Gujarat Anand News

Asia's 50 Best Restaurants revealed: Three Indian eateries make the cut
The Indian Express | 1 day ago | |
The Indian Express
1 day ago | |

The much-awaited list — Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023 — is finally out, and three restaurants from India have made the cut!This year, Mumbai’s fine dining restaurant Masque rose from 21 (its rank last year) to 16 — registering a steady growth, as it was ranked at 32 prior to that. Delhi’s Indian Accent, too, found a spot at the 19 position, moving up from last year’s 22. And making a smashing debut was Avartana — located in the luxurious ITC Grand Chola hotel, Chennai — at the 30th spot; and also taking home the trophy for the Highest New Entry.   A post shared by Masque (@masquerestaurant)However, Megu, a restaurant at The Leela New Delhi, that made its debut last year and was ranked at number 48, was missing from the list.Bangkok had the maximum top rated restaurants in Asia’s Top 50 with nine of them making it to the list. In fact, the winning restaurant — Le Du — is also located in Bangkok. Further, Nussara is ranked at number 3, and Gaggan Anand at number 5. The same does not come as a surprise for a city popular for its amazing food (street as well as fine-dining).In terms of a country, Japan has the maximum number of restaurants — 10 — making it to the top 50. Seven of them are from Tokyo, one is from Kyoto, one is from Osaka and one is from Wakayama. Singapore also has 9 restaurants mentioned in the Top 50 list; however, only Odette (ranked at number 6) appears in the top 10.South Korea’s capital Seoul has four restaurants on the list.  A post shared by Indian Accent (@indianaccent)Check out the complete list of winners.1. Le Du (Bangkok)2. Sezanne (Tokyo)3. Nusara (Bangkok)4. Den (Tokyo)5. Gaggan Anand (Bangkok)6. Odette (Singapore)7. Florilege (Tokyo)8. La Cime (Osaka)9. Sorn (Bangkok)10. Narisawa (Tokyo)11. Labyrinth (Singapore)12. Sazenka (Tokyo)13. The Chairman (Hong Kong)14. Villa Aida (Wakayama, Japan)15. Mosu (Seoul)16. Masque (Mumbai)17. Meta (Singapore)18. Fu He Hui (Shanghai)19. Indian Accent (New Delhi)20. Ode (Tokyo)21. Zen (Singapore)22. Suhring (Bangkok)23. Onjium (Seoul)24. Burnt Ends (Singapore)25. Euphoria (Singapore)26. Cloudstreet (Singapore)27. Les Amis (Singapore)28. Mingles (Seoul)29. Neighborhood (Hong Kong)30. Avartana (Chennai, India)31. Ensue (Shenzhen, China)32. Cenci (Kyoto, Japan)33. Ms. Maria & Mr. Singh (Bangkok)34. Da Vittorio (Shanghai)35. Potong (Bangkok)36. Born (Singapore)37. Wing (Hong Kong)38. Raan Jay Fai (Bangkok)39. Wing Lei Palace (Macao)40. Anan Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)41. Mono (Hong Kong)42. Toyo Eatery (Manila)43. Sichuan Moon (Macao)44.L’Effervescence (Tokyo)45. Mume (Taipei)46. Baan Tepa (Bangkok)47. Born & Bred (Seoul)48. Metiz (Manila)49. Caprice (Hong Kong)50. Refer (Beijing)📣 For more lifestyle news, follow us on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook and don’t miss out on the latest updates!

Asia's 50 Best Restaurants revealed: Three Indian eateries make the cut
  • Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants revealed: Three Indian eateries make the cut
  • The Indian Express

    The much-awaited list — Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023 — is finally out, and three restaurants from India have made the cut!This year, Mumbai’s fine dining restaurant Masque rose from 21 (its rank last year) to 16 — registering a steady growth, as it was ranked at 32 prior to that. Delhi’s Indian Accent, too, found a spot at the 19 position, moving up from last year’s 22. And making a smashing debut was Avartana — located in the luxurious ITC Grand Chola hotel, Chennai — at the 30th spot; and also taking home the trophy for the Highest New Entry.   A post shared by Masque (@masquerestaurant)However, Megu, a restaurant at The Leela New Delhi, that made its debut last year and was ranked at number 48, was missing from the list.Bangkok had the maximum top rated restaurants in Asia’s Top 50 with nine of them making it to the list. In fact, the winning restaurant — Le Du — is also located in Bangkok. Further, Nussara is ranked at number 3, and Gaggan Anand at number 5. The same does not come as a surprise for a city popular for its amazing food (street as well as fine-dining).In terms of a country, Japan has the maximum number of restaurants — 10 — making it to the top 50. Seven of them are from Tokyo, one is from Kyoto, one is from Osaka and one is from Wakayama. Singapore also has 9 restaurants mentioned in the Top 50 list; however, only Odette (ranked at number 6) appears in the top 10.South Korea’s capital Seoul has four restaurants on the list.  A post shared by Indian Accent (@indianaccent)Check out the complete list of winners.1. Le Du (Bangkok)2. Sezanne (Tokyo)3. Nusara (Bangkok)4. Den (Tokyo)5. Gaggan Anand (Bangkok)6. Odette (Singapore)7. Florilege (Tokyo)8. La Cime (Osaka)9. Sorn (Bangkok)10. Narisawa (Tokyo)11. Labyrinth (Singapore)12. Sazenka (Tokyo)13. The Chairman (Hong Kong)14. Villa Aida (Wakayama, Japan)15. Mosu (Seoul)16. Masque (Mumbai)17. Meta (Singapore)18. Fu He Hui (Shanghai)19. Indian Accent (New Delhi)20. Ode (Tokyo)21. Zen (Singapore)22. Suhring (Bangkok)23. Onjium (Seoul)24. Burnt Ends (Singapore)25. Euphoria (Singapore)26. Cloudstreet (Singapore)27. Les Amis (Singapore)28. Mingles (Seoul)29. Neighborhood (Hong Kong)30. Avartana (Chennai, India)31. Ensue (Shenzhen, China)32. Cenci (Kyoto, Japan)33. Ms. Maria & Mr. Singh (Bangkok)34. Da Vittorio (Shanghai)35. Potong (Bangkok)36. Born (Singapore)37. Wing (Hong Kong)38. Raan Jay Fai (Bangkok)39. Wing Lei Palace (Macao)40. Anan Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)41. Mono (Hong Kong)42. Toyo Eatery (Manila)43. Sichuan Moon (Macao)44.L’Effervescence (Tokyo)45. Mume (Taipei)46. Baan Tepa (Bangkok)47. Born & Bred (Seoul)48. Metiz (Manila)49. Caprice (Hong Kong)50. Refer (Beijing)📣 For more lifestyle news, follow us on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook and don’t miss out on the latest updates!

Anand Mahindra falls for edited clip of puppet dancing to hit RRR song ‘Naatu Naatu’
The Indian Express | 1 week ago | |
The Indian Express
1 week ago | |

Business magnate Anand Mahindra is easily one of the biggest fans of RRR’s hit dance number ‘Naatu Naatu’. Composed by MM Keeravani, the song has gained commercial and critical success ever since its release in March last year. This year it made history by winning an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award in the Best Original Song category.While the Mahindra chairperson has been vocal about his support for the song, this time the business tycoon fell for an edited video of the song. Mahindra shared a video that showed a puppeteer manoeuvring her puppet to the beats of Naatu Naatu. However, the video seems to be five years old as it was posted on YouTube with the puppet dancing to the mega hit ‘Despacito’.While sharing this video, Mahindra wrote, “Ok. One last tweet, I promise, about #NaatuNaatu But couldn’t resist this one. Real evidence of it being a global phenomenon since it now has the whole world on its ‘strings’”.Ok. One last tweet, I promise, about #NaatuNaatu But couldn’t resist this one. Real evidence of it being a global phenomenon since it now has the whole world on its ‘strings’ 😊 pic.twitter.com/ex1bmf4Boh— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) March 22, 2023This tweet has gathered over 17,000 likes since it was published. Commenting on it, a Twitter user wrote, “Music & dance has no boundaries it spread positivity those who don’t know the language, meaning also can enjoy the beats & dance move.”However, many people in the comments pointed out that the video is edited as the puppet’s steps did not match the dance steps of Naatu Naatu. Echoing this view, a Twitter user wrote, “Looks more like not the original music for which the puppet dance was made. looks like background music is changed to nattu nattu”.Another person wrote, “Sir they have superimposed the song. This lady did the despacito song with this puppet. All the characters are same. I think natu natu has been superimposed on the dance.”Someone edited the song. She was doing this with Despacito and it was five years ago.https://t.co/KUN3r0mJow— Andholanjeevi Anju Backer (@anjubacker) March 22, 2023“Someone edited the song. She was doing this with Despacito and it was five years ago,” another user pointed out.In February, Mahindra was seen shaking a leg to the song with none other than actor Ram Charan who featured in the song. The sweet interaction between the Telugu superstar and Mahindra during the Hyderabad E-Prix race was caught in a video. In the video, Ram Charan teaches Mahindra the hook step of Naatu Naatu in a step-by-step manner as the industrialist follows his lead.

