The Evening Wrap: Reservation is no poverty alleviation programme, say petitioners at SC hearing

Reservation cannot be implemented as a “poverty alleviation programme” for the socially and educationally forward classes, which is what the economically weaker sections (quota) does, petitioners opened their challenge before a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit on Tuesday. Reservation addresses structural inequality and is not a means to become financially well-off. The purpose of reservation is to provide representation or empowerment to classes of people who were historically denied access to education and employment. Benefits of reservation cannot be given solely on the basis of economic criterion, they argued. Poverty in the forward classes can also be due to “poor personal wealth management”. Reservation on the basis of economic criterion creates a “moral hazard” -- a gambler who lost all his money cannot be made eligible for reservation. “Winning a lottery would be a quicker way of ending financial incapacity than reservation. Using financial incapacity [as a criterion for reservation] creates what economists call a moral hazard… It has the potential to reward those who lose money foolishly or carelessly or “immorally” such as through gambling by making them eligible for reservations,” renowned jurist, Dr. G. Mohan Gopal, opened the arguments for the petitioners before the five-judge Bench. Dr. Gopal said the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, which introduced the 10% EWS quota, was a “fraud on the Constitution”. “Parliament knew well that it has no power to provide reservations for socially and educationally forward classes. That it has no power to provide reservation to any class except backward classes as held in the Indira Sawhney judgment. Yet, because of political considerations, it did so deliberately and falsely projecting the Amendment as economic reservation for the benefit of economically weaker sections…” he contended. Petitioners and intervenors, represented by senior advocates Meenakshi Arora and Sanjay Parikh and advocate Prasanna S., found chinks in the criteria set to identify EWS in the society. “To judge anyone as poor on the basis of self-declaration and only on the basis of one previous year’s income makes the implementation of the whole scheme full of loopholes. No one can be termed as poor by having one year’s income as less than ₹8 lakh. In a country where less than 5% file income tax returns, and that too is open to manipulations, any such scheme is practically not implementable. To make such unreal, arbitrary and impractical scheme a part of the Constitution is disrespectful to the Constitution makers and shows lack of thinking on the part of the Union of India,” one of the petitioners argued. Dr. Gopal argued that those earning a gross annual family income of at or below ₹ 66,666 a month or ₹ 8 lakh annually were eligible for the EWS quota. “These numbers should be compared against the 2021 estimate of Pew Research, the renowned global fact-tank, once helmed by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, that 93.7% of the people of India have a family income of less than ₹25,000 per month per family of four. The EWS criteria will therefore give eligibility not only to Forward Classes amongst this 93.7% but also to those who earn between ₹25,000 and ₹66,000 per month per family of four, who fall amongst an elite 6% of the country that earn above ₹25,000 per family per month,” he contended. Submissions drafted by advocate Kaleeswaram Raj pointed out how the amendment clearly excluded citizens belonging to OBC/SC/ST who were economically weaker. Poverty is an impediment which knows no caste or social backwardness. It transcends across categories and across geographical spread. It is an impediment which cannot be restricted to advanced castes alone, by any stretch of imagination, the petitioners argued. Raj said no demographic study was conducted before proposing the 103rd Amendment, which was only a “populist measure”. Ishrat Jahan case probe team member Satish Chandra Verma dismissed from service Gujarat cadre Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Satish Chandra Verma, who assisted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in probing the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, was dismissed from service on August 30, a month before he was to superannuate on September 30, for giving an interview to a TV channel in 2016. Verma has filed two special leave petitions (SLPs) in the Supreme Court against the order which states that in 2016 a concerted media campaign started to discredit the evidence in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case with “senior members of the ruling party” and retired officers joining the campaign. It adds that false accusations of torture were made against him by R.V.S. Mani, a former Under Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), and he denied the accusations as media surrounded him at the official guesthouse in Guwahati in 2016. The 1986 batch IPS officer had challenged the disciplinary proceedings initiated against him by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in the Delhi High Court and it was during the hearing of the case on August 30 that the Ministry informed the court that Verma has been dismissed from service on August 