A comedy of errors & a reminder: BJP’s Kerala mouthpiece Janmabhumi, publishing the editorial page of the Indian Union Muslim League’s daily Chandrika on New Year’s Day, has left readers flummoxed. While the Left leaders poke fun at their rivals, they are reminded of a similar blunder by their official party organ over 15 years ago, when CPI(M)-affiliated daily Deshabhimani’s Gulf edition had carried the edit page of Chandrika in 2010. Sharing the paper, former legislator K N A Khader wrote on Facebook: “It created a major controversy. Deshabhimani took back the unsold copies following the blunder. I had witnessed agents flitting in and out of shops to collect the unsold copies.”
With that, let’s move on to the top 5 stories from today’s edition:
🚨 Big Story
What began as a trickle with six patients being admitted at Bhagirathpura’s Urban Primary Health Centre soon turned into a deluge as clinics saw numbers jump from 129 to over 300 in a single day. Now, a week ahead, a mobilised army of health workers have screened 66,107 people across nearly 13,000 households in Indore. The contamination of drinking water by waste from a toilet in the Madhya Pradesh district has exposed faultlines and put civic infrastructure under unprecedented strain. My colleague, Anand Mohan J, speaks to several doctors on the frontlines, who helped set up effective treatments and healthcare officials who screened panicked families door-to-door to ensure the damage was contained.
Taking stock of the crisis, the Madhya Pradesh government has removed the Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) chairman, and suspended its additional commissioner and the in-charge superintending engineer (SE) of the waterworks section. Government sources have attributed the failure to coordinate lower-level officials who “wilfully disregarded senior officials”, failure to fix the broken water pipeline, and lack of movement on a tender to fix the water lines among the reasons for the removal.
⚡ Only in Express
‘A typical Indian sport story’: Since 2019, India has witnessed a multifold spike in the participation numbers (credits: women athletes) in some of the major sports, with players emerging as world champions. The real impact of India’s championship medals earned at global platforms is seen way beyond the podium, across the country’s sprawling geography. Shivani Naik, Mihir Vasavda, and Nihal Koshie trace the evolution of Indian sports through three iconic stories – a badminton dream nurtured inside a no-frills academy, a budding javelin thrower from the atolls of Lakshadweep, and lastly, a shooting prodigy from a chemical cluster in Gujarat.
World No 1: India’s passion for badminton has continued to grow exponentially even after the Saina Nehwal-P V Sindhu crest, throwing up gigantic numbers. Doubles entries are now reaching unprecedented heights, on the back of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty’s success. They have become the first Indian pair to reach World No 1 after winning Asian Games & Championships gold and Commonwealth Games gold, besides world championship events.
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‘Jave-lution’: Since Neeraj Chopra clinched gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, its impact could be felt on the Indian javelin scene. Between 2019 and 2024, women’s participation in junior national javelin championships skyrocketed from 31 to 137, a staggering 125% spike. For Chopra, this trend feels “like a dream come true”
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Meanwhile, Aditi Rajeshwari and Agam Aditya’s success is a testament to shooting’s wide reach, increasing popularity, consistent medals at the world level, and deep penetration into regions where the sport is not even in the general consciousness of the people. Here’s how India turned into a global shooting force.
💡 Express Explained
Zohran Mamdani has finally taken over as the Mayor of New York City – the beating heart of capitalism – promising to aggressively tax the rich. In our latest GDP column, Udit Misra shares the key takeaways of the Office of the New York State Comptroller (OSC) report on where NYC finances stood just before Mamdani took charge. “The main worry about any set of government finances is whether the budget is balanced or not. In other words, does the government have the money it intends to spend? If not, it means a budget deficit and forces such a government to borrow. If there is a surplus, such governments are well-positioned to handle a crisis such as a recession or a health emergency (like a pandemic),” Misra explains.
✍️ Express Opinion
In our Opinion section today, Munish Tamang calls for our attention on the severity of racism in India, amidst the killing of Anjel Chakma, a student from Tripura, in Dehradun last week. Tamang highlights the “lack of demonstrable institutional and political intent in fighting the menace.” He writes: “Clearly, more needs to be done to combat the casual racism that one comes across daily in the form of offensive jokes at its mildest, to racial chants, physical and mental assault, and grievous physical violence at its worst.”
🎬 Movie Review
Not a war film: Wondering what to watch this weekend? Well, we’ve got you covered! Sriram Raghavan’s Ikkis has hit the theatres, portraying second Lt Arun Khetarpal, who did not live to be 22. He fought with his last breath during the 1971 Indo-Pak war, becoming the youngest Army officer to be awarded a Param Vir Chakra. Shubhra Gupta writes in her review that the movie stands out “from the overwhelmingly jingoistic, disturbingly violent features of the past few years. This is as anti-Dhurandhar a film as you can hope to watch in theatres this year, a film that speaks of the residual connections between people regardless of borders, as opposed to those whose intention is to stoke old wounds, and create new ones.”
That’s it for today, have a lovely weekend!
Until next time,
Ariba
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Business As Usual by E P Unny