Anand Mahindra falls for edited clip of puppet dancing to hit RRR song ‘Naatu Naatu’
Stories behind Kumar Sanu's most-loved songs: When RD Burman abused him, Salman couldn't lip-sync
The Indian Express | 1 week ago | |
The Indian Express
1 week ago | |

There is a Kumar Sanu song for every memory, every occasion. But the singer, who has recorded an astonishing 21,000 tracks, says it’s not possible to have always have a great story behind a good song.“Sometimes, the songs were just recorded amid a heavy day of work, or like a regular recording session. The magic is there, but not always did we know the kind of impact some of them would have,” Sanu shares with indiaexpress.com.Therefore, the singer says, while his songs from Shah Rukh Khan‘s Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa were “lovely to record”, he would prefer narrating an anecdote of a Salman Khan song, which not many know about. “Sometimes great stories are there from lesser-known songs too,” he adds.In an interview with indiaexpress.com, Kumar Sanu lists seven tracks from his career and shares behind-the-scenes stories of how they were recorded. From a music composer abusing him with happiness, another shying away from briefing him about a naughty track to the song he never thought would work — but has now become one of his most loved tracks.Edited excerpts:1) Nazar Ke Saamne Jigar Ke Paas, Aashiqui (1990)Every recording of the album is memorable to me. I remember every song, they were just so nice, melodious. But Nazar Ke Saamne was the first song I sang for the film. It was during that recording when Nadeem-Shravan shouted from the microphone, ‘You are a Tiger!’ From that day, I started getting known as Tiger among music composers. When I had finished the recording, they rained currency notes on me, of Rs 500, 200, 100. They threw it in the air and celebrated my recording, because it was that special. It was an unforgettable moment. They would get so happy after each recording. 2) Jab Koi Baat Bigad Jaaye, Jurm (1990)This was a song which I didn’t think would become a hit. It was a slow number, composed by Rajesh Roshan. I thought it is a good, melodious song, but that’s about it. I didn’t think much of it and definitely not that it would be remembered even till today. It has now become one of the most memorable songs of my career. That’s fate. 3) Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, 1942: A Love Story (1994)Pancham da (RD Burman, in his last film work) came to the singing room and told me, ‘See this song has a lot of ‘jaise’ word. Jaise khilta gulaab, jaise shayar ka khwaab, jaise ujli kiran, jaise ban mein hiran….’ There were many ‘jaise’ in just one mukhda. He told me, ‘Sanu, I want every mention of ‘jaise’ to be different from each other. They shouldn’t be similar sounding.’ He told me if I can sing each ‘jaise’ distinctively, then my song is a hit! I tried hard singing the word differently each time it appeared and, the song became a hit! Pancham da’s thinking was great. He was a visionary. It was such an extremely creatively way to know how you would want a song to sound different. When the recording was done, he hugged me, kissed my forehead and started abusing me. So, if he liked something, if he liked how the recording went, he would abuse a lot. Mother, father, everything. When I didn’t know this initially, I asked someone next to me. ‘Why is he abusing me?!’ then I was told, ‘Because he really liked it!’ 4) Main To Raste Se Jaa Raha Tha, Coolie No 1 (1995)It was composed by Anand-Milind. Now, Anand ji would be the quieter one, Milind ji would be the naughty one. When they were briefing me this song, Anand ji was playing harmonium and Milind ji was teaching me. Anand ji didn’t take the risk of singing the song because it was a ‘natkhat (naughty)’ song and only Milind could sing and teach me. ‘This is not my kinda track, please learn from Milind!’ is what Anand ji had told me! So I followed what he briefed me, sang the song, and the rest is history. 5) Tujhe Dekha Toh Ye Jana Sanam, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)It was a wonderful Jatin-Lalit track. I was singing it with Lata Mangeshkar ji and that in itself was a huge achievement. Lata ji had given me tips and I remember when we were in the studio, she was telling me softly, ‘sing it like this!’ I was so nervous. To stand with her and sing. It’s like you are standing in front of a mountain. Her achievement would dwarf everyone. When I go to record, I always crack jokes and the staff, the artistes would always keep laughing. I would always make the situation light, laugh, have fun, record and then leave. But with Lata ji, of course I couldn’t do this. It was a far more serious atmosphere. Everything would be in control when she would be there. So even I wouldn’t say anything ‘ulta-pulta.’ 6) Aankhon Mein Kya, Khamoshi: The Musical (1996)This song from Khamoshi was actually the one I didn’t want to sing. Jatin-Lalit forced me to sing, requesting me again and again. You won’t believe, I didn’t take any music track on my headphone, there was only the violin playing, no rhythm, nothing. The arranger, Babu da, would snap his fingers to give me taal. I sang the entire song, using the snapping of his fingers as a taal, and recorded the song. It was a very, very tough song. There is no ‘leh’ in the song. It was a Salman Khan film, so you had to also sing it with a certain expression. When they shot the film, Sanjay Leela Bhansali didn’t take any close shot of Salman because it was just so tough to lip sync that! So only long shots were taken. It is actually a very, very tough song to lip sync. Only Jatin and I can do this. 7) Dard Karaara, Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015)The story was about a hero who was a Kumar Sanu fan so Sharad, who is a solid fan of mine, insisted that I should sing in the film. The funny thing is, when we recorded the song, Anu Malik stood in front of a microphone and snapped his fingers and I sang it, basis that. They later added 100 musicians orchestra on it! But I recorded it over just that, his two fingers snapping, with no music, no rhythm. There was just me, Anu Malik and the recordist in the studio. It was historic and I shall always remember how we pulled it off!“By this year end,” Kumar Sanu says, “My count will go up to 22,000 songs! Imagine then, all the new stories that I will add,” the singer signs off.

Stories behind Kumar Sanu's most-loved songs: When RD Burman abused him, Salman couldn't lip-sync
Tough love: Widow reports son to cops for rash driving in Gujarat’s Nadiad
Times of India | 1 month ago | |
Times of India
1 month ago | |

AHMEDABAD: A 58-year-old widow from Nadiad resorted to some tough love and reported her son to the cops for driving recklessly. She had repeatedly warned him against driving dangerously but to no avail. An accident on Sunday, which left her with a fractured shoulder, was the last straw. Meena Patel, a resident of Degam Patel Faliyu in Nadiad, filed a complaint alleging rash driving against her son Anand at Vaso police station. According to Patel's complaint, her husband passed away eight months ago. She lives with and depends on her 34-year-old son Anand who works with a private firm. On Sunday morning, she wanted to go to Nadiad to meet somebody. So, she asked Anand to drop her off. Since his motorcyle had developed a fault, he borrowed his friend's motorcycle to drop her off. However, he did not check the vehicle's brakes properly and was overspeeding, ignoring her pleas to go slow. A while later, he braked suddenly, causing the vehicle to skid and fall. Both mother and son were injured in the accident. Anand took Patel to a nearby hospital where she underwent treatment for a fractured shoulder. She then decided to file a complaint against her son as a last-ditch attempt at course correction. Her complaint states, "My son was overspeeding and his negligence led to the accident in which I was injured. I am filing this complaint against him so that legal action is taken in the matter." Vaso police filed a complaint under IPC Sections 279 (rash driving), 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 338 (causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) against Anand Patel.

Tough love: Widow reports son to cops for rash driving in Gujarat’s Nadiad
Gujarat’s tobacco acreage up by 116% in 19 years
Times of India | 1 month ago | |
Times of India
1 month ago | |

AHMEDABAD: In Gujarat — which has the ignominy of being known as the oral cancer capital of India — farmers in North and Central Gujarat are raking in the moolah from tobacco. Tobacco was sown on 63,800 hectares in 2004, and this number has risen to 1.38 lakh hectares for the 2023 winter crop, a 116% increase. Gujarat accounts for 48% of the country’s total tobacco production of 8 lakh tonnes. Experts say there are many factors for this, tobacco is a cash crop and keeps away wild animals such as nilgai and wild boar which may graze on and destroy food crops. The greater availability of water has also increased tobacco acreage. According to figures from the agriculture department, the acreage sown with tobacco was 68,200 hectares in 2003-04, and rose to 92,900 hectares in 2013-14 and to 1.38 lakh hectares as of January 2023. The figures show that till 2013-14, about 95% of tobacco was grown in the Charotar region — Anand, Kheda and Vadodara districts. However, in 2013-14, it started to be grown in North Gujarat, which now accounts for 30% of tobacco acreage, mainly in the districts of Mehsana, Banaskantha, Patan and Sabarkantha. In Central Gujarat, 96% of the area sown with tobacco is in Kheda and Anand districts. Bhikhu Patel, president of the Gujarat Tobacco Merchant (Farmers) Association, says tobacco cultivation in Gujarat is rising because the crop never fails and doesn’t need pesticides as tobacco itself is a natural pesticide. “As the population grows, consumption of cigarettes and other tobacco products is also rising. Tobacco is also used in the pharma and cosmetics industries,” he said. While Anand and Kheda dominated earlier, Banaskantha, Sabarkantha and Mehsana are fast catching up. The work of the Tobacco Research Institute in Kheda is also helping farmers. An agriculture department officer said, “While tobacco sells for Rs 6,500 to Rs 7,500 a quintal, wheat sells for Rs 2,800 to Rs 4,000 a quintal.” D H Rabari, Kheda district agriculture officer, said “Tobacco farming keeps wild and domestic animals away because of the bitter taste of the leaf. Damage to the crop from grazing animals is minimal compared to other crops. More farmers are opting for tobacco while rotating their crops.” He added that Vijapur in North Gujarat is fast turning into a trading hub for tobacco, despite the vast area under tobacco cultivation in the Charotar region. M S Prajapati, Patan district agriculture officer, said, “Returns from tobacco are higher than other rabi crops. The greater availability of water in North Gujarat has led farmers to shift to tobacco. Earlier, canal bed irrigation was only available in Charotar. The crop grown here is used in the bidi, cigarette, pharma, and cosmetic industries and as an insecticide.

