it.” 
CheMoulding: Framing Future
Archives is on view at Chemould Prescott
Road till December 23; Remembering is
on view at Jehangir Art Gallery till
November 5 and Continuum is on view at
Chemould CoLab till November 4
www.openthemagazine.com 55
 BOOKS

THE MAN
ON THE HILL
Madhav
M dh Gadgil
G d il relives
li h his
i fascination
f i i
with the natural world in his memoir.
Nandini Nair talks to the veteran ecologist

PRATHAM GOKHALE

T
O KNOW A LANDSCAPE one has to walk it. One
needs to tread earth, soil ones shoes and feel the echo
of wind to recognise the pulse of a place. How does it
change on a day-to-day basis—which birds swoop
down when, which flower pops its head out of the
cracks, when do the bats land on the fruits, when does the grass
go from husk to copper to apple green to neon? Field ecologist
and anthropologist Madhav Gadgil has walked the valleys and
plains of India for more than half a century. He now recounts
those experiences in an autobiography fittingly titled A Walk up
the Hill: Living with People and Nature (Allen Lane; 434 pages; `999).
In his memoir, Gadgil writes of the importance of the Vetal
tekdi in his hometown Pune, which introduced him to the
wonders of the outdoors. He started walking the neighbour-
hood hills, as a four-year-old, with his father the economist
Dhananjaya Ramachandra Gadgil who was well-versed with
Salim Ali’s Book of Indian Birds. He could soon spot the larks and
pipits, bulbuls and babblers, quails and partridges. This early in-
troduction to the natural world—and with Ali as both real and
metaphoric guide—nudged Gadgil to pursue these interests
professionally. Over the years, he continued to walk up both
near and distant hills. And in his own neighbourhood, due to
the use of pesticide and unregulated construction, he now be-
moans the absence of a few of his favourites such as the hoopoe
and the Indian bush lark. He can no longer walk as effortlessly,
given age and health issues, but he still keeps an eye out for
changes, he says, “Now with the density of population, and the
construction of walls and fences and buildings, the landscape
has changed completely.”
A Walk up the Hill was released at a recent event in Pune,

56 25 SEPTEMBER 2023

Madhav Gadgil
where students sat on the stage, as every chair was taken, and
even the aisles doubled up as seats. The launch was special as it
marked the release of not only the English edition of the book,
but also the simultaneous release of the book in nine Indian
languages, including Marathi (which Gadgil wrote himself),
Malayalam, Bengali, Konkani etc. Eighty-two-year-old Gadgil
spoke to author and historian Ramachandra Guha about his
days at Harvard University, his three decades as a faculty
member of Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and
the two big loves of his life; his wife the meteorologist
Sulochana Gadgil, and the Western Ghats. Gadgil told Guha,
“Someone once told me, ‘If you’ve a friend in nature, you’ll
never be lonely.’” He has lived by that maxim.
The Padma Bhushan recipient’s autobiography differs from
many memoirs as his professional experiences ink it more
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
deeply than his personal ones. He says, “I write about my rela-
tionship with people, including my family members, but only
in this specific context of my interest in science and scientific
work and policy related issues.” While the book is structured
chronologically it also follows themes, such as ‘Sacred Groves
and Sacred Animals’, ‘Pests, Pesticides and Pollution’, ‘Herders
and Farmers’ etc. Gadgil says, “It conveys a perspective on what
is going on, which is fairly unusual because very few people
have the kind of relationship with people at the grassroots,
which I have and the actual field work at the ground level,
which I have done.” When Covid hit and finding time on his
hands, he decided to embark on the project. He adds with a
chuckle, “I have turned 82, so I thought it is better that I finish
it… because you never know.”
We meet at Gadgil’s home in a quiet tree-lined neighbour-
hood. He lives on the top floor of an apartment building—
surrounded by books and artefacts that seem to predate him—
which overlooks the Vetal hills. He is warm and welcoming,
even though he is nursing a slight cold and is clad in a sweater
despite the mild weather. He willingly obliges the requests of
the photographer, and in good humour tries to strike different
poses in varied locations.
The memoir was relatively easy to write as Gadgil has main-
tained a diary of important events in his life from 1971. This
allowed him to go back and forth into the past. He says that the
book arose from multiple reasons. For one, Guha (with whom
he has co-authored books such as This
Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India
and Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of
Nature in Contemporary India was instru-
mental in pushing him to do so. Gadgil
also realised that many of the issues that
he has spent decades working on—such
as the unequal costs of development and
climate change—are today’s hot topics.
