The Nobel Prize for Literature, one of the oldest and most prestigious cultural awards, could be cancelled in 2018 as the institution that awards it is mired in a sex and financial scandal.

The Swedish Academy is under fire for how it dealt with alleged sexual misconduct by French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, who is married to a former member of the centuries-old institution, the BBC reported on Thursday.

The Academy was scheduled to decide whether this year’s prize will go ahead, with some members reportedly concerned it was in no state to make such an award.

In November, inspired by the #MeToo campaign, 18 women made allegations of sexual assault and harassment against Arnault. Several of the alleged incidents reportedly happened in properties belonging to the Academy. Arnault has denied all the allegations.

The organisation then voted against removing his wife, the poet and writer Katarina Frostenson from its 18-person committee.

The following day, the Academy’s Permanent Secretary Sara Danius said the institution had cut all ties with Arnault in light of the reported allegations and additional claims that some Academy staff and members’ relatives had experienced “unwanted intimacy” at the his hands.

Till now, six members of the Swedish Academy have stepped down, including Danius.

The academy is also under fire for contravening its own conflict of interest regulations by providing funding to the Kulturplats Forum, a cultural centre run by Arnault and Frostenson.

An independent investigation by a Swedish law firm revealed that “unacceptable behaviour by (Arnault) in the form of unwanted intimacy had indeed taken place, but the knowledge was not widely spread in the Academy”.

But the team of lawyers also discovered that the Academy had received a letter in 1996 outlining alleged sexual assault at Arnault’s cultural forum, indicating that November was not the first time that some members were made aware that the photographer’s name had been connected with misconduct.

In its statement, the organization said it “deeply regrets that the letter was shelved and no measures taken to investigate the charges”.

Ebba Witt-Brattstroem, the former wife of Horace Engdahl, Academy’s Permanent Secretary from 1999 to 2009 and currently a member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, had also cast doubt on the claim that its members were largely unaware of Arnault’s alleged misconduct.

The flurry of withdrawals is potentially catastrophic for the 230-year-old academy, whose members, elected by secret ballot, must be approved by the King and traditionally hold their positions for life.

In 1943 — the last time the literature prize was postponed — was the height of World War II and the Nazis ruled much of the European continent.

Anu Kumari is the topper among the female candidates securing an overall second rank

The Union Public Service Commission has declared final results of Civil Services Examination 2017. A total of 990 candidates including 750 men and 240 women have been recommended by the Commission for appointment to various Services.

Durishetty Anudeep who belongs to OBC category has topped the examination. Anudeep has qualified the examination with Anthropology as his optional subject.

Anu Kumari is the topper among the female candidates securing an overall second rank. She has graduated with BSc (Hons) in Physics from Delhi University and has done MBA from IMT, Nagpur. The recommended candidates also include 29 Divyang persons. Saumya Sharma with hearing impairment, has secured an overall Ninth Rank. The top 25 candidates comprise of 17 men and 08 women.

The Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, 2017 was conducted on 18th June last year. Over Nine lakh 57 thousand candidates applied for this examination, out of which over 4 lakh 56 thousand candidates actually appeared. 13,366 candidates qualified for the Main Examination and of them, 2568 candidates qualified for the Personality Test.

Hindusthan Samachar/Shri Ram Shaw

A writer who was once a phenomenon, literally took Indian publishing by a storm, popularised reading in a magnitude that India had never known before, Chetan Bhagats reputation as a writer has fast crumbled over the past few years. Bhagat seldom surprised readers with his books but his sudden “global deal” with Amazon Publishing, announced Friday, for next six novels came as a shock to publishing insiders.

All of Bhagat’s previous books — nine blockbusters — had been published by Rupa, the publishing house that introduced him to the literary scene and sold his paperbacks at giveaway prices. He arrived with a bang and soon became a national sensation, selling hundreds of thousands of copies across the country at an incredible pace.

