Violence Sparked by Demand for ST Status for Meiteis Kills 13; Ahead of G20 Summit, States Told to Remove Street Children from Streets

India among worst on crony capitalism index, Indo-Pak sparring on terror, Rahman promotes sweet Kerala story and Modi a toxic one, mystery Mumbai firm shipping Russian oil, death of a cinema hall

May 5, 2023

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Tanweer Alam and Pratik Kanjilal | With inputs from Kalrav Joshi | Editor: Vinay Pandey

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Snapshot of the day

May 5, 2023

Vinay Pandey

At least 13 lives have been lost in two days of mob violence which resulted from the massive opposition by Manipur’s tribal communities to the demand for Scheduled Tribe status by the state’s majority community, the Meiteis. As the situation worsened, the state’s home department on Thursday issued “shoot at sight” orders “in extreme cases”. Chief Minister N Biren Singh of the BJP said all steps were being taken to control the situation. However, on the ground things still appeared quite grim at the time of publication.

In Jammu and Kashmir, five Indian soldiers were killed in a ‘counter-terrorist’ op that seems to have gone the terrorists’ way. Former R&AW chief AS Dulat had warned of this possibility in an interview to Karan Thapar last month.

Another pre-election survey puts the Congress ahead of the BJP in Karnataka. News 18 Kannada said the Congress was headed to a tally of 120-132 in the 224 member assembly. Prime Minister Modi has said these surveys are “propaganda” and urged voters to ignore them.

Ahead of their deliberations on Friday, the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation member-states had a relaxing dinner by the beach of Taj Exotica, one of Goa’s top five-star resorts on Thursday evening. It also became the backdrop for the first courteous – but unphotographed – handshake and exchange of pleasantries between Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. In the meeting on Friday, the two men sparred: Jaishankar said terrorism in all its forms, including cross-border terrorism, must be stopped while Bhutto said, “Let's not get caught up in weaponising terrorism for diplomatic point scoring."

China insisted on Thursday that the border situation is “stable”. Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang told his Indian counterpart Jaishankar that both countries should work to maintain “sustainable peace and tranquillity” in the border regions. This comes against the backdrop of the failure of the two countries to normalise relations amid the unresolved three-year-old military stand-off on the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.

In the 2023 edition of the Economist’s Crony Capitalism Index, India has been ranked among the world’s worst countries. The index measures the extent to which businesses and individuals with close ties to government officials are able to use their influence to gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace. India has ranked 10th worst in the index, with the magazine citing examples like the allocation of mining licences and the awarding of government contracts, which have often been marred by allegations of favouritism and corruption.

The ranking could be a blow to India’s efforts to attract foreign investment. Russia tops the list of countries where crony capitalism is most rampant.

Meanwhile, India and Russia have suspended negotiations to settle their trade in rupees. The move comes as a setback for India’s efforts to reduce its dependence on the US dollar and promote greater economic ties with Russia.

A senior official from the I&B ministry said during a panel discussion on Thursday that streaming services should refrain from publishing information “which is harmful, which is illegal, which is offensive, which brings a bad name to your country when you’re going abroad”. The IT Rules code of ethics binds creators on a “moral ground” to avoid illegal and offensive content, joint secretary Vikram Sahay said. On Wednesday, I&B secretary Apurva Chandra had alluded to “murmurs about the quality of the language” used on streaming programmes.

Irfan, a 17-year-old Muslim boy, has topped the UP Sanskrit Board’s Class XII exam with 83%. “We do not subscribe to this thinking that only Hindus should study Sanskrit and that only Muslims should study Urdu,” says his father, Salauddin.

The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights has asked states to map the hotspots of street children and rescue them, that is, return them to their parents or send them to children’s homes. A social activist called it an “ad hoc measure”, being adopted to hide the real condition of Indian children from G20 delegates who have been increasingly visiting the country in the run-up to the G20 summit, scheduled to be held in New Delhi in September.

The Central Vista Project, which is meant to showcase the Vishwaguru’s far-sightedness, does not meet international standards for accessibility for people with disabilities. According to a report by the Disability Rights India Foundation, while the complex has ramps and lifts, they may not be easily accessible or suitable for certain types of disabilities. The report also highlights a lack of features such as Braille signage and audio announcements, which would make the complex more accessible for those with vision or hearing impairments. Scroll looks at the infrastructure and procedures that have only superficially accommodated disability-friendly measures.