He adds, “Now there is a lot more aware-
ness about the kind of issues I have been
thinking about, I have been writing about
at policy level.”
Gadgil was the chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology
Expert Panel (WGEEP), which submitted its report to the
Government of India in 2011. The WGEEP designated the
entire Western Ghats as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA)
and assigned three levels of Ecological Sensitivity to different
regions of it. It cautioned against the construction of dams and
mining, and emphasised the coastal tracts are “under severe en-
vironmental and social stress”. The report also underscored the
importance of citizen and gram sabha participation in the pro-
tection of the environment. With the 2018 Kerala floods, which
left nearly 500 dead, the recent landslides in Maharashtra, and
other large-scale natural disasters, the WGEEP—also known as
the Gadgil Commission—has come once again to the fore.
The WGEEP was criticised for being out of touch with
ground truths, but the recent extreme events have proved that
www.openthemagazine.com 57
 BOOKS
climate change is very much a reality of today. It is against this
backdrop that A Walk up the Hill becomes an important record
of India’s ecological conditions and changes. Gadgil’s life and
work have revolved around three pillars—nature, ecology and
society. And as a “scholar, field researcher, teacher, institution-
builder, policy influencer, activist, author” (as described by
Jairam Ramesh) the central thesis that emerges from the book
is that “we have been implementing a system of passing on the
benefits of development to those already well off and costs of
development to the weak and poor.”
Gadgil’s readings and interests are vast, and he drops the
names of British geneticist JBS Haldane and climate activist
Greta Thunberg with equal familiarity. I ask if over 60 years of
study he has found a suitable answer to the environment versus
development riddle. He says, “Because the costs of development
can be imposed with immunity and impunity on the weaker
sections of the society, this is happening. If there is a more
equitable apportionment of these costs, then so-called develop-
ment will not be at the cost of the people, its cost will be more
equitably distributed. You will then see a very different path.”
T HE BOOK IS ALSO an interesting memoir in itself.
Gadgil whose “favourite pastime is writing popular ar-
ticles for the lay public” recounts the past with a light touch and
an accessible tone. He details his days of athleticism at
Fergusson College, and how he chose his wife—Sulochana a
“habitual backbencher” in his chemistry class. After attendance
had been marked, she would jump out of the large French win-
dows to go play table tennis with her friends. Despite her truancy,
she nearly topped all the exams. Convinced of her aptitude and
spirit, Gadgil asked his mother to reach out to her family.
Gadgil also writes in rich detail about the many expedi-
tions he embarked on, from the hills of Manipur to the valleys
in Kerala. On an expedition to the Upper Nilgiris plateau in
1981, he had to spend a night on top of a tree to escape a herd
of wild elephants. Realising the importance of this skill, he
started asking prospective field assistants to come perch
beside him on an imposing gulmohar tree in the IISc com-
pound. He writes in detail of the numerous people he’s met in
his career; from birdwatching with Salim Ali to
visiting Himalayan villages with the environmentalist
Chandiprasad Bhatt to meeting villagers in Goa, to the
Kondh tribals protesting the Niyamgiri mining project.
Though his parents had given up markers of caste, before he
started travelling he hadn’t tried varied cuisines. He recounts
enjoying the taste of different foods from raw crab to plant-
sucking bugs to meat soups. He writes, “I am a field ecologist
and field anthropologist rolled into one, and a field anthropolo-
gist must eat and drink whatever the people he is working with
are eating and drinking for them to fully accept him. So, my
willingness to taste and relish all manner of food has been an
asset in my pursuit of field work to this day.”
As someone fond of literature and poetry, Gadgil also has a
58
Editions of A Walk Up the Hill in various Indian languages
“ The book conveys a perspective on what is
going on, which is fairly unusual
because very few people have the kind of
relationship with people at the grassroots,
which I have and the actual field work at the
ground level, which I have done ”
MADHAV GADGIL author
way with languages. He is equally fluent in English and Marathi,
and as Guha mentioned at the launch event, he can even be
claimed by Karnataka, given his familiarity with Kannada.
Gadgil found speaking Kannada to be particularly useful. As a
member of the Karnataka Planning Board, he often had to attend
meetings chaired by the chief minister and other senior min-
isters. Most of the experts would speak in English, even if their
mother tongue was Kannada. He says, “Whatever I wanted to say,
it may be technical, but you can always put it in simple language.
