THE SUBCONTINENTAL MENUIN & AROUND
MEDIA MAYHEMS
CRIBES across the world have
been riding choppy waves. But
for their Pakistani counterparts,
things just got worse. Ranked 142
on the press freedom index in 2019,
Pakistani media now has to contend
with censorship by the military and
a decline in government advertising
budgets. Consequently, hundreds
of journalists lost their jobs overthe past few months. “Authorities
control even minute details of
media content these days and dic-
tate who will be the face of print and
electronic media,” said Afzal Butt,
president of the Pakistan Federal
Union of Journalists. The union
has fought back by taking out rallies
and launching a nationwide protest
against censorship.PUPPET OR
GOVERNOR? (
MARKS)I
T was a question students
taking the Bihar Public Service
Commission exam were not
anticipating: “Critically examine
the role of governor in state
politics in India, particularly in
Bihar. Is he a mere puppet?”
As it led to an uproar, the
controller of examination
debarred the examiner from
setting papers in the future.
But it’s hard not to sympathise
with the examiner. Bihar
governors have often ignited
controversies—in 2000, B.C.
Pandey invited the NDA to form
the government even though
the RJD was the single-largest
party; in 2005, the SC criticised
Buta Singh for recommending
dissolution of the assembly.8 OUTLOOK 5 August 2019
T
HE august league of Darjeeling
tea, Hyderabadi haleem and
basmati rice is soon set to get a rather
pedestrian entrant—Indori poha.
The industrious sweetmeat sellers
of Indore are trying to garner the
coveted geographical indication (GI)
tag for four gastronomical delights
from the city —poha, shikanji, laung
sev and khatta-meetha namkeen.
“We have traced Indori poha to
1949 and the others to the early1930s,” gushes Anurag Pradhan,
the sec retary of the association
of snack manufacturers. He has
even marshalled photographic
evidence of Jawaharlal Nehru
and Amitabh Bachchan relishing
the delicacies. We wish Pradhan
and his peers the best of luck in
their endeavours. Hopefully their
bid won’t fall flat like Madhya
Pradesh’s quest to get a basmati GI
tag for its rice in 2018.RICE, SPICE & EVERYTHING NICEIllustrations by SAAHIL; Text curated by PUNEET NICHOLAS YADAV and ALKA GUPTAHOUSE THY NEIGHBOURF
OUR years after the ruthlessly
persecuted Rohingya were
forced to leave Myanmar’s Rakhine
province, there are efforts to
resettle them in their homeland.
India, China, Japan and ASEAN
countries are collaborating with
the Myanmar government for
the rehabilitation efforts. India
has dispatched over 250 pre-
fabricated houses to Rakhine and
reportedly pressed upon Myanmar
to send its foreign secretary to the
overcrowded Rohingya relief camps
in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar. There
are 40,000 Rohingya refugees in
India; 16 have been sent back to
Myanmar in the past two years.
India also plans to build schools,
bridges and hospitals in Rakhine
and has committed $25 million
for these projects.