The Adani Group’s ports arm, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), has been forced to take a $120 million hit on its balance sheet as the company on Thursday agreed to sell its ambitious Myanmar Port project for barely $30 million to an overseas firm, Solar Energy Ltd, in the wake of sanctions imposed by the US on Myanmar Economic Corp Ltd (MEC), a company controlled by the Myanmar military. Meanwhile, Adani Enterprises, the Adani Group flagship, has decided to stick with its auditor Shah Dhandharia & Co days after the firm quit as the auditor of Adani Total Gas. US short-seller Hindenburg had raised questions on the size and capability of the “tiny firm’’.

Mysterious Mumbai firm shipping Russian oil

A mysterious Mumbai company registered as an exporter only on March 31 this year, has grown into a giant of international oil shipping in the last 18 months, the Financial Times reports. The company, Gatik Ship Management, has purchased more oil tankers than any other company since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. The newspaper says Gatik owned “just two chemical tankers in 2021” but by last month, it had 58 vessels, worth $1.6 billion. There is little by way of records on the company, which is yet to appear on India’s official corporate registry.

“One important clue is that Gatik shares an address in the dreary shopping mall with Mumbai-registered company Buena Vista Shipping, another little-known operation that two years ago reported a little over $100,000 worth of assets,” the report says, observing that who owns the mall or funded Gatik is mired in mystery. Gatik’s role, however, has benefited the Russian oil giant Rosneft, from whom it has transported more than half of the 83 million barrels of Russian crude and oil products it has brought to Indian ports.

When an apology to PM is enough to get you a visa

Jammu & Kashmir National Panthers Party founder Bhim Singh’s only son, Ankit Love, who is based in London, has been removed from the blacklist and issued an emergency visa to attend his mother’s funeral after he apologised to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for participating in an anti-government protest in London last year.

Love, 39, was given a three-month emergency visa on Thursday. A copy of the visa was posted by him on Facebook with the message “Thank you India for taking me off the blacklist so that I may go and attend my mother’s funeral”.

Rahman promotes a sweet Kerala story, Modi the toxic one

Academy award-winning composer AR Rahman has shared a popular tweet about a Hindu wedding held at a mosque, highlighting the communal harmony in Kerala amid a controversy over the film The Kerala Story, which purports to show that girls in Kerala are being forcibly converted and recruited by the Islamic State. Narendra Modi invoked the film at an election rally in Karnataka, accusing the Congress for opposing its release and thereby "kneeling" before terrorism to “save its vote bank”.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected last-minute efforts to halt the release of the film, saying: “Leave it to the market, if the film is good people will watch it, otherwise not.”

Kohli-Gambhir row: Who really pays the fine?

A recent incident involving Indian cricketers Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir has once again brought attention to the issue of on-field behaviour and fines imposed on players who cross the line. During a recent match, Kohli and Gambhir were involved in a heated exchange that resulted in fines for both. The question now is who pays the fine? According to the rules, fines are usually paid by the player who is found guilty of an offence. However, in some cases, the team may choose to pay the fine on behalf of the player.

Fans and experts are debating the role of fines in promoting good sportsmanship. Many have called for harsher penalties on players who engage in unsportsmanlike behaviour, while others have argued that fines are not enough and that more needs to be done to address the root causes of such behaviour.

The Long Cable

Death of a cinema: Eros is not demolished, but gone

Sidharth Bhatia

I saw my first ‘A certificate’ movie at Eros in Bombay. I was not an A, but a lucky confluence of a kindly uncle, a sudden spurt in inches and a distracted doorkeeper allowed me to get in. Blow Hot Blow Cold, a boldish film, had scenes of nudity and murder, and starred the famous Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, though the censors had probably lopped off most of the “hot” scenes. Still, word of mouth ensured it was a big draw. The posters must have helped, too.

After that, I saw many other films in the landmark cinema – Woodstock, where an Indian rock band played, too; Abba (which killed the rock scene), the band in which the four Swedish singers wore white spandex and sang their familiar songs. This time the audience joined in. Towering Inferno, the first of the disaster films, where the big screen made us feel we were in the skyscraper while the fire raged.

And then how can one forget The Exorcist in the 9pm-midnight show, after which no one in our group wanted to go home alone, and every one walked to the office and stayed up all night. There were many more over the years, in that elegant, Art Deco edifice facing Churchgate station.

And now, the cinema that houses many memories of mine, and those of countless others, is being demolished. There goes another beautiful structure, falling victim to rapacious builders. Is that so? Twitter said so, and the mandatory couple of hours of outrage has happened, so it must be true.

Well, yes and no.