So I spoke in Kannada and some of the ministers actually became
very fond of me because of that. So it had even a political advan-
tage, even though I was not looking for political advantage.”
While at Harvard University, he also learned Spanish and Ger-
man. Given his multilingualism, he says he still largely thinks in
Marathi but relies on English for scientific terms and concepts.
Gagdil has the unique distinction of having five ‘new’ spe-
cies named after him. He lists them out, with a hint of merri-
ment, there is a tarantula spider, which he first identified at the
Bandipur Tiger Reserve. A frog expert who joined him on an
expedition—but then turned back as he couldn’t keep up—to
the Silent Valley named a frog after him. A caecilian (legless
amphibian) has been named after him in the Western Ghats.
As has a species of bamboo and a forest tree. I ask which would
he like to be the sixth? He chuckles, “Well, they are not left to
be discovered. But in Arunachal and so on, there are certainly
new species, including even monkeys and birds. That would be
nice. Though I don’t think it is likely.”
For now he will continue to watch the hills from his home. 
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
 BOOKS
Tasting Time
Understanding India through its food and drink
By Mohit Satyanand
ENGALURU-BASED
B
Scandinavian-origin novelist,
Zac O’ Yeah introduces
Digesting India as a “panegyric to Indian
hospitality, to eating and travelling and
to enjoying food on the road...”
Call it The Rough Guide to Indian
Food, from railway stations through
Iranian cafes and golgappa carts, to the
downmarket bars of Thimphu, “the
most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” Zac
fell in love with the drinking dens, drank
a six-pack of Red Panda beer, apparently
the minimum required to get used
to its yeasty taste, read Bhutanese
newspapers, and “acted Buddhistic.”
Just how rough the guide gets, you
can anticipate from the travel rules he
frames: 1) Carry Imodium (lots of)
2) Learn to adjust, (use coconut groves
if necessary), and 3) Give the most
traumatic experiences names like ‘Fred’.
The scale for said traumatic
experiences is marked in t.t.b/h,
or trips to bathroom per hour.
The world record is apparently 37.
Clearly, the book does not cover the
same ground as restaurant reviews
in the weekend glossies. Food
delivery apps are swiftly dismissed—
“culinary malware—clickable
edibles and mass-manufactured
monotonous meal kits”.
Zac’s language is always playful.
Between the search for Malgudi, and
teatime in Calcutta’s New Market,
he describes the daily caffeine dose
on the International Space Station
as “recycled-urine-mixed coffee
with dehydrated cream.” Gross, but
factual, even if you dismiss his claim
that the provenance of the coffee was
the sole reason his Swedish friend
backed out of the space race.
In his many years in India, Zac has
also acquired endearing Indianisms,
Illustration by SAURABH SINGH
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
like “veg” and “nonveg”, or “eating
5-star”, usage you won’t find elsewhere
in the English-speaking world. So, when
you survey his dosa route through
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, or sniff over
his shoulder in Chandigarh, at a tandoori
chicken of “classic honest-to-goodness
simplicity”, you’re travelling with a
foreigner, albeit a nativised one, with a
sharp eye for the incongruous.
Though the book is described as
“sub-continental adventures with the
tummy”, it has a strong literary strand, to
be expected from a bibliophile and crime-
writer, in love, not just with dubious
Bhutanese dives, but also with Bengaluru.
His first chapter is a paean to the city he
has made home, featuring Ramachandra
Guha and Rajmohan Gandhi,
Winston Churchill and HRF Keating,
and Lisbeth Salander, who first appeared
in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. After
exploring the heritage of beer in India’s
DIGESTING INDIA
A TRAVEL WRITER’S
SUB-CONTINENTAL ADVENTURE
Zac O’Yeah
Speaking Tiger
394 Pages | 599
pub city, Zac takes you to a dance bar,
which he describes as a euphemism for
“striptease without removing garment”,
then back to his native Swedish for the
origin of the word ‘offal’, which triggers
an important culinary journey into the
‘sparepart’ dishes of Bengaluru, featuring
the hypnotising eyes of goats, and dishes
such as haleem, gurda, and kaleji.
Then, in another thread that runs
through the book, he explores the remains
of the Anglo-Indian culture. He visits the
Kolar Gold Fields, where the club was a
British island, a “make-believe place(s)
simulating home”, with mildewed books,
snooker tables, and “dusty heads of rotting
animals on walls.” The KGF club no longer
features the Eurasian cuisine of its heyday,
but Zac’s interests are wide-ranging, and
in Calcutta, he takes us to the Park Street
Cemetery, “a calming counterpoint
to the glitzy tap-dancing highlife of
Park Street”, and reminds us that
William Thackeray was born in Free
School Street; then, talking to an
Anglo-Indian aunty, reminds us that
both Engelbert Humperdinck and
Cliff Richard were born in India.