30. “The dismissal would mean that he will not be entitled to any pension or other benefits. The High Court had earlier given him protection from any coercive action. We have filed two SLPs in the Supreme Court. The High Court order says the dismissal cannot come into effect till September 19,” Sarim Naved, counsel for Verma, told The Hindu. In all, three chargesheets were served by the MHA on Verma — August 13, 2018, September 28, 2018 and May 9, 2016. The dismissal is made as per the chargesheet served on August 13, 2018. The order of dismissal accessed by The Hindu mentions four charges against Verma. First, Verma, as the Chief Vigilance Officer of Northeastern Electrical Power Corporation (NEEPCO), “interacted with public media on March 2 and 3, 2016 in an interview with India Today news channel at the official premises of NEEPCO at Guwahati without any authorisation or permission from the competent authority and spoke unauthorisedly on the matters which were not within the sphere of his duties at NEEPCO.” “He misused the official premises, a public property” and by his act contravened provisions of Rule 3(1) of the All-India Services (Conduct) Rules 1968, the order said. Second, Verma made such statement of fact and opinion on his communication over public media in the matter of encounter of a terrorist Ishrat Jahan in Gujarat, which had the effect of an adverse criticism of action of the Central government and the State government and capable of embarrassing the relations between the Central government and the State government and “which is also capable of affecting the relationship of India with a neighbouring country.” He also did not make it clear that the views expressed by him were his own and not that of the government. Third, Verma, without there being any general or special order of the government, directly communicated official information regarding interrogation of R.V.S. Mani, then Under Secretary in the MHA, regarding the contents of the affidavits filed by the Government of India before the Gujarat High Court in the Ishrat Jahan case. Fourth, Verma, without the previous express or deemed sanction of the government, had recourse to the press (electronic media) for vindication of official acts to counter the statements of G.K. Pillai, the then Secretary, MHA, and R.V.S Mani. Verma is currently posted with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Coimbatore. In 2018, the officer, while challenging the MHA’s chargesheet against him had placed a 1,100-page petition before the Guwahati Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). He alleged that “the malicious acts are meant to victimise the applicant for doing the work that he did in two phases [September 2010 to January 2011, and July 2012 to June 2013] for investigating the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and bringing to light the underlying ugly truth of the criminal conspiracy involving the high and mighty in both the Gujarat State and the Central government.” Verma had informed the CAT that his services as the CVO of NEEPCO were curtailed as he had red-flagged a transportation scam worth ₹450 crore, which also involved a relative of the then Minister of State (Home) Kiren Rijiju and for investigating a fraudulent land deal done in Gujarat. Jahan (19) from Mumbra near Mumbai was killed along with Javed Shaikh (alias Pranesh Pillai), Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar by the Gujarat Police in an ‘encounter’ near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The police had said the four were terrorists who were planning to assassinate then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. However, a High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) of which Verma was one of the members, concluded that the encounter was fake, after which the CBI registered a case against various police officials. Journalist Siddique Kappan to remain in jail due to pending PMLA case Kerala-based journalist Siddique Kappan, who was recently granted bail by the Supreme Court, will continue to remain in jail as a case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate against him is still pending, officials of the prison department said. A court on Monday issued the release order of Kappan, who was lodged in jail after his arrest in October 2020 while he was on his way to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh, where a Dalit woman had died after allegedly being raped. “Mr. Kappan will continue to remain in jail as a case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate is still pending,” DG Jail PRO Santosh Verma told PTI. While ordering his release, Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Anurodh Mishra had directed Kappan to furnish two sureties of ₹1 lakh each and a personal bond of the same amount. The judge also sought an undertaking from the journalist that he would not breach the conditions imposed on him by the apex court. Kappan along with three others — Athikur Rehman, Alam and Masood — was arrested by the police in Mathura for allegedly having links with the Popular Front of India and being a part of conspiracy to instigate violence. He was booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act. The Supreme Court on Friday had granted bail to Kappan. The court had also taken note of the submissions of the Uttar Pradesh Government and