Gujarat’s tobacco acreage up by 116% in 19 years
Supreme Court Asks CBI, Gujarat Why They Want Activist Teesta Setalvad Back In Jail
Ndtv | 2 months ago | |
Ndtv
2 months ago | |

Supreme Court posted the Teesta Setlevad case for further hearing after 4 weeks. (File)New Delhi: The Supreme Court today questioned the CBI and the Gujarat government as to why they want to send social activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand back in jail after they have been out for over seven years on anticipatory bail.A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Abhay S Oka and BV Nagarathna said, "Question is how long can you keep someone in custody. Seven years have passed since anticipatory bail was granted. You want to send her back to custody."Advocate Rajat Nair, appearing for the CBI and the Gujarat government said some additional material needed to be placed before the court with regard to the cases and, therefore, four weeks time may be given.Senior advocate Kapil Sibal and advocate Aparna Bhat, appearing for Ms Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand, said in one of the proceedings in which the CBI has come in appeal, anticipatory bail was granted following which a charge sheet was filed and after that regular bail was granted to her.He said since a regular bail was granted, the appeal of the probe agency against anticipatory bail does not survive.Mr Nair said this had happened in one case but there are more than one case against her and requested the court to grant him four weeks to place additional material on record."A bench of two judges has referred this matter to a larger bench and has framed questions which need to be decided by this court," Nair said.The bench posted the matter for further hearing after four weeks.Mr Sibal submitted a note to the bench pursuant to the earlier direction giving details of issues as to which of the appeals survive for consideration and what is the subject matter to be decided as the passage of time may have taken care of some aspects.The top court was hearing a batch of pleas filed by Ms Setalvad, Mr Anand, the Gujarat police and the CBI arising out of three FIRs lodged against the couple.On March 19, 2015, the top court had referred to a larger bench the anticipatory bail plea of Setalvad and her husband in the case of alleged embezzlement of funds for a museum at Ahmedabad's Gulbarg Society devastated in the 2002 riots and extended its interim order protecting them against arrest.It had said the question that arises for consideration is whether liberty on the one hand and fair and effective investigation on the other make out a case for extending the benefit under Section 438 CrPC (anticipatory bail).In 2014, an FIR was registered against them with DCP, Crime Branch, Ahmedabad, on charges of cheating, breach of trust and under the IT Act in a matter related to the construction of the "Museum of Resistance" in the Gulbarg housing society.Teesta Setalvad and her husband, who were trustees of two trusts- 'Citizens for Justice and Peace' (CJP) and 'Sabrang Trust' - were accused by Feroz Khan Saeed Khan Pathan of having raised a few crore of rupees as donation from certain donors from India and abroad after projecting to them the plight of the riot-affected people of Gulbarg Society.The top court had noted in its order of March 19, 2015 that Pathan had alleged in his complaint that the couple entered into a conspiracy and promised the residents of the housing society they will build a museum in the honour of the 2002 riot victims. The court had also noted that the couple had asked the residents to not sell their properties in the housing society.Pathan alleged the couple neither built the museum as promised nor spent the amount for the benefit of the members of the Gulbarg Society nor did they fulfil the assurance made to the victims regarding the sale of their properties.In the second case, the CBI has moved the top court against grant of anticipatory bail to Ms Setalvad and her husband in a case where they have been accused of misusing foreign funds.The probe agency has alleged that a company floated by the couple-Sabrang Communication and Publishing Pvt Ltd (SCPPL) - had received Rs 1.8 crore from US-based Ford Foundation allegedly without the mandatory approval of the Centre.It has sought cancellation of their anticipatory bail claiming the Bombay high court had erred in giving them the relief after prima facie finding that provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) had been violated.In the third case, the Ahmedabad police had moved the top court against the April 5, 2018 order of the Bombay High Court by which the couple was protected from arrest in an FIR registered on March 31, 2018 for allegedly securing central government funds worth Rs 1.4 crore "fraudulently" for her NGO Sabrang Trust between 2010 and 2013.According to the Gujarat police, the funds were obtained for a project launched in some districts of Maharashtra and Gujarat to help the victims of the 2002 post-Godhra riots but were misappropriated or used for other purposes.PromotedListen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.comThe couple has denied all the allegations made in the FIRs which are being probed by Gujarat police and the CBI. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)Featured Video Of The DayJai Jawan: Sonu Sood's Tug-Of-War With Soldiers

Supreme Court Asks CBI, Gujarat Why They Want Activist Teesta Setalvad Back In Jail
Congress appoints Amit Chavda as CLP leader in Gujarat
Times of India | 2 months ago | |
Times of India
2 months ago | |

AHMEDABAD: The Congress party named Amit Chavda as its legislature party leader and Shailesh Parmar as the deputy leader in Gujarat, on Tuesday. The party's central leadership asked the state unit to communicate the decision to the assembly secretariat. All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary K C Venugopal, in a communication to Gujarat unit head Jagdish Thakor, said the party president has approved the proposal for nomination of Chavda as the leader and Parmar as the deputy leader of the Congress legislature party in the state. Earlier this month, the Gujarat assembly secretariat had asked the Congress party to appoint its leader before January 19. According to rule, the opposition parties are required to appoint their respective leaders in the house within 30 days of the swearing-in of the newly elected members of the legislative assembly. The members of the 15th legislative assembly in Gujarat were sworn in on December 19, 2022. Chavda had earlier served as Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee president. The 46-year-old hailing from Anand district is a five-term legislator. Chavda won the 2022 state assembly election from the Anklav seat in Anand, defeating Bharatiya Janata Party's Gulabsinh Padhiyar. Parmar, 53, won his fourth election last year from Ahmedabad's Danilimda seat, reserved for scheduled caste candidates, by defeating BJP's Naresh Vyas. The ruling BJP won 156 seats in the 182-member Gujarat assembly in the polls last month, while the Congress finished a distant second with 17 seats. AAP won five seats, three seats were won by independents, and one was bagged by the Samajwadi Party. Meanwhile, the three-member committee which has been appointed by the central Congress leadership held deliberations with party candidates who had been fielded in the recent assembly election. Based on the feedback, the panel will submit a report to the leadership on the factors that led to the Congress's worst ever showing in the assembly election in Gujarat.

Congress appoints Amit Chavda as CLP leader in Gujarat
Serial killer armed with an iron rod, femme fatale: Welcome to Bollywood's heart of darknessPremium Story
The Indian Express | 2 months ago | |
The Indian Express
2 months ago | |