Zac’s gustatory indulgences
are as wide-ranging as the Indian
topography, and he salivates
over everything from mahi-mahi
and shrimp in Puducherry
to shamudatsi in Bhutan. My
indulgences are severely restricted
by being vegetarian, but we concur
on one fact—dosas are divine.
And, even though my tolerance
for spicy food is vanishing, I share
his thoughts on the bland, here
expressed through Verrier Elwin’s
words on ashram food: “Oh food
inedible, we eat thee, / Oh drink
incredible, we greet thee, / Meal
indigestible, we bless thee.” Q
www.openthemagazine.com 59
 CRIME CANON Shylashri Shankar
Paths of the Psychopath
Three thrillers reveal the emotional cost of coping with killers
SYCHOPATHS IN
P crime fiction are an
easy sell. The three
books discussed here have
different types of psycho-
paths. We start with
Patricia Wentworth who
wrote in the early to mid-20th
century, around the same
time as Agatha Christie. Hers
is a domestic triangle where
there is no overt violence, and
the psychopath among the characters is hard to pin down; the
focus being on the psychological effect on the victim. But in the
Kyle Perry and Karin Smirnoff stories written in the present era,
the brutality and violence of their psychopaths are on the page as
are the physical and emotional effects on the victims.
DANGER POINT by Patricia Wentworth
(Hodder; 320 pages; `699)
Beautiful society heiress Lisle Jerningham overhears a conver-
sation between two guests at a country-house party. One says
that her husband will murder her just as he did his first wife.
Lisle flees to the station and jumps into a first-class compart-
ment where she meets Miss Silver, a retired governess and now
a private investigator. But Lisle, who has recently written her
will, doesn’t listen to Miss Silver’s advice to tell everyone that
she has changed it again. When Lisle experi-
ences a near drowning and other accidents,
it is clear that someone is out to kill her. Is
it the husband, who stands to inherit her
fortune and who needs it to resuscitate his
stately home, or is it the husband’s cousin,
a raffish man with a hush hush job? As the
needle of suspicion swings between the two,
and a third cousin (a woman who is in love
with Lisle’s husband), the emotions shoot up to danger point.
Even worse, Lisle discovers that the trio were with the first wife
when she “slipped” on a mountain track and fell to her death.
Then a young woman from the local village is found dead at the
bottom of a cliff, and she is wearing the heiress’s jacket. A case of
mistaken identity? Miss Silver certainly thinks so.
Wentworth, who was born in Mussoorie in the late 19th
century, is the Golden Age Queen of high anxiety heroines
mired in romantic triangles. In this high concept psychologi-
cal thriller she creates two triangles: two cousins and the
60
heiress; the heiress, a cousin and the husband.
Like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Miss Silver is a gentle-
woman, but unlike the twittery Miss Marple, she has a scho-
lastic background and is rational and logical in her approach.
Wentworth is brilliant at conjuring the setting and the
emotional intensity, which comes from the heroine’s tangled
love life. Danger Point keeps us at the edge of our seats, riveted
by the heroine’s plight and desperate to find out whodunnit
and whether they will murder again.
THE DEEP by Kyle Perry (Penguin; 464 pages; $22.99)
Forrest Dempsey washes up ashore amidst the largest sea-cliffs
in the Tasmanian coast. The 13-year-old is alive, after having
been lost at sea seven years ago with his father and mother, and
on his back is a badly etched tattoo, “I am Forest Dempsey”.
Set in Shacktown, a township that runs on abalone fishing
and drug smuggling controlled by the
coldblooded matriarch Ivy Dempsey, a
female Godfather, The Deep is about the
inner rivalries and betrayals of the Dempsey
family. Many generations of Dempseys have
used the fishing industry and a deadly Black
Wind as cover, a wind that twists and pulls
at the waves like a cyclone. Only two men
have managed to break free of the family
trade, but have paid a high emotional price. Mackerel Dempsey
out of jail on bail who is trying his best to change his life and
keep out of trouble; and his cousin Ahab who was a father-
figure to Mackerel and his two brothers including Forrest’s psy-
chopath of a father in their childhood. As the police, psychia-
trists and the family ask Forrest questions about the past seven
years, something doesn’t seem right. Is he Forrest Dempster? Or
is he the pawn of a mysterious pirate-drug lord Blackbeard, who
is rumoured to be moving in on Shacktown.