Eros, like Metro and and Regal, was built on land reclaimed from the sea in the early 1900s, which created many new precincts in Bombay, including Marine Drive. Land was auctioned off to residential buildings and institutions and cinema houses. Regal came up first, near the Gateway of India, and the other two followed, all built in the “modern” style, very much in vogue around the world, especially in coastal cities. Eros, built in 1938, was the most handsome of them all, shaped like a ship, since it was on a corner, with a ziggurat on top, and facing strategically across Churchgate station, one of the two busy suburban train termini, the other being Victoria Terminus. For the tens of thousands exiting the station, it loomed large, a veritable symbol of Bombay and its modernity, of a new city taking shape just before independence.

Eros was built by Shivax Cambatta, a cosmopolitan, well-travelled Parsi, who was inspired by the statue of Eros he saw in Piccadilly, London. He decided to build a picture palace that would be the “pride of not only Bombay but also the of the entire East”, wrote the Bombay Chronicle.

“As much as this building was about exhibiting moving images in its interiors, its exterior also had a grand, almost cinematic quality. The streamlining on the building’s curved facade gives the impression of a magnificent ocean liner, a symbol of voyages and cosmopolitan travels in the modern age,” says an essay in Art Deco Mumbai, a website devoted to the architectural style that shaped 20th-century Bombay.

The interiors of the cinema itself had friezes, air conditioning and plush seats. And the patrons could also enjoy fine dining with an English band made up of ladies providing the musical accompaniment.

Churchgate, where Eros was located, was also the venue for a whole street of new restaurants – serving cuisine that ranged from Chinese, to Italian and the much loved “Conti” (a kind of faux Continental) – where city sophisticates went to dine and dance to the many jazz bands that played.

The south Bombay cinemas only showed Hollywood films and there was an informal arrangement – Eros showed Warner Bros films, Metro was for MGM and Regal had a tie-up with 20th Century Fox. Naturally, these cinemas were for the “gentry”, in the parlance of the film industry, the English=speaking “upper classes”.

Most of the Hindi films, which were far more numerous, were concentrated in the Grant Road stretch.

To counter this, Habib Hoosein, a cotton trader whose real passion was cinema and who owned theatres in Bombay and Poona, decided to build a 1,200-seater, grand picture palace which would be the “Show Palace of the Nation” and screen only Hindustani films and also commemorate India’s independence. Liberty was inaugurated in 1949, with the premiere of Mehboob Khan’s Andaz.

As Bombay spread towards the north with new suburbs coming up, more and more cinemas came up in the Art Deco style.

Pulling in large audiences for their films was every producer’s dream, but not all movies could manage it. Those that did advertised every milestone – 100 days, Silver Jubilee (25 weeks), Golden Jubilee (50 weeks) and finally, Platinum (75 weeks). Some went over and beyond – Mughal-e-Azam, Sangam, Pakeezah and Sholay.

Those were good times for single-screen theatres. But then things began changing. Multiplexes started springing up around the country. The government came up with a policy that favoured multiplexes – a tax holiday for the first three years, and then only 25% for the next two years. Soon, all over the state and also the country, multiplexes began proliferating while the number of single-screen cinemas dwindled.

The big cinemas, already reeling under a tax structure that barely gave them anything on the tickets sold, saw a new future for themselves. Many smaller cinemas shut shop and were bought out by new developers who had a simple plan – a shopping arcade below and small screens, seating up to 200 people, on top. One by one they went, picture palaces – which had given so much pleasure to millions of others, where people cried, laughed, danced and romanced in the cool darkness of a cavernous hall – being replaced by another venue to shop, eat and maybe see a film with a few score more in a small cinema. It was just not the same.

The bigger halls held out, especially in south Bombay, but in the early 2000s, Metro cinema was the first to succumb and was acquired by Adlabs, which opened many multiplexes. It soon became popular. Excelsior and Sterling transformed, too.

Now it is the turn of Eros. Since 2019, passersby have been seeing a closed cinema and after the lockdown, a green curtain covering the entire building, behind which work is going on. That was generally ignored till, a few weeks ago, a covering went around the famous Ziggurat and that seems to have touched an emotional chord.

What was going on? Was it finally shutting down, or is it being demolished? Will another of those chrome-and-glass skyscrapers come up?

Inquiries show that the cinema has been acquired from the Sidhwa family by another group. The lower level will be dominated by a famous high-street British clothings brand and a sporting goods store. On the upper level, there may be one cinema of 300 seats. None of this is confirmed, only reports and rumours.