Any discussion about the Hollywood thriller starts and ends with Alfred Hitchcock. Nobody did more to spook audiences than the portly British director, who once defined the difference between ‘suspense and surprise’ as follows — A bomb goes off under a table, that’s a surprise. We know there’s a bomb under the table but not when exactly it will go off, now that’s suspense. Filmmakers around the world have tried to mimic Hitchcock’s approach to suspense. Bollywood is no different. Here too the Hitch rules, but it is homegrown noir pundits like the late Vijay Anand, Sriram Raghavan and Anurag Kashyap and their pulpy musicals that speak more to the palette of Indian audiences. ‘Goldie’ to family and fans, Anand made all kinds of cinema, but it is his thrillers, or noir to be more specific, that have become his enduring legacy. Starring Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman, the spiritually-minded Guide is usually cited as his tour de force, but the ones that inspire cult-like devotion are the breezy thrillers. You may have seen a few of them. There’s Jewel Thief, Johny Mera Naam and Teesri Manzil. What sets Goldie’s thrillers apart from others is not their adrenaline-pumping plot or masterful characterization — all good thrillers have that in common — but the way he conceived and shot songs. Known as a master of song picturisation, each Vijay Anand song, whether it is “Hoton mein aisi baat” in Jewel Thief that combines Vyjayanthimala’s deft dancing talent with ‘edge-of-the-seat’ suspense as the story hurtles towards its climax or the soulful “Tumne mujhe dekha” in Teesri Manzil that takes place in the club, moments before Asha Parekh, in an emotional outburst, unveils Shammi Kapoor (singer Rocky) as the elusive rapist and killer.In short, Anand’s thrillers are catchy, filled with musical intrusions that somehow carry the story forward but more importantly, they are pure popcorn entertainment. Does that explain his enduring legacy? Is that all? Yes, but only partly. Bear in mind that to carry forward any legacy, you need heirs. Alfred Hitchcock, the ultimate suspense-meister, was a critical pariah in Hollywood and it was the French New Wave, most notably the French critic-turned-director François Truffaut, who helped reintroduce Hitchcock to America. That’s how Hollywood came to look at such classics as Rear Window, Pyscho and North by Northwest with renewed appreciation. In Goldie’s case, the heir apparent is Sriram Raghavan. A patron saint of pulp, Raghavan’s unashamedly mainstream noirs frequently doff their hat to the “God”, as the Goldie successors fondly address him. His 2007 breakout, Johnny Gaddaar, was duly dedicated to the guru. “You can see Vijay Anand’s influence even in a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film,” Anurag Kashyap had once declared. “The 1942 A Love Story song of “Ek ladki ko dekha”,” he continued, “is influenced by Johny Mera Naam’s “Pal bhar ke liye.” Earlier, songs were a part of the narrative, for instance, the suspense built around “Hoton mein aisi baat” in Jewel Thief.”Also, close friends who owe their break to Ram Gopal Varma, Raghavan and Kashyap are well represented in our list of top 10 thrillers (as part of our exhaustive ‘100 Bollywood movies to watch in your lifetime’ series). We have picked Raghavan’s Andhadhun and Badlapur over the just-as-finely-crafted Johnny Gaddaar. Sorry JD buffs, but we sincerely believe that Raghavan’s film about a blind pianist and a femme fatale is the film that his career has been building up to — which is to say, all the hard-to-achieve elements of a thriller fall in line in Andhadhun. Motivation? Check. Atmosphere? Check. Tense pacing? Check. Director Guillermo del Toro once described suspense as being all about the withholding of information. Either a character knows something the audience doesn’t know, or the audience knows something the character doesn’t. It’s a tall ask, but Andhadhun goes a long way in “withholding of information.” Raghavan’s Badlapur comes a close second. Similarly, Anurag Kashyap’s filmography thrums with slick thrillers but on our thriller-o-meter, Raman Raghav 2.0 ranks higher than Black Friday and Ugly, both capturing the filmmaker in top form with their blend of gritty realism, high-tension drama and an overwhelming sense of dread. In Raghavan and Kashyap’s immoral universe, the hook is usually a psychopath/sociopath or serial killer navigating moral ambiguities in a pool of blood and violence. The lighting is dark, so is the mood which has led critics to bill these films as “noir.” From the RGV school, another inclusion in our countdown is Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chhappan, one of Ram Gopal Varma’s many erotic fetishization of cops, crime and mob violence in the golden age of Mumbai’s mafiosi. Then, there are other kinds of thrillers which aren’t noir but equally enjoyable. Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012) is easy to sum up in hindsight except that it was a totally unexpected mainstream fare when it first released. A heavily-pregnant woman (Vidya Balan) is out and about searching desperately for her missing husband. Ghosh’s breathless ode to the city of his birth, Kahaani brings Kolkata alive in all its grungy beauty. (Satyajit Ray should be proud).What’s common to the roundup of these Bollywood thrillers is the element of human motivation and crime. It is sad but not entirely surprising to find that top stars who can bring so much heft to a juicy thriller typically avoid this genre. No self-respecting superstar with a mass following can risk his image by playing a bloody murderer. So, the dirty job goes to the usual suspects. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Kay Kay Menon or Manoj Bajpayee. Someone like Shah Rukh Khan who once sunk his teeth into “K-k-k-kiran”-slurring anti-heroes today hews closer to crowd-pleasers. But whenever a leading man throws caution to the wind, from Ashok Kumar in Jewel Thief (though in his defence, it wasn’t something new for Dadamoni whose Kismet and Sangram, among more, went a long way in glamourizing crime) to Varun Dhawan in Badlapur, the audience is in for a treat. So long as you aren’t taking what’s happening on screen seriously. A far safer bet for big stars is the spy caper, a popular sub-genre in Hindi cinema thrillers. From Dev Anand and Jeetendra to Saif Ali Khan and Salman Khan, everyone has tried their hands at it. Taken together, our guide to the top 10 thrillers will give you a fair idea of the fun Bollywood capers to watch. Many thrill-seekers may have already seen some of these films. Hopefully, the accompanying write-up may encourage you to view them in a new light. You will notice that the “psychological thriller” and “political thriller” are missing from the list. Why? Simply because that’s the ilk Bollywood doesn’t do often. For now, we leave you with our pick of 10 essential Hindi crime thrillers. It will do well for readers to remember that Bollywood’s forte is pulp thrillers with chartbuster music, unlike Hollywood that has over the years perfected the brain-twisting, genre-bending capers. Join us in this thrill ride.‘What is life? It all depends on the liver’ — PrologueIt’s not about how you start. It’s about how you finish. And as far as endings go, Andhadhun is delectably open-ended and mysterious — triggering more questions than it answers. Spoilers ahead: Is the half-blind rabbit who opens the film a metaphor for Ayushmann Khurrana’s character? Does blind pianist Akash have partial vision? Has Akash taken Tabu’s eyes? Has the rabbit become Akash’s stick? Whatever the meaning of the ending and fanzine-fuelled wild theories around it, Andhadhun is Sriram Raghavan’s most enjoyable caper, yet. The noir specialist (maker of Johnny Gaddaar and Badlapur) far exceeds expectations this time. Set as usual in Pune, an unsung backdrop for most Raghavan films, it follows Akash (Khurrana), a blind pianist, who’s called by a former Bollywood star to perform at his home. Once he arrives for the private concert, he is in for a surprise. So is the audience. As the femme fatale, Tabu (the gleefully unrepentant Simi is a hat tip to Subhash Ghai’s Karz) makes you fall in love with her once again. Why doesn’t one of Hindi cinema’s most gifted performers do more films? She, along with an unbreakable Khuranna who gets tossed around and the director’s trusted ensemble (bit players like Zakir Hussain and Ashwini Kalsekar) make Andhadhun the most engaging and fun caper Bollywood has produced in a long time. Explains Andhadhun’s new-found appeal as a fan favourite.‘Bhagwan har jagah nahin hota, DKji’ — Devki‘Isliye toh usne maa banayee hai’ — DKSridevi’s swan-song (though her last appearance is in Zero), MOM is a riveting portrait of revenge — best served cold, in this case. This is the ‘unsafe-for-women’ Delhi we all read about, with dread. Director Ravi Udaywar films the opening with frenetic energy. Your heart’s in your mouth. More troublingly, you know where all this is heading. Young Arya, Devki’s (Sridevi) step-daughter, is in harm’s way. Less than half an hour into the film and Arya is lying in a pool of blood, brutally raped and left to die. When justice is denied, Devki switches on her Durga-Kali mode. “God isn’t everywhere,” she tells DK, Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Bholenath-invoking gumshoe. “That’s why he made mothers,” he quips, before promising to help her in the case. Channelling her inner goddess, Devki goes about systemically cleaning out her daughter’s rapists. Hot on her tail is a Ray-Ban-wearing CBI officer (Akshaye Khanna) determined to nab her. While MOM keeps you on tenterhooks what works are the performances. Khanna is extraordinarily restrained while Siddiqui, with his partially balding get-up, adds the right amount of excitement. But MOM is Sridevi’s show all the way. Vulnerable and vengeful by turns, the late actor is a delight to watch.These days, Anurag Kashyap oscillates between romance and crime. He follows the dusty hinterland crime capers with a dark vision of Mumbai. Many critics have drawn a connection between That Girl in Yellow Boots, Ugly and Raman Raghav 2.0, bracketing them into a loose trilogy. Look closely and the connection does become apparent. All these films are based in present-day Mumbai, painting and tainting the underbelly with the darkest shade of black. Those feeling lucky can also add Black Friday to that list. If Ugly was about a kidnapping, Raman Raghav 2.0 is a disturbing account of a serial killer (based on a real-life criminal who terrorised Mumbai in the 1960s). No prizes for guessing that the reliable Nawazuddin Siddiqui fills in the rubber chappals of the infamous killer. Ramanna (Siddiqui) kills without motivation. It’s the only thing he knows, as he lumbers around with an iron rod looking to add unsuspecting pavement-dwellers to his tally. Kashyap contrasts Ramanna with the coke-snorting cop Raghav (Vicky Kaushal). Raghav forms the second half of this thriller’s title. He kills for pleasure and to feed his sadistic needs. Kashyap places this duo side by side, nudging the audience to make a choice between the morally worse of the two. There’s no doubt that the cop and criminal are alter ego/splitting images of each other. The question is, who’s the one most undeserving of your sympathy.Macabre, twisted and unflinchingly dark, Badlapur once again has director Sriram Raghavan in terrific form. The title is taken from an industrial suburb near Mumbai but metaphorically points to revenge. Where there is revenge, there is redemption. Badlapur opens with a heist-gone-wrong. Raghu’s (Varun Dhawan) innocent wife is killed in an accident, a totally unavoidable crime for which perpetrator Liak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) will pay for the rest of the film. Raghavan artfully subverts the idea of bad and evil (an intriguing counterpoint to the conventional good and evil). Surely, the low-life Liak is bad and goes behind bar. But he tries to redeem himself in jail. What’s shocking is to discover average-Joe Raghu, a so-called educated professional who loves his family and who we trust will not betray us, baring his fangs to reveal man’s ugly side. He finds newer ways to make himself repulsive to the audience. He’s so bad that he makes Liak start appearing like a saint. We root for Raghu in the beginning, but as the film progresses audience sympathy shifts to Liak. That, indisputably, is Badlapur’s true triumph — setting Raghu and Liak up in a battle of morality. Playing Liak, the chameleon-like Siddiqui, with his passive-aggro show of cards, proves he’s the best thing to have happened to Hindi cinema since Om Puri. Pitted against the titanic Siddiqui, Varun Dhawan holds his ground. Reportedly, Raghavan had written Raghu as an older character. But the way Dhawan slipped into Raghu, one can’t imagine anyone else in that role. Maybe, Rajkummar Rao. Or Ayushmann Khurrana. How about Dulquer Salman? Is Mr Raghavan listening?‘Yeh shehar badhta bachcha hai, sir. Kudd toh lagayega hi’ — Gurgaon copNavdeep Singh might be the most unsung director on the bloc. After showcasing a flair for noir in Manorama Six Feet Under in 2007, he vanished for nearly a decade. NH10 — his first offering since his debut starring Abhay Deol as a junior PWD engineer-cum-aspiring novelist — is a welcome return for Singh. The story is set in Gurgaon, which a cop describes as a growing child “bound to jump, at times.” Couple Meera (Anushka Sharma) and Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam) are on their way to a vacation when they get accidentally involved in a tiff with local Haryanvi thugs. Their perfectly happy life is torn apart. Arjun is killed in the extended brawl. Left alone, Meera at first tries to escape. But when she finds herself cornered from all ends, she decides to pick up the weapon. Anushka Sharma shines in this uncompromisingly dark and violent thriller. It’s horrific, what we do in the name of patriarchy. If only Arjun hadn’t taken it up on his ego, would the happy-go-lucky couple even land in such a bloody mess?‘Teri maa ki.. Khan. Yehi naam hai mera’ — Khan, IB officerThis is a satisfyingly nail-biting thriller that makes you wonder why Hindi cinema hasn’t made more of it. Consider the theme: a woman, all alone in a big city, goes around looking for her missing husband. Except — this should send a chill down your spine — the woman is seven-months pregnant. Vidya Bagachi, or Bidya as she’s called in Kolkata, is played by Vidya Balan. She is no pushover. Strikingly plucky, she launches into a parallel investigation. Director Sujoy Ghosh uses this plot device to explore the Kolkata of his birth. The city of joy is captured in all its colour. There’s Durga Puja on one side (the same kind of cultural compulsion that a filmmaker making a film on Mumbai would feel for including Ganesh immersion) and the trams, yellow Ambassadors and Kolkata street life on the other. But undoubtedly, Kahaani’s highpoint is Bob Biswas (Saswata Chatterjee), the mild-mannered contract killer with a penchant for a gentle way of greeting. “Nomoshkar!” he says, tenderly. But don’t fall for it. His untimely pat on Vidya’s shoulder at Kalighat metro station still has the power to leave viewers gasping for air. Tucked in this espionage thriller is also a solemn Nawazuddin Siddiqui, still some years shy of his indie stardom.‘Kaheen aapko yeh shaq toh nahin ke yeh crank call hai’ — Unnamed CallerThis is a racy thriller, a gripping tale pounding along to the finishing line. The clock’s ticking away and one unusually common man (Naseeruddin Shah) has held the Mumbai police to ransom. The cat-and-mouse begins when an unnamed citizen (Shah) calls commissioner Rathod (a restrained Anupam Kher) informing him of bombs being planted all over the city, including one in a police station. In return of the city’s safety, he wants a bunch of wanted terrorists released. Thus begins the chase, with the fast-thinking caller always a step ahead of Rathod. Operating from the roof of an under-constructed building, the sandwich-chomping caller shouts down orders to the cops, much to their chagrin. It appears he’s more tech-savvy than the entire police control room put together. Shah plays him as a man in a hurry, at par with the film’s urgent pace. Hollywood churns out this kind of ‘Catch Me If You Can’ thrillers (from Phone Booth to The Dark Knight) regularly and rather well. A Wednesday is that rare Bollywood flick that delivers the thrills, without resorting to song and dance. Watch out for its final twist, the brief moment when the common man and the super-cop cross path. Well-cast, taut and heart-pulsating, director Neeraj Pandey’s debut is watchable.‘Aye, Zameer, kul milaake dedh sau ka gang nahin hoga tera. 40,000 ka gang hai mera police ka’ — Sadhu AgasheIn Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found, everyone’s favourite tome about Mumbai, author Suketu Mehta writes about growing up hearing the famous comparison between Mumbai police and the Scotland Yard. But after meeting top cop Ajay Lal (based on Rakesh Maria), he is convinced the ‘Second best after Scotland Yard’ bit about the Mumbai police is “probably a misquote.” It is to this force that Nana Patekar’s Sadhu Agashe belongs. Before Patekar became a version of Rakesh Maria in Ram Gopal Varma’s The Attacks of 26/11, he was Agashe, inspired by encounter specialist Daya Nayak. Ab Tak Chhappan is directed by Shimit Amin, whose oeuvre is as short as it is diverse. Through the film, Amin and mentor Ram Gopal Varma draw a map of the Mumbai underworld and police procedural. Though ATC may be yet another take on crime, its raw energy and troubling reality distinguishes it from the rest. The title comes from Daya Nayak’s 56 body count so far, in the heyday of mobdom when an encounter on the streets of Mumbai was a cliche tabloid headline, as common as the morning tea. If it was that common for the hot polloi to read it, imagine how casual it might be for the trigger-happy newsmakers. The Ab Tak Chhappan scene that best encapsulates this is the opening itself. Edgy and documentary-style, we meet Agashe picking up a suspect. They stop by at a dhaba on the Kasara highway for tea break and indulge in a lighthearted chat about the Salman Khan-Vivek Oberoi tiff over Aishwarya Rai, the headline of the day. “What do you think, who will get Aishwarya?” asks the hoodlum, as the radio blares a 60s Bollywood song. Patekar breaks into his famous mercurial laughter. And then, bam, the man’s dead. In the backdrop is a slick Coca-Cola hoarding, declaring ‘Jo chahe ho jaaye.’ Don’t miss the ‘Enjoy’ part.‘Tumne mujhe dekha hokar meharbaan’ — RockyTeesri Manzil should come with a ‘Don’t Miss the Beginning’ note (like Badlapur). It features one of the most intriguing opening scenes in Hindi cinema. The camera opens on a darkly-lit building and pans to the windows, as it moves upwards. Finally, the title rolls out, and a body falls from the third floor. With that one smart artifice, director Vijay Anand sets the ball rolling. The film is about the hunt for the young girl’s rapist-killer. Who could it be? Rocky (Shammi Kapoor) is framed for the rape and murder, and the film is his attempt to prove his innocence. Director Vijay Anand is in his element here. He creates scenes and songs just as meticulously as he does the enigmatic opening scene. To bring alive RD Burman’s iconic music, he has eye-candies Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh and Helen. Kapoor invests Rocky with his debonair charm. If some parts of the film, especially the early frolics typical of Shammi Kapoor, remind you of Nasir Hussain’s musicals that’s because the Dil Deke Dekho maker was a producer-writer on Teesri Manzil. Watching the film again today, you could argue he may have been more than just the producer-writer. Teesri Manzil is that rare caper that brings together the fun elements of Nasir Hussain’s brand of cinema with Vijay Anand’s command of suspense. And the songs (“Oh haseena zulfo waali” and “Tumne mujhe dekha”, to name just two) have their classic touch. After all, between Hussain and Anand lies the secret to Hindi film music. Couldn’t have asked for more, could we? PS: This film was designed for Dev Anand. But in walked Shammi Kapoor and he made it his own. Rocky is a musician and who better than Kapoor, with his hipster vibe way back in the 1960s, to play that role.Also read | Naya Daur, Rang De Basanti, Bandit Queen and more: Your guide to 10 socially relevant films from Bollywood‘Macchli pakadne ka shauq tumhe bhi hai, mujhe bhi’ — Seth Vishambar Nath“I am not Amar,” Dev Anand repeatedly clarifies, as Vyjayantimala aka Shalu insists she had been cheated. Was she really engaged to Amar? The proof is a glittering rock on her finger. Further confusion: Is Dev Anand Amar or police commissioner’s son Vinay. Is he an imposter? Director Vijay Anand combines the classic Hitchcockian ‘Innocent Man Wrongly Accused’ trope with an enigmatic plot, lots of memorable music, chase scenes, suave characters and connect-the-dots surprises that makes Jewel Thief flamboyantly pulpy. Dev Anand fills the screen with his goofy gait and loosey-goosey charm while Vyjayantimala proves that there’s no better dancer than her. Watch “Hoton mein aisi baat”, which works as a showcase for her dancing skills just as it for Vijay Anand’s knack for mixing suspense with heightened musical drama to forge out a perfect Bollywood moment. One of the scene-stealers is Ashok Kumar. Hindi cinema’s doyen is an embodiment of a stylish villain — cunning, double-crossing, sly and a true wolf in sheep’s clothing. As Vinay (Dev Anand) tells Kumar’s Arjun Singh in the final confrontation, “Phir aise badhiya badhiya actoron ki sohbat mein aadmi thodi bohot acting toh seekh hi jaata hai.” He could be saying that just as well about the thespian Ashok Kumar and not Arjun Singh.(Shaikh Ayaz is a writer and journalist based in Mumbai)