When Forrest’s uncle and current head of the Dempsey
empire goes missing, and his body is found floating in a
whirlpool under the sea-cliffs, old family secrets are exposed,
and danger threatens Forrest and the Dempseys. Mackerel and
Ahab have to make a stand for what they believe is right, even
if it means sacrificing everything. With highly complex back-
stories to resolve, the end feels a bit rushed, but Perry manages
to tie the strands together quite neatly, and in a satisfying way.
Kyle Perry’s books are a grittier version of fellow Australian
Jane Harper’s. Their sublime prose transports us emotionally to
close-knit families and communities grappling with shame-
ful secrets in the rugged Australian landscape. It is no wonder
25 SEPTEMBER 2023

Illustration by SAURABH SINGH
that Perry is a rising superstar of Australian crime fiction. The
lyrical prose highlights the taut emotional entanglements of
the Dempseys, and the wild sea including a terrific underwater
chase provide a fitting setting to the twists of the story.
THE GIRL IN THE EAGLE’S TALONS
by Karin Smirnoff (Knopf; 368 pages; `2,146)
Stieg Larsson had envisaged ten books in the Millennium
series, but didn’t live to write them. His estate hired David
Lagercrantz to write books four, five and six. And now, Swedish
journalist and crime fiction writer Karin Smirnoff has writ-
ten book seven. Translated by Sarah Death, the story is set in
the wilderness of northern Sweden. The theme is the damage
caused by ostensibly green companies. With the criminal un-
derworld leading the charge for the untapped natural resources
of Sweden’s far north, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist
find themselves heading north to the small town of Gasskas,
quite separately, and for seemingly different purposes. Salander
has been named guardian of her niece Svala after her mother,
Marta disappears, while Blomkvist is there to attend his
daughter’s marriage with the local councillor
(Henry Salo). When Lisbeth realises that 13-year-old
Svala is being watched and knows far too much
about the criminal underworld, Marta’s disappear-
ance assumes ominous overtones. Blomkvist, on the
other hand, who is at a loose end since his beloved
Millennium magazine has become defunct, finds his
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
KYLE PERRY’S SUBLIME
PROSE TRANSPORTS US
EMOTIONALLY TO CLOSE-
KNIT FAMILIES AND
COMMUNITIES GRAPPLING
WITH SHAMEFUL SECRETS
IN THE RUGGED AUSTRALIAN
LANDSCAPE. THE LYRICAL
PROSE HIGHLIGHTS
THE TAUT EMOTIONAL
ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE
DEMPSEYS, AND THE WILD
SEA INCLUDING A TERRIFIC
UNDERWATER CHASE
PROVIDE A FITTING SETTING
TO THE TWISTS OF THE STORY
son-in-law-to-be’s erratic behaviour and unsavoury associates
suspicious. Salo and his family are threatened by a mysterious
Swede Marcus Branco, the owner of a global company that
wants sole ownership of a wind farm project. With his daughter
and grandson’s safety on the line, a worried Blomkvist begins
investigating. Meanwhile, Lisbeth and Svala search for Marta,
who is not the first woman to have disappeared from the town.
As the violence rises, once again Blomkvist and Lisbeth find
themselves on the same side battling evil villains.
The heroine of this book is Svala, a mini Lisbeth Salander,
a whiz kid, a safebreaker and a go-getter, with the same toler-
ance for pain as Lisbeth. The level of violence and brutality is
high, which is par for the course for a Scandi noir.
Blomkvist fades into the background for much of the book,
and Lisbeth is not that present either on the pages, though both
are necessary ingredients in the series. Smirnoff admitted in an
interview that she was less interested in writing about Blom-
kvist. “He’s a difficult person and I don’t like him that much,”
she said. “I find him quite boring. But at the same time, he’s a
good guy who deserves more cred than being a person
who chases women and lives for his articles.”
