India Today

CHAIRMAN AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Aroon Purie VICE CHAIRPERSON: Kalli Purie GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Raj Chengappa GROUP CREATIVE EDITOR: Nilanjan Das GROUP PHOTO EDITOR: Bandeep Singh MANAGING EDITORS: Kai Jabir Friese, Rajesh Jha EXECUTIVE EDITORS: S.

If 2020 was the year that changed everything, 2021 begins with many questions about what lies ahead. We are trapped between a pandemic that is still raging in many parts of the world and the promise of a post-pandemic world with the launch of several

16 % Vote share in local body polls in 2017, lowest since 1960 112 No. of municipal seats (2017); Total seats: 409 277 No. of seats in zila parishads (2016); Total seats: 1,514 ■

Maharashtra social justice minister Dhananjay Munde is the man to watch out for within the Nationalist Congress Party. Nephew of the late BJP leader Gopinath Munde, the young minister in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government is the first to release

Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao was on the farmers’ side when the Centre passed the farm laws in September. However, a fortnight after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on December 13, he seems to have taken a U-turn. Embrac

Mumbai city’s new joint commissioner of police (traffic) Yashasvi Yadav’s crackdown on traffic violators has left motorists stunned. A new ‘three strikes’ plan will see driving licences of violators suspended after the third offence. The drive is als

286 DRY RUNS have been conducted in 125 districts across India. UP is the only state to conduct dry runs in all its districts 270 MILLION beneficiaries (over the age of 50 and with comorbidities) are being identified for priority vaccination by July

In January 1950, newly independent India emerged as a republic with a new Constitution that had been forged against a backdrop of great anarchy in the preceding decade. The India of the 1940s had witnessed the Second World War, the Jewish Holocaust,

I did not read much fiction in a year when fact was really stranger than fiction. Started with Jin Yong’s ‘Legends of the Condor Heroes’ first volume, A Hero Born, a martial arts fantasy that is probably the most popular Chinese novel ever and has be

Politics and society” just about covers everything, except—I was going to say—music, religion and love. But wrong! At least in India, the India of our times, those three are at the heart of our politics. When T.M. Krishna’s book Sebastian & Sons appe

Winter solstice. Concealed in cloud, Jupiter and Saturn kiss unseen. With 78 million lives interrupted by a speck of RNA gone rogue, Earth is a grisly planet. Even in an appalling year, because life is more than srushti pushti nashti, bookwards we le

While I disagree with some of their premises and recommendations, these two economists have been deeply involved in policy and institutional reforms over decades. Their book highlights the critical importance of state capacity in the success and fail

The year 2020 was, for me, one for reading books by famous, best-selling authors whose works I had not read before. First is the Belgian author, the late Georges Simenon, whose Inspector Maigret murder mysteries were wildly popular in mid-20th centur