Serial killer armed with an iron rod, femme fatale: Welcome to Bollywood's heart of darknessPremium Story
‘Nothing comes easy’: Anand Mahindra lauds Neeraj Chopra’s ‘back-breaking effort’
The Indian Express | 2 months ago | |
The Indian Express
2 months ago | |

Olympic gold medallist in javelin throw Neeraj Chopra has inspired business tycoon Anand Mahindra with his workout routine. The demanding routine reminded Mahindra of Chopra’s “extraordinary, back-breaking effort” and praises have poured in the comments section.The clip shared by the chairman of Mahindra and Mahindra shows the javelin thrower sprinting, taking leaps and training his body for strength and stamina. “Just watching the workout routine of @Neeraj_chopra1 reminds me of the extraordinary, back-breaking effort that lies ‘behind-the-scenes’ of any victory. Nothing comes easy…” tweeted Mahindra.Just watching the workout routine of @Neeraj_chopra1 reminds me of the extraordinary, back-breaking effort that lies ‘behind-the-scenes’ of any victory. Nothing comes easy… pic.twitter.com/cgMRcZaDkq— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 17, 2023Since being shared on Tuesday, the clip has amassed more than 732,200 views on Twitter. Netizens too were impressed by the remarkable efforts put in by the reigning Olympic champion. A user commented, “Gosh..and to do this day in and day out,relentless.That’s what champions are made from.” Another user wrote, “True! long term success can only be hard-earned, no other way.” A third user commented, “Thats why it is said, ‘hard work pays.'”Chopra is currently at UK’s Loughborough University where he is training ahead of the 2023 season. He is slated to participate in the world championships and the Asian Games this year. The 25-year-old is expected to compete in the World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August, the Asian Games in Hangzhou in September and also take part in competitions in the Diamond League series.Chopra recorded a historic win at the Diamond League Finals last year, bagging gold after winning silver at the World Championships, also last year, and emerging at the top in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

‘Nothing comes easy’: Anand Mahindra lauds Neeraj Chopra’s ‘back-breaking effort’
Day after Sodhi quit, minister Panchal calls it ‘routine process’
The Indian Express | 2 months ago | |
The Indian Express
2 months ago | |

A day after RS Sodhi, managing director of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), stepped down, Gujarat Minister of State for Cooperation Jagdish Panchal on Tuesday called it part of a “routine process”.“It is a routine process. At present, there is no probe or inquiry ordered against him,” Panchal told The Indian Express when asked if there was anything amiss that had caused GCMMF to seek his resignation during a board meeting held on Monday.Monday’s sudden change of guard at the GCMMF, known by its brand name Amul, caused intense speculation given the tone of the letter addessed to Sodhi, signed by GCMMF chairman Shamal Patel and vice-chairman Valamji Humbal.“The board has resolved that you end your services as the managing director of the federation with immediate effect. Thus you should leave the charge as MD with immediate effect,” the letter stated.On Tuesday, Jayen Mehta, who was the chief operating officer of the federation, took charge as the interim managing director of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) at Anand, a day after his predecessor Sodhi stepped down from the post.Like Sodhi, Mehta who joined GCMMF in 1991, too, is an alumni of the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). A gold medalist in Bachelor of Business Administration (Marketing), Mehta had held charge as MD of Amul Dairy in 2018 for six months when the incumbent chairman K Rathnam resigned citing personal reasons.Rathnam who was MD of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union Limited (KDCMPUL), popularly known as Amul Dairy — one of the 18 dairy unions of GCMMF, is now CEO of Milky Mist Dairy in Coimbatore.Amul Dairy then put out a statement on the resignation and the appointment of Mehta as the incharge MD of Amul Dairy. However, in the case of Sodhi, there is no official word so far from GCMMF.The chairman and vice-chairman of GCMMF could not be reached despite multiple attempts. The Indian Dairy Association of which Sodhi is president is to host its 49th dairy conference in Gandhinagar from March 16-18.Mehta is also a member of the standing committee of International Dairy Federation (IDF). During his tenure at the GCMMF, he worked across multiple functional areas and led strategic initiatives in the domain of information technology, digitisation, exports, advertising, brand building, new product launch and total quality management.During his long career, Mehta functioned as brand manager of Amulya Dairy Whitener and Amulspray Infant Milk Food. He was also in charge of Dhara edible oils and Safal fruit drinks — brands of NDDB that were distributed by GCMMF — from 1995 to 2000.