Lisbeth’s role has been usurped by her niece, the
most interesting character in the book. The focus is on
Svala’s ingenuity in tackling the baddies, a mini Lisbeth
in action, and when the aunt joins in, mayhem ensues
for the diabolical villains. It might be time, though, to
retire Blomkvist and Lisbeth, and stick with Svala. 
www.openthemagazine.com 61
 PLAYTIME WITH BORIA MAJUMDAR

C’mon, It’s Only a Game

Indian football will be better off when fans learn to take defeats in their stride

Incident 1 four tickets and the number of people who had asked me
It was an unimportant was no less than 50. Every ticket was gold and all roads
match between East were jampacked with supporters of both teams all buoyant
Bengal and a local team and committed. The East Bengal victory in the group stage
in the late 1970s. The of the competition after a gap of 1,657 days had helped
match was just about to set things up and it meant that Mohun Bagan no longer
start. A small crowd was had that aura. They were beatable and it was evident from
chatting near the main the number of East Bengal supporters in the ground.
entrance of the ground.
Suddenly a middle-aged
man with messy hair,
red eyes and a worn-out
look appeared at the gate. While entering the ground, he
anxiously asked the gatekeeper whether the match had
begun. The gateman replied in the negative. A few other
members who knew the man came to him and asked why
he was so late in arriving on that day. The man hesitantly
replied: “My younger son passed away in the morning. I
am coming straight from the crematorium.”

Incident 2
In a League match in the late 1970s, Mohun Bagan won
by a big margin. After the match, the jubilant crowd
rushed towards Esplanade to board buses and trams on the
way home. A few bare-bodied young lads were standing on
the rod of the tram’s wheel, hanging on to the windows
with one hand. They were waving their shirts like
Mohun Bagan flags. As the tram suddenly stopped at a
road signal, one of the lads got thrown onto the street. His
feet appeared to be run over by the wheels of the tram.
However, as the tram started to move, the lad ran and
jumped onto the rod to catch the tram. After the tram left
the place, a severed toe was found amidst a few drops of
blood while a thin red line stretched along the tramline.
The pain got lost in the euphoria of victory.
Neither of these two incidents are aberrations. Anyone
who was present at the Vivekananda Yuva Bharati
Krirangan on September 3 would agree. The build-up
had started from the morning. Fans coming to the city
in numbers wearing their club colours and all set for the
big game was the norm. It was derby day and all else was
secondary. In fact, it was around 2PM that I was at the FOR TOO LONG, MATCHES LIKE MOHUN BAGAN
ITC Sonar, less than a mile from the stadium, meeting a
few friends ahead of the mega Durand Cup final. A number FOOTBALL BUT EACH TIME THE NATIONAL TEAM
of colleagues had asked for tickets and the honest truth is SIDE, WE HAVE BEEN CAUGHT WANTING. NOW
I did not have any left to give! I had somehow managed AND WE NEED TO USE THE DERBY TO STRENGT

62
 The stadium was exactly divided halfway down the middle
and for the 35,000 Mohun Bagan fans, there were an equal
number of East Bengal fans in the stands. Each time the
East Bengal players managed to mount an attack, the fans
found voice. And even after Mohun Bagan had scored the
all important winning goal, the EB fans did not desert
the team. They stayed on till the end and kept cheering.
It was only after the referee had started looking at his
watch 7 minutes into lost time did the East Bengal fans
start to leave the stadium. As one side of the stadium
was fast turning empty, the other side witnessed wild
celebrations from the Mohun Bagan fans soon after the
final whistle was blown.
Team owner Sanjiv Goenka was all ecstatic and did not
hide his jubilation. “It is always good to win a trophy.
And when you do so beating East Bengal, it is a very
The Durand Cup
final between
Mohun Bagan
and East Bengal
in Kolkata,
September 3, 2023
VS EAST BENGAL HAVE DOMINATED INDIAN
HAS PLAYED A BETTER AND HIGHER RANKED
THINGS HAVE FINALLY STARTED TO CHANGE
HEN INDIAN FOOTBALL
special feeling. However, we can’t rest on our laurels.
The real deal is the AFC cup and we need to prepare for it.
We also have the ISL starting soon and we need to get back
to training immediately,” said Goenka.
I NDIAN FOOTBALL’S PREMIER club rivalry between
Mohun Bagan and East Bengal mirrors the oppositional
identities, social differences and emotional commonalities
inherent in Indian society and culture. While the roots
of the origin and consolidation of this football rivalry lie
in social and sub-regional differences of contemporary
Indian society, its playing out in the last 25 years can only
be meaningfully explained in terms of club loyalty, fan
culture and commercial transformation. This was yet one
more time borne out on Sunday, September 3. While the
East Bengal fans all said the team had played well and they
are now confident of competing with Mohun Bagan in the
ISL, the Mohun Bagan fans considered it the perfect revenge
within a week of having lost to East Bengal. The players,
too, were consumed by fan passion. Soon after he scored
the deciding goal, Dimitri Petratos ran towards the Mohun
Bagan stands and was not willing to resume play for at least
5 minutes. His gesture was pushing the fans more and it is
no surprise that both sets of fans came hard at each other
once the match was over. There were unconfirmed reports
of fan violence and it is time the law enforcement agencies
clamp down on such behaviour.