laid down several conditions for bail, including that he will have to remain in Delhi for the next six weeks after release from the prison and report to Nizamuddin police station in the national capital on Monday every week. Opposition parties and journalist bodies had welcomed the Supreme Court order granting bail to Kappan. They claimed Kappan was made a “soft target” by the Uttar Pradesh Government and hoped he will also be granted bail in another case filed against him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The Dalit woman had died at a Delhi hospital a fortnight after she was allegedly gang-raped on September 14, 2020. She was cremated in the middle of the night in her village. Jean-Luc Godard, French New Wave film director, dies at 91 Film director Jean-Luc Godard, the godfather of France’s New Wave cinema, died on September 13 aged 91, French newspaper Liberation said, citing people close to the Franco-Swiss director. Godard was among the world’s most acclaimed directors, known for classics such as ‘Breathless’ and ‘Contempt’, which pushed cinematic boundaries and inspired iconoclastic directors decades after his 1960s heyday. His movies broke with the established conventions of French cinema and helped kickstart a new way of filmmaking, complete with handheld camera work, jump cuts and existential dialogue. For many movie buffs, no praise is high enough: Godard, with his tousled black hair and heavy-rimmed glasses, was a veritable revolutionary who made artists of movie-makers, putting them on a par with master painters and icons of literature. “It’s not where you take things from -- it’s where you take them to,” Godard once said. Godard was not alone in creating France’s New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), a credit he shares with at least a dozen peers including Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer, most of them pals from the trendy, bohemian Left Bank of Paris in the late 1950s. However, he became the poster child of the movement, which spawned offshoots in Japan, Hollywood and, more improbably, in what was then Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia as well as in Brazil. “We owe him a lot,” former French culture minister Jack Lang wrote in an emailed statement. “He filled cinema with poetry and philosophy. His sharp and unique eye made us see the imperceptible.” Quentin Tarantino, director of 1990s cult films ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’, is among a more recent generation of film makers who took up the mantle of the boundary-bending tradition initiated by Godard and his Paris Left Bank cohorts. Earlier came Martin Scorsese in 1976 with ‘Taxi Driver’, the disturbing neon-lit psychological thriller of a Vietnam veteran turned cabbie who steers through the streets all night with a growing obsession for the need to clean up seedy New York. Godard was not everyone’s idol. Wild-child Canadian director Xavier Dolan, who at 25 shared an award with an octogenarian Godard at the Cannes film festival in 2014, courted controversy every bit as much as Godard did but called him “the grinchy old man” and “no hero of mine”. Godard was born into a wealthy Franco-Swiss family on December 3, 1930 in Paris’s plush Seventh Arrondissement. His father was a doctor, his mother the daughter of a Swiss man who founded Banque Paribas, then an illustrious investment bank. This upbringing contrasted with his later pioneering ways. Godard fell in with like-minded folk whose dissatisfaction with humdrum movies that never strayed from convention sowed the seeds of a breakaway movement which came to be called the Nouvelle Vague. With its more forthright, offbeat approach to sex, violence and its explorations of the counter-culture, anti-war politics and other changing mores, the New Wave was about innovation in the making of movies. Godard was one of the most prolific of his peers, producing dozens of short- and full-length films over more than half a century from the late 1950s. “Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form,” Godard said. Most of his most influential and commercially successful films came in the 1960s, including ‘Vivre Sa Vie’ (My Life to Live), ‘Pierrot le Fou’, ‘Two or Three Things I Know About Her’ and ‘Weekend’. In Brief: India will hold over 200 G20-related meetings across the country during its presidency of the grouping that will begin on December 1, 2022 and continue till November 30, 2023. The G20 Leaders’ Summit will be held in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 in 2023, and Bangladesh, Egypt, Mauritius, Netherlands, Nigeria, Oman, Singapore, Spain and the UAE will be the “guest countries” at the event, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced on September 13. “India is currently part of the G20 Troika [current, previous and incoming G20 Presidencies] comprising Indonesia, Italy and India. During our Presidency, India, Indonesia and Brazil would form the troika. This would be the first time when the troika would consist of three developing countries and emerging economies, providing them a greater voice,” said the Ministry of External Affairs in an official statement. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 13 SEPTEMBER 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Reservation cannot be implemented as a poverty alleviation programme, say petitioners at EWS quota hearing Reservation cannot be implemented as a “poverty alleviation programme” for the socially and educationally forward classes, which is what the economically weaker sections (quota) does, [petitioners opened their challenge before a Constitution Bench]( led by Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit on Tuesday. Reservation addresses structural inequality and is not a means to become financially well-off. The purpose of reservation is to provide representation or empowerment to classes of people who were historically denied access to education and employment. Benefits of reservation cannot be given solely on the basis of economic criterion, they argued. Poverty in the forward classes can also be due to “poor personal wealth management”. Reservation on the basis of economic criterion creates a “moral hazard” -- a gambler who lost all his money cannot be made eligible for reservation. “Winning a lottery would be a quicker way of ending financial incapacity than reservation. Using financial incapacity [as a criterion for reservation] creates what economists call a moral hazard… It has the potential to reward those who lose money foolishly or carelessly or “immorally” such as through gambling by making them eligible for reservations,” renowned jurist, Dr. G. Mohan Gopal, opened the arguments for the petitioners before the five-judge Bench. Dr. Gopal said the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, which introduced the 10% EWS quota, was a “fraud on the Constitution”. “Parliament knew well that it has no power to provide reservations for socially and educationally forward classes. That it has no power to provide reservation to any class except backward classes as held in the Indira Sawhney judgment. Yet, because of political considerations, it did so deliberately and falsely projecting the Amendment as economic reservation for the benefit of economically weaker sections…” he contended. Petitioners and intervenors, represented by senior advocates Meenakshi Arora and Sanjay Parikh and advocate Prasanna S., found chinks in the criteria set to identify EWS in the society. “To judge anyone as poor on the basis of self-declaration and only on the basis of one previous year’s income makes the implementation of the whole scheme full of loopholes. No one can be termed as poor by having one year’s income as less than ₹8 lakh. In a country where less than 5% file income tax returns, and that too is open to manipulations, any such scheme is practically not implementable. To make such unreal, arbitrary and impractical scheme a part of the Constitution is disrespectful to the Constitution makers and shows lack of thinking on the part of the Union of India,” one of the petitioners argued. Dr. Gopal argued that those earning a gross annual family income of at or below ₹ 66,666 a month or ₹ 8 lakh annually were eligible for the EWS quota. “These numbers should be compared against the 2021 estimate of Pew Research, the renowned global fact-tank, once helmed by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, that 93.7% of the people of India have a family income of less than ₹25,000 per month per family of four. The EWS criteria will therefore give eligibility not only to Forward Classes amongst this 93.7% but also to those who earn between ₹25,000 and ₹66,000 per month per family of four, who fall amongst an elite 6% of the country that earn above ₹25,000 per family per month,” he contended. Submissions drafted by advocate Kaleeswaram Raj pointed out how the amendment clearly excluded citizens belonging to OBC/SC/ST who were economically weaker. Poverty is an impediment which knows no caste or social backwardness. It transcends across categories and across geographical spread. It is an impediment which cannot be restricted to advanced castes alone, by any stretch of imagination, the petitioners argued. Raj said no demographic study was conducted before proposing the 103rd Amendment, which was only a “populist measure”. Ishrat Jahan case probe team member Satish Chandra Verma dismissed from service Gujarat cadre Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Satish Chandra Verma, who assisted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in probing the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, was [dismissed from service on August 30]( a month before he was to superannuate on September 30, for giving an interview to a TV channel in 2016. [IPS officer Satish Chandra Verma. Photo: crpf.gov.in] Verma has filed two special leave petitions (SLPs) in the Supreme Court against the order which states that in 2016 a concerted media campaign started to discredit the evidence in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case with “senior members of the ruling party” and retired officers joining the campaign. It adds that false accusations of torture were made against him by R.V.S. Mani, a former Under Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), and he denied the accusations as media surrounded him at the official guesthouse in Guwahati in 2016. The 1986 batch IPS officer had challenged the disciplinary proceedings initiated against him by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in the Delhi High Court and it was during the hearing of the case on August 30 that the Ministry informed the court that Verma has been dismissed from service