Day after Sodhi quit, minister Panchal calls it ‘routine process’
Actors, filmmakers, trade experts break down Bollywood's annus horribilis
The Indian Express | 2 months ago | |
The Indian Express
2 months ago | |

The box-office performance of most Bollywood films in 2022 has been volatile. As most filmmakers and actors had a tough past year, many of them spoke about what they’ve learnt from what their audience is trying to tell them and how they can bring them back to the theatres.2022 saw Alia Bhatt‘s Gangubai Kathiawadi directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Kartik Aaryan‘s Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 directed by Anees Bazmee, Ranbir Kapoor‘s Brahmastra directed by Aayan Mukerji, Varun Dhawan’s Jug Jugg Jeeyo directed by Raj Mehta, Akshay Kumar’s Samrat Prithviraj and Ram Setu, Hrithik Roshan’s Vikram Vedha and Ajay Devgn’s Drishyam 2, among others. Only a few of them managed to emerge as hits with others outrightly rejected by the audience despite their star value. To understand what went wrong, and what are the takeaways for a better 2023 at the box-office, indianexpress.com spoke to some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.  A post shared by Vicky Kaushal (@vickykaushal09)‘Audience have demarcated films into good and bad films’: Vicky KaushalActor Vicky Kaushal, who did not have any theatrical release this year, was seen attending screenings of most Bollywood films, including his wife, Katrina Kaif’s Phone Bhoot. When asked what is his big takeaway from the box-office this year, and how he’s preparing for the next year when he’ll have multiple releases, he said, “My personal takeaway is that people have demarcated films into good films and bad films and that puts me in a very happy space. You follow your instincts as an actor and make good films, and then people either resonate with them or they don’t. People have broken every formula and are clearly saying that there is no formula, just give us good films, entertainers. That’s very clear, they are saying, just entertain us.”On what changes with these learning, he said, “People just want to have a good time, they just want to feel the emotion, they just want stories that connect to characters. So now when you do films that’s all you have to keep in mind. It’s not like ‘yeh genre nahi chalega or yeh story nahi chalegi‘. Ab sab chalega and sab nahi bhi chalega, agar acchha hai toh sab chalega, agar acchha nahi amhai toh kuch nahi chalega. Use any formula of your choice, it won’t work. So now when I’m sitting and discussing new films, all I’m thinking about is whether it will connect with the audience or not. Any film can come and surprise you. Drishyam 2 is a big thing, it came out of nowhere and it was unstoppable. It is not like a formula that it has a scale like RRR, or comedy like Bhool Bhulaiya (2). It is a good gripping story with great content film, which worked wonderfully. If it is a good film, toh mazaa aayega, even if we don’t know the actors.”  A post shared by Shashank Khaitan (@shashankkhaitan)‘Audiences and film industry are still recovering from pandemic’: Shashank KhaitanFilmmaker Shashank Khaitan — who’s delivered hits like Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya and Badrinath Ki Dulhaniya — thinks 2022 was a transitional phase, where people were still tackling the losses incurred during the pandemic and Covid-19 induced lockdowns, and that we’re being too harsh on Bollywood. He says, “To be honest, we’re all trying to figure it out but I think I have a very different perspective on it, we have to realise that two years of Covid-19 was tough on everyone, especially on middle class people, financially. Probably in 2019, people were saying let’s watch all the three films in theatres this month, but today they’re willing to watch only one or none in a month. I think we all need to be patient, we all need to give it some time. It is foolish to think that the recovery of it will happen in three weeks or in a matter of a few months, things will turn around. I think it will take at least six more months for things to settle. We’ll still have one big film coming and doing the numbers or one off the chart film coming.”Khaitan also cited Drishyam 2’s example. “See how Drishyam 2 happened, we all knew it was a loved franchise but this kind of box-office was unexpected. I think we all need to trust ourselves and not follow anything (blindly) and believe that our content is not good enough. This is the same industry that made Rang De Basanti, 3 Idiots, PK, Munna Bhai MBBS, Raazi and other great films, so it’s not that we haven’t done it in the past and we can’t do it anymore. We have to trust ourselves, be patient, and give people time to recover economically,” Khaitan adds.  A post shared by Komal Nahta (@komal.nahta)‘Star strength failed to pull audiences to the theatres’: Komal NahtaTrade expert Komal Nahta believes that star power doesn’t sell on its own, and every star will have to reinvent, reimagine and deliver great content. He says, “Stars on their own strength could not attract the audience whether it was Bhediya, or Jersey, or Cirkus, or Vikram Vedha, none of these films could open on the star names. People would rather go for good content than just go for top stars. Great content with lesser stars has a much better chance of working than average content with topmost stars. People have consumed content from across the world and have realised the value of great content.”  A post shared by Anand Pandit (@anandpandit)‘We will get through this’: Anand PanditFilm producers have had the toughest year, with few films able to return investment. Producer Anand Pandit, who backed films like Thank God and Doctor G, says, “The biggest learning from 2022 is that after every low there is a high. I have always been an optimist and even during the worst months of the pandemic, when people were making dire predictions about the future of cinema, I maintained that we will get through this time because we are a resolute and resilient industry. We recovered from the lockdown months, production delays and huge losses. We not only survived, but are on our way to the pre-pandemic deluge of fresh releases and blockbusters. I do acknowledge the odds, but the biggest life lesson for me is to always remember that change is the only constant and we have to keep evolving with it. And we have learnt and evolved in the way we now write and make films. We are keeping up with the changing tastes of the audience and learning from our mistakes. The only way to go from here is up. Evolution is the ultimate truth of life.”What are the trends to look out for in 2023?Pandit says, “The biggest lesson is to not take the audience for granted by offering the same, predictable fare day in and day out. The entertainment landscape has changed enormously in the past few years and we cannot make films in a bubble oblivious to these shifts. Today, audiences will patronise a film in theatres and spend their hard-earned money only if they are offered an extraordinary experience that they cannot access right at home on their OTT streamers.”“Whether we are telling intimate stories or creating massive entertainers, we need to invest honesty and authenticity in our work and not try to fool the people we are making films for. When makers lose sight of the people who are going to watch the film, that is when they truly lose big time at the box-office. As far as the winning formula is concerned, there is none as far as filmmaking goes. As I said before, you have to tell every story to the best of your ability and with complete conviction,” he adds.Komal Nahta has a mic drop moment, as he gives his final word. According to him, even when superstars have not delivered this year, if they use their star power to tell good stories through good films, 2023 will be the year when Bollywood will rise.“Better times will return because the industry has definitely learnt its lessons. People have said that half baked scripts, lesser scripts will not work, so makers have started working very hard on scripts, very hard on content and those films will probably start releasing mid 2023, and we’ll see the results. If great content with lesser stars work then you can imagine what it will be when there is great content with top-most stars. Business will multiply manifold and that is going to happen. So, we’ve learnt our lesson, it is not as if Bollywood is over or stars are over. Stars might have not shined for the time being but they’ll bounce because when good content comes with those top-stars, sky will be the limit and that is bound to happen,” Nahta concludes.

Actors, filmmakers, trade experts break down Bollywood's annus horribilis
Less than one-third of transgender community voted in Gujarat Assembly polls, members claim ‘incomplete registrations’
The Indian Express | 3 months ago | |
The Indian Express
3 months ago | |

Even as the overall voting percentage for the two-phased Gujarat Assembly polls remained low at 64.33 per cent, the third gender especially recorded a rather dismal turnout at 31.99 per cent. While the transgender community claims that the registrations of voters on the electoral roll were incomplete, the State Election Commission (SEC) says that it is at a loss at the lower turnout of the third gender.The transgenders, who were recognised by the Election Commission of India (ECI) as a separate gender category in 2014, have increased in count on the voter list since the 2017 Assembly polls — where they first voted as the third gender.From 702 registered transgender voters in 2017 to about 1,100 registered transgender voters in the Lok Sabha polls of 2019, currently, 1,391 transgenders have registered as voters.However, only 445 turned up across 33 districts of Gujarat to cast their votes 2022 polls.In 2017, 298 out of 702 transgenders voted in the Gujarat Assembly polls making a turnout of 42%.Vadodara district has the highest number of transgender voters at 226. However, only 74 came out to vote, making a voter turn out of 32.74%. While only 10 out of the 94 registered transgenders from Vadodara’s Akota constituency turned out to vote, 41 out of 51 registered transgenders cast their vote in the Raopura constituency.In Ahmedabad, only 47 out of the 209 transgenders voted making a voter turnout of 22.49 per cent, while 51 out of 160 transgenders voted in Surat marking 31.88% voter turn out.Anand, where 53 of 128 registered transgender voters came out to cast their votes, saw a turnout of 41.41 per cent.Tapi district, which has only four transgender voters saw a 75% voter turn out with three coming out to vote, followed by Patan at 65.38% turn out where 17 of the 26 transgenders voted.In Botad too, three of the five registered transgender voters exercised their franchise, making a 60 per cent voter turn out.Dahod, where 16 transgenders were registered as voters, saw zero turnout, along with Narmada and Dangs districts having two registered transgender voters, each.The transgender community says that the lower voting percentage is a result of “incomplete registrations” of voters.Urvashi Kunwar, from the ‘Kinnar dera’ in Baranpura area of Vadodara, who also works as a volunteer with Lakshya Trust and the Garima Gruh for transgenders in Vadodara was allegedly among the many who could not vote this year.“I had voted in 2017 but in the revision rolls, my name was not found at the polling station. About 100 new transgenders were waiting for their voter id cards until the last day. They were enrolled as voters by the District Election Office. But despite repeated follow-ups, the voter id cards did not arrive,” Urvashi said.However, another transgender from Anand district, who identifies herself as Jasmeen, says many registered transgenders could not vote due to “migration” after Covid-19 pandemic.Jasmeen said, “Many transgenders, who were not part of the deras like in Vadodara and Ahmedabad, could not survive in the same place during the pandemic. A lot of them went back to native villages or even outside the state in search of work… Some have not approached the election officers for revision of rolls. Many transgender voters have also stayed away from voting because they are disillusioned with the fact that nothing has much changed on the ground for the thid gender in terms of security, healthcare or living standards… Transgenders are no body’s votebank.”Manvendrasinh Gohil of the erstwhile Rajpipla royal family, who is the patron trustee of Lakshya Trust that works for the LGBTQ community said, “It is essential for transgenders to come out and vote and feel part of the mainstream… I have not yet gone into the details, but I learnt that some of them faced a problem in voting during the polls. It is important for the administration to reach out to the transgenders so that they are included in the system.”Chief Election Officer, Gujarat, P Bharthi told The Indian Express that the low voter turnout among transgenders had highlighted the need to “focus more” on campaigns for the third gender.“We can’t find a reason to attribute to this low turnout because we have revised the electoral rolls and added more third-gender voters since 2017 Assembly polls. Maybe, the figures are an indication that we must focus more on the community in future voter awareness campaigns. Even this time, we had not left any stone unturned,” Bharathi said.Rajkot, which had 34, registered transgender voters saw a voting percentage of 41.18 % with 14 transgenders casting their vote on the polling day. Bharati added that the State Election Commission had not received any complaints from transgenders about being unable to vote.