Some East Bengal supporters were attacked and abused at
the end of the contest and there are rumours that a couple of
them were seriously injured. While there is no confirmation
on this at the time of writing except some videos floating
on social media, suffice to say that clashes did take place
and flare-ups did happen. This is where things get ugly.
As a Mohun Bagan fan myself, I think such incidents are
deplorable. A true fan will never attack another fan and by
doing so the fans are bringing disrepute to their own club.
It is time the fans find grace in both winning and losing for
only then can Indian football progress.
The larger question, however, isn’t about the derby
itself. While the fan support and all else is great, how can
the derby help the growth of Indian football? Is there any
way to harness the fan support for the betterment of Indian
football, going forward? If local club football continues to
take precedence, will the clubs release players for the national
team? Will the AIFF be able to push through a compromise
formula that will ensure national interest is taken care of?
For too long, matches like Mohun Bagan vs East Bengal have
dominated Indian football but each time the national team
has played a better and higher ranked side, we have been
caught wanting. Now things have finally started to change
and we need to use the derby to strengthen Indian football.
Such a thing can only happen if synergies are established and
that’s what will make this famed rivalry a lot more valuable.
www.openthemagazine.com 63
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 S T R E A M I N G
Follow the Money
Kaala
Cast: Avinash Tiwary, Jitin Gulati,
Taher Shabbir, Rohan Vinod Mehra
Showrunner: Bejoy Nambiar
Hindi | Disney+Hotstar
Avinash Tiwary
in Kaala
W hat does a man do
when his honesty
and hard work get him
nothing but humiliation and Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Kritika Kamra, Avinash Tiwary
immiserisation? What does
his son do when he sees
his father’s helplessness in
the face of an increasingly
cruel world? The story of
Dawood Ibrahim has been
often told in Hindi cinema,
yielding a sub-genre by
itself. But nowhere has it
been played as a classic
conflict of father and
son, as the former falls
increasingly down a rabbit
hole of defeat and the latter
rises slowly making the
corrupt system work
Rarely does an actor have two major releases in the same
for him. Based on week and even rarer is for him to excel in both very different roles.
S Hussain Zaidi’s relentless
chronicling of Mumbai’s
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
S M A R T
A
CANNY CHIEF MINISTER interested
in big numbers. A soldier declared a deserter
and traitor. His son, an Intelligence Bureau
officer, investigating a money laundering case.
A waste recycling start-up czar accused of reverse hawala
transactions. Bejoy Nambiar weaves an intricate web,
which goes back and forth in time, from 1988 to 2018,
focusing on a magnificent-looking Kolkata and more of
the East. At the heart of it though it is a story of a father
and son, and how the latter tries to redeem his legacy,
stained by conspiracy and crime. Short and tightly edited
episodes keep the suspense alive even as everyone seems
to be ready to betray everyone else but it’s a relief to not
have everything attributed to the foreign hand. There
are some financial terrorists who are as home grown as
they are dangerous, and as the plethora of investigating
agencies shows, from the IB to the CBI to the Economic
Offences Wing, not everyone on the ground marches in
lockstep to a patriotic drumbeat. New or little seen faces,
some cast from among Nambiar’s friends, add to the
freshness of the show.
Why Watch it?
Shows about financial fraud are popular for a reason. If done
well, they have the potential to hold you in their thrall for a more
sustained period. And yes, star-making performances from
Avinash Tiwary and Jitin Gulati
Blood on the Streets
Bambai Meri Jaan
underworld, Kay Kay
Menon is excellent in the
series as the stoic and
proud Ismail who watches
Showrunner: Shujaat Saudagar Mumbai change before
English | Prime Video his eyes taken over Haji’s
ingenuity, Anna’s network
and Pathan’s terror, while
Avinash Tiwary plays
his forever brash and
rebellious son, Dara, like
the poet and emperor
says Haji. Shot beautifully,
mostly at night, Mumbai
looks partly like an alluring
lover and partly like a jaded
courtesan whose every
move is as practised as it
is weary. There is a wide
Why Watch it? cast of characters but the
relationship between Dara
Avinash Tiwary take a bow and Ismail is the heart of
the drama.
www.openthemagazine.com 65
 STARGAZER
R
KAVEREE BAMZAII
LAKSHYA
À +DYH,QƬXHQFH:LOO$FW
It is no accident that social media
influencers, such as BeerBiceps aka
Ranveer Allahbadia, are interviewing
senior ministers in the government or
Curly Tales aka Kamiya Jani is eating
ice cream with Rahul Gandhi. Hindi
cinema has long known that social
media influencers can paper over
any cracks in the narrative with their
loyal followers. Some casting choices
recently have been proof of this.
