Newsletters
💪@Sunrise: Is Rishi Sunak Up For It?
The election of Rishi Sunak as the Prime Minister of Great Britain has evoked excessive celebration in India. We are getting ahead of ourselves.
Context: The celebration is fair. After all, an Indian, with a Hindu identity, has risen high in the land of our colonisers. But...
It's premature to say he will have a free hand to change Britain politically in a substantial way, especially to India's advantage.
Sunak’s election is the result of a specific and unique set of circumstances that may not last or recur in the future.
He will be too beholden to certain sections inside the Conservative Party to make any substantial policy difference.
Britain in a mess. Political instability is rife. Plus:
Inflation is through the roof.
Widespread energy shortages are looming along with winter.
Britain is, along with the US and Europe, at the forefront of an unwinnable proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
A tough gig! Facing many obstacles to exercising the normal powers of a prime minister, what can Sunak do?
R Jagannathan says Sunak's brief is only to fix the British economy and take the blame for anything that goes wrong.
Venu Gopal Narayanan says Sunak can save Britain, but only if he makes peace with Russia. But that would accompany rupturing Britain’s special relationship with the US.
Bottom line: Time will tell... Swarajya will keep you posted.
From 1998 to 2002, it seems little has changed for Coimbatore.
Context: A car exploded near the Sangameswarar Temple in Coimbatore on 23 October.
The man in the car, Jameesha Mubeen, was killed in the blast.
Tamil Nadu police arrested five associates of Mubeen.
Some of those arrested were seen in CCTV footage helping Mubeen carry a suspicious object into the car.
An LPG cylinder in the car was found to be stuffed with iron pellets and sharp metal items.
Police say the cylinder may have been triggered earlier than planned as Mubeen wanted to avoid a nearby police check-post.
Parallels: This incident casts our mind back to the Coimbatore bomb blast of 1998.
The main accused, Abdul Nasser Madhani, was arrested by Tamil Nadu police.
When the UPA stepped in, the Communists from Kerala, Dravidianists from Tamil Nadu, and the Congress party joined across political boundary lines and raised their voices for the main accused.
When the verdict came, the main accused was cleared of all charges.
>> Had Mubeen succeeded in his nefarious plans to kill people on the eve of Deepavali in Coimbatore, one can be almost sure that the culprits would have been arrested but also acquitted, Aravindan Neelakandan writes.
A key difference. While the centre has been tough on terror, the same can't be said about all the states. Thus, terrorists are still exploiting the cracks in the armour.
Let's meet the seven people who will lead China and the Communist Party.
Context: In the Twentieth Party Congress, Xi Jinping continued on as president for a third term.
Xi promoted people who are personally loyal to him and share his worldview.
Most of the newcomers can be seen as technocrats.
Who are these men? Here's a quick round-up of China's leadership:
1. Xi Jinping, the helmsman
2. Li Qiang, the Shanghai chief
3. Zhao Leji, the discipline chief
4. Wang Huning, the political theorist
5. Cai Qi, Beijing party leader
6. Ding Xuexiang, a confidant of Xi
7. Li Xi, head of Guangdong, China's industrial powerhouse
MTR's ever-popular thali is celebrating 25 years of delighting people’s taste buds.
Harishchandra Maiya brought in the thali concept at MTR.
Offer everything to everyone, make it economical, and bring in equality — this was the premise with which the everyday thali took birth in 1997, with 30 items for Rs 50.
The thali was initially served in silver plates with a silver spoon and a small silver tumbler for fresh grape juice.
Bengaluru's Mavalli Tiffin Room is a culinary institution.
It boasts of a kitchen that bustles from 3 am onwards every day.
Brisk preparations underway with half-a-dozen head cooks and a host of assistants and helpers.
Fathom this, for the appeal of MTR.
The restaurant has 2,500 walk-ins during the weekends.
Nearly 1,500 drop by only for a cuppa of their heady mix.
The tiffin variety is a hot sell during public holidays, serving 1,000 masala dosas, 800 plates of rava idli and sagu, 800 plates of poori with chutney and sagu.
The restaurant draws crowds for rava idli, kesaribhath, kharabhath, bisibele bhath, benne dosa, masala dosa, and sweets like chandrahara, Mysore pak, dumroot, haalbaayi (coconut, rice, and jaggery), Badami haalu, and grape juice.
Salman Rushdie has lost vision in one eye and the use of one hand.
Quote. “He [Rushdie] had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso." — Andrew Wylie, Rushdie's agent, to Spanish newspaper El Pais
Context: The author was attacked by fanatics for alleged blasphemy of Islam.
Rushdie, now 75, is a celebrated author and winner of several of the world’s top literary awards.
He was stabbed on 12 August at a public event in New York’s Chautauqua Institution around 10.45 am (New York time).
He was set to give a talk on artistic freedom.
The motive of the attack, as suspected, was revealed to be a 34-year-old controversy associated with the author.
Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, was declared “blasphemous” by the Muslim world.
The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said the book was an insult to Islam and its founder, Mohammed, and issued a fatwa against Rushdie, calling for his death.
Rushdie remained in hiding for nine years under British protection.
This is bad. As per a Vanity Fair report from 2014, more than 60 people have died in the controversy related to Rushdie.
The Moon took a solid bite off the Sun yesterday.
Context: The Moon induced a partial eclipse of the Sun in some parts of the world, including India.
The celestial phenomenon was visible in India from 4.29 pm until around the sunset.
In a partial solar eclipse, the Moon covers only a part of the Sun, with our star peeking out from behind the Moon (as seen by us).
How does the Moon cover the Sun?! While the Sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon, it is also 400 times further away from Earth.
Missed the eclipse? Several Indian institutions streamed the eclipse — IIA, Bengaluru; ARIES, Nainital; and IUCAA, Pune; among others.
Users complained about not being able to send or receive text and video messages on WhatsApp yesterday.
The service was out for two hours before it was restored.
Meta, which owns the popular messaging app, said it fixed the outage, but did not explain the cause of the glitch.
WhatsApp is among the most popular messaging services in the world.
Meta, previously known as Facebook, bought WhatsApp in 2014.
Introducing ElectionsHQ + 50 Ground Reports Project
The 2024 elections might seem easy to guess, but there are some important questions that shouldn't be missed.
Do freebies still sway voters? Do people prioritise infrastructure when voting? How will Punjab vote?
The answers to these questions provide great insights into where we, as a country, are headed in the years to come.
Swarajya is starting a project with an aim to do 50 solid ground stories and a smart commentary service on WhatsApp, a one-of-a-kind. We'd love your support during this election season.
Click below to contribute.
Latest