on August 30. “The dismissal would mean that he will not be entitled to any pension or other benefits. The High Court had earlier given him protection from any coercive action. We have filed two SLPs in the Supreme Court. The High Court order says the dismissal cannot come into effect till September 19,” Sarim Naved, counsel for Verma, told The Hindu. In all, three chargesheets were served by the MHA on Verma — August 13, 2018, September 28, 2018 and May 9, 2016. The dismissal is made as per the chargesheet served on August 13, 2018. The order of dismissal accessed by The Hindu mentions four charges against Verma. First, Verma, as the Chief Vigilance Officer of Northeastern Electrical Power Corporation (NEEPCO), “interacted with public media on March 2 and 3, 2016 in an interview with India Today news channel at the official premises of NEEPCO at Guwahati without any authorisation or permission from the competent authority and spoke unauthorisedly on the matters which were not within the sphere of his duties at NEEPCO.” “He misused the official premises, a public property” and by his act contravened provisions of Rule 3(1) of the All-India Services (Conduct) Rules 1968, the order said. Second, Verma made such statement of fact and opinion on his communication over public media in the matter of encounter of a terrorist Ishrat Jahan in Gujarat, which had the effect of an adverse criticism of action of the Central government and the State government and capable of embarrassing the relations between the Central government and the State government and “which is also capable of affecting the relationship of India with a neighbouring country.” He also did not make it clear that the views expressed by him were his own and not that of the government. Third, Verma, without there being any general or special order of the government, directly communicated official information regarding interrogation of R.V.S. Mani, then Under Secretary in the MHA, regarding the contents of the affidavits filed by the Government of India before the Gujarat High Court in the Ishrat Jahan case. Fourth, Verma, without the previous express or deemed sanction of the government, had recourse to the press (electronic media) for vindication of official acts to counter the statements of G.K. Pillai, the then Secretary, MHA, and R.V.S Mani. Verma is currently posted with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Coimbatore. In 2018, the officer, while challenging the MHA’s chargesheet against him had placed a 1,100-page petition before the Guwahati Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). He alleged that “the malicious acts are meant to victimise the applicant for doing the work that he did in two phases [September 2010 to January 2011, and July 2012 to June 2013] for investigating the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and bringing to light the underlying ugly truth of the criminal conspiracy involving the high and mighty in both the Gujarat State and the Central government.” Verma had informed the CAT that his services as the CVO of NEEPCO were curtailed as he had red-flagged a transportation scam worth ₹450 crore, which also involved a relative of the then Minister of State (Home) Kiren Rijiju and for investigating a fraudulent land deal done in Gujarat. Jahan (19) from Mumbra near Mumbai was killed along with Javed Shaikh (alias Pranesh Pillai), Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar by the Gujarat Police in an ‘encounter’ near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The police had said the four were terrorists who were planning to assassinate then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. However, a High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) of which Verma was one of the members, concluded that the encounter was fake, after which the CBI registered a case against various police officials. Journalist Siddique Kappan to remain in jail due to pending PMLA case Kerala-based journalist Siddique Kappan, who was recently granted bail by the Supreme Court, will [continue to remain in jail]( a case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate against him is still pending, officials of the prison department said. A court on Monday issued the release order of Kappan, who was lodged in jail after his arrest in October 2020 while he was on his way to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh, where a Dalit woman had died after allegedly being raped. “Mr. Kappan will continue to remain in jail as a case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate is still pending,” DG Jail PRO Santosh Verma told PTI. While ordering his release, Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Anurodh Mishra had directed Kappan to furnish two sureties of ₹1 lakh each and a personal bond of the same amount. The judge also sought an undertaking from the journalist that he would not breach the conditions imposed on him by the apex court. Kappan along with three others — Athikur Rehman, Alam and Masood — was arrested by the police in Mathura for allegedly having links with the Popular Front of India and being a part of conspiracy to instigate violence. He was booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act. The Supreme Court on Friday had granted bail to Kappan. The court had also taken note of the submissions of the Uttar Pradesh