There was Kusha Kapila in the second
season of the Netflix series Masaba
Masaba, Prajakta Koli in Jugjugg Jeeyo,
comedian Anubhav Bassi in Tu Jhoothi
Main Makkar. But Karan Boolani’s
forthcoming film, Thank You for
Coming, about a woman’s hunt
for the perfect orgasm, is almost
cut out of influencer cloth. It has
Bhumi Pednekar in the lead, and
Kapila, Dolly Singh (already seen
in Double XL), Shibani Bedi and
Shehnaz Gill, as her friends. The
movie apparently gets street cred
and the influencers get credit in their
bank. While it does wonders for the
democratisation of stardom, allowing
diverse narratives to unfold, it strips
the influencers of their indie vibe.
Most influencers amass followers
because audiences like their unique
way of presenting themselves.
While their followers are no doubt
delighted at their success, as they
wear borrowed plumes and pout
professionally for the paparazzi, they
lose their authenticity, becoming
just another cog in the industrial
machine. But then a new wave of
influencers arrives, offering the
industry more opportunities to co-
66
R MADHAVAN
opt them. India has become a nation
of YouTube creators, with one survey
putting the number at 8 crore, but
only 1.5 lakh professionals are able
to monetise their content, according
to a 2022 report by Kalaari Capital.
Even so-called nepo babies can’t
resist the lure of building their social
media following, often landing
endorsements before any movie
release or substantial achievement.
À 6WHSSLQJLQWR%LJ6KRHV
Film and Television Institute of India
(FTII) chairmen have been a stellar
lot, from Shyam Benegal to Saeed
Akhtar Mirza. For actor R Madhavan,
it is a responsibility that he bears
with pride, fully aware it comes with
high expectations. The actor-director
is the new president and chairman
of the governing council, replacing
filmmaker Shekhar Kapur. He is also
in a new phase of his career, as an actor
of the witty Netflix series Decoupled as
well as director of the movie Rocketry:
The Nambi Effect. “I feel I’ve come into
my own at this age in terms of acting
and have so much more to give,” he
says. “The key will be to balance my
time,” he says. FTII remains an iconic
institution, training the best to be the
best. It has suffered in recent times
with misguided attempts to “tame” its
students by appointing men of minor
talent, such as Gajendra Chauhan
(2015-2017), or men who were far
too occupied with their careers, such
as Anupam Kher (2017-2018). The
last two chairmen had rather quiet,
uneventful terms, CID producer
BP Singh (2018-2020) and Kapur
KUSHA KAPILA
(2020-2023). Chauhan’s appointment
elicited a long student strike and
also a tough crackdown, captured
most effectively in Payal Kapadia’s
documentary, A Night of Knowing
Nothing. With many of the leading
lights of the film industry from
FTII—from Rajkummar Rao to
Vijay Varma—Madhavan’s tenure
will be worth watching.
À 6FHQHDQG+HDUG
Sometimes things have a way
of working themselves out.
Dostana 2, which was stalled
when Kartik Aaryan walked out of the
film, would have launched another
newcomer to the film industry,
Lakshya, formerly known
as Laksh Lalwani. The actor, who
was in several TV shows between
2015 and 2018, finally had his
moment in the sun with the premiere
of Kill at the Toronto International
Film Festival (TIFF). Produced by
Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions
and Guneet Monga’s Sikhya
Entertainment, the film premiered
at the Midnight Madness programme
at TIFF and is being called the most
violent movie to come out of India.
It’s got good reviews at TIFF and
joyously for Lakshya, he is being
celebrated as a bright young talent.
With a starring role in Netflix’s
fiction series, Stardom, on the film
industry, written and directed by
Aryan Khan, Shah Rukh Khan’s
son, expect to see much more of
this young man. All good things
come to those who wait and
work hard.
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
Young leaders who stood out
for their impact on business
FRIDAY, 6 TH OCTOBER 2023
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