Less than one-third of transgender community voted in Gujarat Assembly polls, members claim ‘incomplete registrations’
Winter rain leaves farmers worried in Gujarat
Times of India | 3 months ago | |
Times of India
3 months ago | |

SURAT/VADODARA: The semblance of winter chill experienced in the state gave way to wet weather as several parts of Gujarat received drizzles to moderate rain on Wednesday under the impact of Cyclone Mandous residual effect. As predicted, the southern Gujarat districts of Dang, Valsad, and parts of Bharuch, witnessed sporadic rainfall. The wet weather left farmers growing vegetables and fruits a worried lot. Rain in Hansot, Bharuch Light drizzles were reported in Surat and parts of Ahmedabad cities even as cloudy weather prevailed throughout the day. Visitors in the state's only hill station Saputara experienced drizzles along with cold. Due to rainy weather, outdoor activities were hampered in Saputara. In Bharuch's Hansot taluka, the unseasonal rain left a large number of farmers brooding over their vegetable crops Several roads in Hansot town were soaked with continuous rainfall. In most parts of central Gujarat, the sky remained overcast for a better part of the day on Wednesday. Light showers were witnessed in the Naswadi and Kawant villages in Chhota Udepur district. Isolated drizzle also took place in Tilakwada taluka in Narmada district. While no rain was reported in Anand, Panchmahal, Mahisagar, Dahod and Vadodara districts, the district administration in Dahod advised farmers in the district to cover any food grains stored by them in wake of the possibility of rain. The forecast by India Meteorological Department (IMD) stated: "Light rain is very likely at isolated places in the districts Ahmedabad, Kheda, Anand, Mahisagar, Aravalli, Tapi, Dang, Surat, Narmada, Navsari, Valsad and in Daman, Dadra Nagar Haveli, Botad, Rajkot, Amreli, Gir-Somnath and Junagadh." Residents of Ahmedabad were also caught unawares in the afternoon as drizzles soaked several parts. Several parts of Bhavnagar and Amreli districts also recorded rainfall.

Winter rain leaves farmers worried in Gujarat
Covid killed their son, hope reborn as baby girl in Gujarat
Times of India | 3 months ago | |
Times of India
3 months ago | |

AHMEDABAD: Pragnya and Vimal Shah, a couple in their 50s from Nadiad town in Anand district, were crestfallen when their only son — Krupal, 23, — suddenly succumbed to Covid on April 25, 2021. Within days, more sorrow befell the couple when Shah’s parents Smita and Sevanti Shah also passed away, killed by the viral infection during the second Covid wave. On December 1, when Gujarat was busy with the first phase of the 15th assembly election, the couple celebrated the fifthmonth birth commemoration of their daughter Hetvi. The couple had lost all reason to live as they reeled from the triple whammy of losing three members of their family to Covid. But they say the birth of Hetvi has given them hope and joy. “You cannot understand the pain of losing your only son. Krupal was in the final year of MCA, days away from taking the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam and flying off to Cana da to build a career in the IT industry,” says Pragnya. “His future was bright and we as parents were thriving on the possibility of his success. Suddenly, that most important person was no more. I didn’t even get to meet him the final time due to Covid-death protocols. ” The couple lost Krupal when all of Gujarat was going through one of its wor st medical crises, precipitated by the Delta virus-led second wave of Covid. These were the times when a large number of parents lost their children. These were also the times when a number of couples who were in different stages of planned parenthood lost their partners, putting their couple goals in jeopardy. An NRI woman had approached the high court to get permission for the extraction of sperm from her Covid critical husband, who was on ventilator. Her hope was to become the mother of his child after his demise. That case had hit the hea dlines and profoundly moved people. But few couples could bear to undertake the journey to parenthood after losing young children to the pandemic. Pragnya says in her desperation to process the loss of her son, she had tried to get into the hospital as a fake patient so that she could talk to nurses or ward staff to know his last thoughts and words. “I was giv en a dressing down and sent away. Nobody understood my emotions,” says Pragnya. As the Shahs grappled with their overwhelming loss, their family and friends came together to suggest a path to hope. “My sister, my husband’s friends and family members all told us that medical technology had made huge advancements and we could try for another child which could help fill the vacuum left by Krupal’s death,” says Pragnya. The couple clutched at this strawand started treatment merely months after losing their son. As Pragnya had her uterus removed years ago following a medic al complication, the couple opted for surrogacy. The Shah couple got lucky as the first cycle resulted in pregnancy. On July 1, 2022, the couple became the parents of a baby girl whom they havenamed Hetvi. The couple say that Hetvi has given them a reason to live. In fact, the couple say they do not feel the vagaries of age while bringing up the infant whom they think is a reflection of their son. “Hetvi is my heartbeat. She is at the centre of my existence. Despite me hitting 50, I feel no fatigue or lethargy when I get up to tend to her, ” says Pragnya. Her husband Vimal, who shared a strong bond with their son, calls at least 10 times a day from his grocery store to talk to Hetvi on video calls. Interestingly in the Shahs’ case, their friends and family supported them through their journey to reclaim parenthood. “My friends nudged us to come out of our depression and take help of medical a dvancements,” says Vimal. “Generally, couples get discouraged from becoming parents in old age — what will society say, is the fearful question. But society inspired and supported us. ” The Shahs believe that Krupal has come back to them as Hetvi. “Krupal was very quiet and happy as a child. Hetvi is like him, a happy child who does not fuss and give me tr ouble,” says Pragnya. Dr Naina Patel, a fertility specialist in Anand, says the couple were staggered by their son’s loss and the child has helped them cope. “But I was lucky we becam e pregnant before the new Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Rules came into force. They do not allow women over 50 and men over 55 a chance at parenting,” says Pragnya. Fertility specialists say after the Covid peak, a number of couples rendered childless approached them. “But many did not meet the eligibility guidelines stipulated by the new ART rules,” says Dr Falguni Bavishi, a fertility expert in Ahmedabad.

Covid killed their son, hope reborn as baby girl in Gujarat
Set to milk hold over Gujarat dairy co-ops, BJP eyes pole position in Phase II polls
The Indian Express | 3 months ago | |
The Indian Express
3 months ago | |

The cash-rich milk cooperatives in Gujarat are likely to have a significant bearing on nearly 50 per cent of the 93 seats bound for the second phase of the state Assembly polls on December 5. These co-operatives, earlier run by functionaries aligned with the Congress, are now controlled by leaders affiliated to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).Banas Dairy in Banaskantha district, which is the biggest milk co-operative in Gujarat, and four other top co-operative dairies — in Mehsana, Anand, Sabarkantha and Panchmahal districts — together account for 75 per cent of the total 280 lakh litres of milk procured daily by the GCMMF.In October this year, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), an umbrella body of the state’s dairy cooperative unions, hiked the prices of Amul brand of milk by Rs 2 per litre for all its markets except Gujarat, which drew criticism from West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee, who accused the BJP of allegedly indulging in “vote bank politics”.The GCMMF’s managing director RS Sodhi had then told The Indian Express that the milk sold outside Gujarat was already subsidised and that the hike was to bring its prices on par with the state home to Amul and to cover the freight costs. The GCMMF comprises of 18 district cooperative milk producers unions, which are made up of the members of the village dairy co-operatives in each district.Increased income of dairy farmers, who are members of the village “doodh mandlis (milk co-operatives)”, from selling milk is perceived to influence voters in the rural belts in Gujarat. In the last five years, the GCMMF has increased the milk procurement price by 18-20 per cent. Currently, a milk producing farmer earns Rs 37 for one litre of cow milk sold to the GCMMF, while his income is between Rs 50-55 for buffalo milk a litre.Dominating Gujarat’s dairy co-operatives, the BJP has been looking to tap into its significant support base among dairy farmers to edge out the principal Opposition Congress and claim a commanding position in the second phase of the polls. The new entrant in the fray, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), is virtually non-existent in the state’s co-operative sector.“The Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union headquartered at Anand is jointly run by the BJP and the Congress leaders. While the chairman Ramsinh Parmar is now with the BJP, the vice-chairman Rajendrasinh Parmar is with the Congress. The rest 17 unions are controlled by the BJP. Over two decades ago, all these unions were controlled by leaders aligned to the Congress party,” said a GCMMF source.પશુપાલકોના વ્યવસાયને મળશે નવી ધાર, ઝડપી બનશે પ્રગતિની રફ્તાર#આવશે_ભાજપ_ફાવશે_ભાજપ#ભરોસાની_ભાજપ_સરકાર#કમળ_ખીલશે_ગુજરાત_જીતશે#ભાજપ_આવે_છે pic.twitter.com/GHvgos62Ik— BJP Gujarat (@BJP4Gujarat) December 4, 2022Ramsinh Parmar was among the Congress leaders who quit the party with the then Leader of Opposition Shankersinh Vaghela in 2017. He subsequently joined the BJP, which has given ticket in this election to his son Yogendra Parmar from Thasra in Kheda district. In adjoining Anand, Rajendrasinh Parmar is himself contesting the election as a Congress candidate from the Borsad constituency. “In the cooperative structure, we (the Congress and the BJP) as board members are working together for the farmers. But Assembly elections are a different ball game. We (Congress) are sure to win in Anand district,” claimed Rajendrasinh.Apart from Anand and Kheda, which have seven and six Assembly seats respectively, Banaskantha (9 seats), Patan (4 seats), Mehsana (7 seats), Sabarkantha (4 seats), Aravalli (3 seats), and Panchmahal (5 seats) have sizeable number of constituencies that are influenced by the milk cooperatives. All these districts are heading to polls on December 5. The dairy cooperatives in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Gandhinagar, which are also bound for polls in the second phase, are relatively smaller as these districts are more urban, although a number of Assembly seats in this region also fall in rural areas.The political influence of the milk cooperatives could be gauged from the point that in June this year the Centre even allowed two of them, Banas Dairy and Dudhsagar Dairy, to set up new “Sainik Schools” at Palanpur and Mehsana, respectively.Banas Dairy chairman and former BJP minister Shankar Chaudhary is contesting on the saffron party’s ticket from Tharad seat in Banaskantha. Banas Dairy has an annual revenue of Rs 15,200 crore and in June 2022 it distributed Rs 1,650 crore profit among the dairy farmers in north Gujarat.Dudhsagar Dairy in Mehsana, which procures milk from five lakh farmers from 1200 village-level cooperatives in Mehsana, Patan and Gandhinagar districts, has also passed on its profits to the farmers this year. This dairy was previously headed by Vipul Chaudhary, a former minister in the Vaghela government, who has been in jail in a case of alleged corruption running into Rs 800 crore. The dairy’s current chairman Ashok Chaudhary has now been campaigning in the region with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is also the country’s first Union Co-operation Minister.“This year, for the first time in 60 years, we have distributed a record Rs 321 crore among the farmers. This is expected to have a positive impact on the polling. We have also increased the milk procurement prices by Rs 6-7 per litre in the last 1.5 years. Currently, we are giving Rs 45-50 per litre to the farmers,” said Ashok Chaudhary.When asked if the supporters of Vipul Chaudhary, who is also currently with the BJP, could influence the elections in the belt, Ashok said, “The Arbuda Sena created by him has members of BJP, AAP and Congress. They had come together for the benefit of the community, but when politics came into the picture, the community stood divided. People are only concerned with good remuneration.”Vipul Chaudhary belongs to the influential Anjana Chaudhary community. In a show of strength before the polls, nearly two lakh members of this community from the north Gujarat had gathered at Mansa in Gandhinagar to pledge their support to Vipul. They had however refrained from spelling out their political preference for the polls.While the Congress election manifesto has promised a subsidy of Rs 5 per litre for milk producers, the BJP manifesto has promised an investment of Rs 10,000 crore for upgrading farm infrastructure including APMCs (Agriculture Produce Market Committee) and farm co-operatives. The BJP has promised subsidised cattle feed and introducing of Pashu Aadhar Cards” to keep a check on health and vaccination of livestock. The Congress has promised Rs 5,000 for every family that buys a cow. The AAP has promised to give Rs 40 per day as maintenance for every cattle in the state.