Government and laid down several conditions for bail, including that he will have to remain in Delhi for the next six weeks after release from the prison and report to Nizamuddin police station in the national capital on Monday every week. Opposition parties and journalist bodies had welcomed the Supreme Court order granting bail to Kappan. They claimed Kappan was made a “soft target” by the Uttar Pradesh Government and hoped he will also be granted bail in another case filed against him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The Dalit woman had died at a Delhi hospital a fortnight after she was allegedly gang-raped on September 14, 2020. She was cremated in the middle of the night in her village. Jean-Luc Godard, French New Wave film director, dies at 91 Film director [Jean-Luc Godard, the godfather of France’s New Wave cinema, died]( on September 13 aged 91, French newspaper Liberation said, citing people close to the Franco-Swiss director. Godard was among the world’s most acclaimed directors, known for classics such as ‘Breathless’ and ‘Contempt’, which pushed cinematic boundaries and inspired iconoclastic directors decades after his 1960s heyday. [French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard attends the 2010 Swiss Federal “Grand Prix Design” award ceremony in Zurich on November 30, 2010. ] His movies broke with the established conventions of French cinema and helped kickstart a new way of filmmaking, complete with handheld camera work, jump cuts and existential dialogue. For many movie buffs, no praise is high enough: Godard, with his tousled black hair and heavy-rimmed glasses, was a veritable revolutionary who made artists of movie-makers, putting them on a par with master painters and icons of literature. “It’s not where you take things from -- it’s where you take them to,” Godard once said. Godard was not alone in creating France’s New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), [a credit he shares with at least a dozen peers including Francois Truffaut]( and Eric Rohmer, most of them pals from the trendy, bohemian Left Bank of Paris in the late 1950s. However, he became the poster child of the movement, which spawned offshoots in Japan, Hollywood and, more improbably, in what was then Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia as well as in Brazil. “We owe him a lot,” former French culture minister Jack Lang wrote in an emailed statement. “He filled cinema with poetry and philosophy. His sharp and unique eye made us see the imperceptible.” Quentin Tarantino, director of 1990s cult films ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’, is among a more recent generation of film makers who took up the mantle of the boundary-bending tradition initiated by Godard and his Paris Left Bank cohorts. Earlier came Martin Scorsese in 1976 with ‘Taxi Driver’, the disturbing neon-lit psychological thriller of a Vietnam veteran turned cabbie who steers through the streets all night with a growing obsession for the need to clean up seedy New York. Godard was not everyone’s idol. Wild-child Canadian director Xavier Dolan, who at 25 shared an award with an octogenarian Godard at the Cannes film festival in 2014, courted controversy every bit as much as Godard did but called him “the grinchy old man” and “no hero of mine”. Godard was born into a wealthy Franco-Swiss family on December 3, 1930 in Paris’s plush Seventh Arrondissement. His father was a doctor, his mother the daughter of a Swiss man who founded Banque Paribas, then an illustrious investment bank. This upbringing contrasted with his later pioneering ways. Godard fell in with like-minded folk whose dissatisfaction with humdrum movies that never strayed from convention sowed the seeds of a breakaway movement which came to be called the Nouvelle Vague. With its more forthright, offbeat approach to sex, violence and its explorations of the counter-culture, anti-war politics and other changing mores, the New Wave was about innovation in the making of movies. Godard was one of the most prolific of his peers, producing dozens of short- and full-length films over more than half a century from the late 1950s. “Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form,” Godard said. Most of his most influential and commercially successful films came in the 1960s, including ‘Vivre Sa Vie’ (My Life to Live), ‘Pierrot le Fou’, ‘Two or Three Things I Know About Her’ and ‘Weekend’. In Brief: India will hold over 200 G20-related meetings across the country during its presidency of the grouping that will begin on December 1, 2022 and continue till November 30, 2023. The [G20 Leaders’ Summit will be held in New Delhi on September 9 and 10]( in 2023, and Bangladesh, Egypt, Mauritius, Netherlands, Nigeria, Oman, Singapore, Spain and the UAE will be the “guest countries” at the event, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced on September 13. “India is currently part of the G20 Troika [current, previous and incoming G20 Presidencies] comprising Indonesia, Italy and India. During our Presidency, India, Indonesia and Brazil would form the troika. This would be the first time when the troika would consist of three developing countries and emerging economies, providing them a greater voice,” said the Ministry of External Affairs in an official statement. 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