Heritage rules mandate that the facade cannot be disturbed. So it will still look the same from the outside. But the inside has been changed – in fact, according to a source who managed to sneak in, completely gutted. “I saw bags of cement, and the movie hall, where the seats and everything else have been ripped off.” The murals may have gone, he says, since the walls were covered in cement, too. No one from the group or the original owners will comment.

A major part of Mumbai’s history is being ripped out and soon, we will have one more of the template retail, food and movie experiences. Government policies have done nothing to save these heritage structures. Coming generations won’t care because they won’t know.

Across Eros, the Metro is being constructed and a board says, “Mumbai is Upgrading.” For those who spent several pleasurable hours watching movies in the grand cinema that was Eros and now can see its shuttered doors, that remains a moot question.

Reportedly

Go First hastily filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this week and suspended operations for a few days. According to Go First, its problems aren’t the result of poor money management, but rather of engine problems. According to the company’s bankruptcy documents, it has never missed a debt repayment date. According to reports, the lessors of the 20 aircraft that Go First leased have also petitioned India’s aviation authority to deregister them, enabling their return. Although the airline has promised refunds to customers, its representatives are currently busy taking calls from upset travellers.

Prime Number: 21

In connection with a money laundering investigation reportedly involving Amira Pure Foods Private Limited and others, the Enforcement Directorate has searched 21 sites in Delhi and Gurugram. They have been charged with fraud, criminal misappropriation, criminal breach of trust, and cheating, which caused a consortium of banks led by the Canara Bank to lose over ₹1,201.85 crore.

Deep Dive

Ahead of King Charles III’s coronation, the Kohinoor – one of the most divisive and infamous stones in history – has once again come under the limelight, this time due to its absence from the ceremony. However, its relevance in modern-day politics is a testament to the enduring legacy of an era in South Asian history that was defined by exploitation, colonialism and the desire for domination. Kalrav Joshi dives deeper into the stone’s chequered history that continues to be a grim reminder of British colonialism in South Asia for New Lines.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

Narendra Modi’s popularity runs on the rails of eloquence and silence, writes Suhas Palshikar.
By resigning as NCP chief, Sharad Pawar has stolen a march over nephew Ajit Pawar, and consolidated support of his party workers, writes Jyoti Punwani.
An insightful piece by Samrat X explaining the current trouble in Manipur which has roots that sprawl across several state and national boundaries,
“It is disconcerting when a judge is impelled to say that he discerns in the tactics adopted by the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, an intent to avoid his bench,” says an editorial in the Hindu.
“When journalists are routinely arrested on national security grounds and media organisations are raided, the press is weakened in its ability to strengthen democracy by holding the government accountable,” the Telegraph says in an editorial.
Sonikka Loganathan explores whether CCTV cameras protect us or invade our privacy.
The proprietors of Go Air declaring insolvency is part of a familiar aviation story in India – of serious deficiencies in the sector, writes A Ranganathan.
The key to any effective opposition coalition rests on a shared set of goals rather than ideological affirmations, writes Anita Tagore.
To overcome the fear of Dalits voting for the BJP, the RJD-JD (U) alliance has gone looking for a new social coalition, Yadav-Kurmi-Muslim-Rajput, says Arvind Kumar.
The construction of LIGO-India is a leg-up for gravitational wave science and the universal progress of science that transcends borders, writes Sethuraman Panchanathan.
The difference between a podcast “interview” and a media interview – though the podcast is more demanding, it is also in some ways less stressful and uniquely rewarding, writes Sampath G.
In a public health catastrophe like Covid, socialist thinking saves lives – read an excerpt from KK Shailaja’s book My Life as a Comrade.

Listen up

Yashica Dutt – author, journalist and a leading voice of the anti-caste campaign – talks on the “Anurag Minus Verma” podcast about love, marriage and personal preferences in reference to the Netflix show Indian Matchmaking and how anti-blackness unites all non-black people globally.

Watch out

Watch this fascinating discussion between Salil Tripathi, Maya Tudor, Hanan Zaffar and Jemimah Steinfeld, on democracy in India being threatened by Modi, what could be done to protect the rights of minorities and how resilient is Indian democracy.

Over and out

The Somapura Mahavihara, located in Bangladesh, is South Asia’s greatest stupa and a Unesco World Heritage Site. It was built in the 8th century by the Pala dynasty and served as a centre of learning and Buddhism for centuries. Read its captivating story here.

Read about how a now-forgotten “Brahmin in the mofussil of Calcutta”, undefeated on his own pitch in the middle of the 1800s, went on to alter the royal game of chess in India.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.