Set to milk hold over Gujarat dairy co-ops, BJP eyes pole position in Phase II polls
No cakewalk in sight: After KHAM, a storm in milk land
Times of India | 3 months ago | |
Times of India
3 months ago | |

Recently, the National Milk Day celebrations marking the birth anniversary of Dr Verghese Kurien, who is hailed as India’s milkman, culminated in Anand — India’s milk city. Even before India gained independence, seeds of the white revolution that changed the fortunes of millions of farmers and converted India from a milk-deficit country into the world’s largest milk producer were sown in Anand’s neighbouring district, Kaira, now Kheda. Headquarters of the Amul Dairy and the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, the apex body of all 18 milk unions of Gujarat that markets the brand, Amul, are located next to each other. The BJP has successfully turned the federation into a ‘Congress-mukt’ board in the past two decades. The heads of the 18 milk unions, who are board members in the federation, have links to the saffron party. Despite this, the Congress still counts in the complex structure of dairy cooperatives. If the BJP rewarded Amul Dairy’s chairman Ramsinh Parmar, a former Congress leader, by giving a ticket to his son Yogendra Parmar from Thasra seat in Kheda, Ramsinh’s deputy in Amul Dairy, Rajendrasinh Parmar, is eyeing another term as the Congress MLA from Borsad in Anand district. Kanti Sodha Parmar, another Amul Dairy board member, is eyeing a second term as a Congress MLA from the Anand seat. Sanjay Patel, another director of the milk union, is trying his luck for the third consecutive time on a Congress ticket from the Matar seat in Kheda. But it is not just dairy cooperatives that hold the key to assembly elections here. The twin districts of Anand and Kheda, broadly known as Charotar — the fertile region that falls between the Vatrak and Mahi rivers — are also known for their diaspora spread across the globe. They own so many motels in the US that the lodges have come to be known as ‘Potels’. It is also this land from where Madhavsinh Solanki once rose to become Gujarat’s chief minister. On the back of Solanki’s social engineering theory of KHAM (Kshatriyas,Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims), the Congress registered a thumping victory by getting 149 seats in the 1985 assembly election — a record that the BJP desperately tries to break every election without success. The Congress had bagged eight of the 13 assembly seats in Anandand Kheda, while the BJP got five in the 2017 election. With caste equations running deep, both the BJP and the Congress are banking on the caste backgrounds of the candidates to ensure victory this time. It is Patel versus Patel on some seats and Kshatriya versus Kshatriya on others. The poll issues in these twin districts are similar. Residents in Anand and Nadiad — the urban towns of Charotar — are battling congested roads, overflowing drains, stray cattle menace and waterlogging — an annual monsoon feature. In the countryside, there are villages where the power of pounds and dollars is evident through the RCC roads, CCTV cameras, and a strong network of hospitals and schools run by various trusts funded almost entirely by NRGs. But this hasn’t helped Anand get its own publicly funded civil hospital – a project that has remained on paper for 15 years despite two foundation stone laying ceremonies. The last one was performed by former DyCM Nitin Patel. Not surprisingly, the Congress has made it an election issue. “If we are voted to power in Gujarat, we will lay the foundation stone of a civil hospital in Anand in 48 hours, and its construction will begin the next day,” promised former GPCC president Amit Chavda. This four-time MLA from Anklav is the grandson of Ishwar Chavda, a five-time CongressMP from Anand, and cousin of former GPCC chief Bharatsinh Solanki. Refuting the charges, Pankaj Desai (Gotiyo), a five-time BJP MLA from Nadiad and chief whip of Gujarat since 2010, said: “We have set up a sports centre with an Olympic-size international level swimming pool,tennis courts, badminton court, and skating rink. We are broadening the railway underpasses, beautifying gardens, and developing lakes. ” Around 100km from Anand, the Panchmahal district with five seats came into focus in 2002 when the Sabarmati Express carnage took place in Godhra. Labelled as the Ground Zero of the 2002 Gujarat riots, Godhra struggles to shake off its communal image even though no major riots occurred after 2002. Amid a political campaign charged with attempts to polarise voters on religious grounds, development too remains the focus in Godhra. Locals point out the town has been in a state of neglect, and there have been times when the municipality has struggled to pay salaries to its safai workers or the power bill for streetlights. “The roads are not made or maintained in these areas. A railway underbridge is desperately needed, but nobody cares about this,” said AIMIM candidate Mufti Hasan Kachaba. The municipality president Sanjay Soni, however, pooh-poohs the charges of partiality. “We have given grants equally to all wards, and the long-pending work of the Kabrastan Road has also been taken up. The locals added money to our allocation to get better quality material,” Soni said. He was an independent councillor but later joined the BJP and was made the municipality president. Barring the 2002 election, Godhra was a stronghold of the Congress. The BJP’s Haresh Bhatt won the seat in 2002. After this, the seat remained with the Congress till C K Raulji ditched the party and joined the BJP. Raulji won from the BJP in 2017 with just 258 votes. The major parties have fielded local heavyweights on the Shehra, Halol, and Kalol seats. In Shehra, the BJP’s Jetha Ahir is a force to reckonwith, while BJP minister Jaydrathsinh Parmar has significant clout in Halol. Kalol has BJP turncoat Prabhatsinh Chauhan, a former minister, contesting from the Congress this time. The Halol constituency in the Panchmahal also has Pavagadh, that found mention in several election speeches. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have both pointed out how, during the BJP reign, a new temple was constructed, and a ‘dhwaja’ unfurled here, 500 years after invaders damaged it. The pilgrimage site has seen significant development over the years as part of a detailed plan. The election speeches also hail the tribal warriors from the region who fought against the British. Other backward class (OBC) votes dominate the electorate in Panchmahal. The Congress believes it has got the caste arithmetic right this time. “Our five candidates are from the OBC community, and the BJP has no local OBC candidate. This will work in our favour along with the anti-incumbency and discontent among the people,” said Rafiq Tijoriwala, Congress vice president of the Panchmahal unit. Mahisagar, among the youngest districts of the state, has three seats. These seats were in three other districts before Mahisagar was formed. The Balasinor seat was in Kheda, the Santrampur (ST) seat was in Dahod, and the Lunawada seat was in Panchmahal.

No cakewalk in sight: After KHAM, a storm in milk land
Gujarat: Underprivileged children splurge on happiness at this unique mall
Times of India | 4 months ago | |
Times of India
4 months ago | |

VADODARA/ANAND: It was nothing less than a visit to paradise for nearly 550 children from poor sections of the society studying in government schools when the 'Earth Mega Mall' opened its doors for them. The children splurged on the sizeable collection of toys, clothes, stationery, and books of their choice in milk city Anand, thanks to long-drawn efforts by the Voluntary Nature Conservancy (formerly known as Vidyanagar Nature Club) aimed at spreading smiles on these little faces. The collection drive had started before Diwali festivities was finally put together for the mega event organized inside the Maruti Solaris Mall in Anand. Through the collection drive, VNC's team had collected nearly 15,000 items which were segregated in 32 segments by 100-odd medical students. "The aim of putting up this mall was not only to help children from underprivileged sections of the society but also to reduce the pressure on Mother Nature to produce more," said Anirudh Vasava, executive director of VNC. "We believe in the principle of reduce, reuse and recycle to limit the pressure on Mother Nature for resources. We had started the drive accepting donations of items such as clothes, toys, bags, stationery which were in good condition and can be reused by keeping donation boxes at 15 elite schools of Anand region," he said. "On Friday, children from nine government schools most of them located on the outskirts of the city or besides slum areas were invited for the event," he said. "Each child was handed over a cloth bag consisting of 1,500 smiley points. Using the smiley points, they were able to buy things. There were many who stepped inside and got experience of a mall for the first time in their life. By giving the children the choice of selecting the items, we also wanted to ensure that their self-respect in maintained," he said. Students from Classes 6 to 8, in the age group of 12 to 14 years, were invited for the event which was promoted by VNC as an unique mall where happiness is sold against the smiles.

Gujarat: Underprivileged children splurge on happiness at this unique mall