But things were different back then. The Indian novel in English was largely confined to the literary genre and the few light-hearted chick flicks that were being published seldom hit the bestseller charts. Bhagat brought a touch of difference in his novels and despite all criticism levelled against him by critics and several heavyweight writers, there is little denying the fact that his novels connected superbly with the Indian middle-class living in tier 2 and 3 cities.

His over-the-top romance sequences and stories centred in a call centre or the IIT came as a relief to the young population that was fast learning English. His readers bore immense resemblance to his characters; like the protagonists of his novels, many of them were not experts in English but aspired to speak in the language that the world was talking in, they fancied “sex with professor’s daughter” but never spoke of the taboo in public and more than anything else, they wanted to read an English novel that they could easily understand. What good would it do or how wonderful the novel is was the least of their concerns.

And just when this was happening, Bhagat made his presence felt by visiting as many colleges and events away from the metropolitan cities as he could. He was among India’s highest paid motivational speakers at a time but his choice of events always focussed on the tier-2 and tier-3 city population — his target readers.

In a country that has abysmally low literacy rate, Bhagat, if not for anything else, deserves credit for popularising reading in a manner that the country had never seen before. One can easily recall the times when the only English novels one could spot at a book stall on a UP or Bihar railway station would be those by this “paperback king”. The popularity multiplied so vigorously that his novels travelled from bookshops to the local ration and even medicine shops!

Nine books down the line, where does Chetan Bhagat stand today as a writer? Not only have his sales dropped significantly but he has also lost his loyal readers, if at all he had many. The reason is simply because most of his readers were of a migrating nature and just as they gained better expertise of the English language and made a better sense of the books available to them, they climbed up the ladder and picked a book, which may have been a step higher than his standard.

Even as this was happening, there was a great churning of Indian writing in English in recent years. Bhagat’s success paved the way for several other commercial authors to rise to fore and on came the likes of Amish Tripathi, Ashwin Sanghi, Anuja Chauhan, Durjoy Dutta, Ravinder Singh and others, who now command the portfolio that Bhagat once prided upon.

Bhagat lost his place because he failed to surprise — in all of his novels, from the theme to storyline to language and diction, there was a similar line of continuity, as if this was all that the writer had to offer. Commercial fiction always attracts more readers than a literary novel but there has to be different backgrounds, different themes and even different settings to sustain the interest of readers.

And this sudden increase in readership found solace in the writers that arrived after Bhagat’s success. Their protagonists were different; they wove new stories out of old mythologies, they entangled tragedies and conspiracies along with Bhagat’s trademark romance while Bhagat turned from a popular writer to a troll on social media. Even the readers of sex sequences and commercial romance found their new writers in the likes of Durjoy Dutta, who used their charming personality and social media to routinely seduce young readers into buying their books.

All this while, Bhagat was making political statements on Twitter. Trolls, obviously, could not be far behind.

But his just announced “global deal” with Amazon Publishing for the next six books, which includes three fiction and three nonfiction titles, could be game changer in his literary career. They can either re-establish a dying writer or fast propel him into oblivion.

His next book will be releasing in October and given this last minute deal for as many as six books in print e-book and audio formats, the anticipation is high.

Bhagat must surprise his readers this time — and the wait has already been far too long. At the same time, how well does Amazon fit into the role that Rupa had served so far — and served excellently well — remains to be seen. While the content of his book will be discussed much later, it will be the pricing that will be the ultimate factor deciding his sales. Prices of books have increased manifolds and Indian novels are priced anywhere between Rs 350 – Rs 500 on an average today.

Rs 350 for a Chetan Bhagat novel? Readers are going to be watchful.

Title: A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership; Author: James Comey; Publisher: Pan Macmillan; Pages: 305; Price: Rs 799

As an Assistant US Attorney in New York in the early 1990s, James Comey was part of the anti-mafia campaign and became well versed about how its top bosses perceived themselves, the people who worked for them and the world. As FBI chief a quarter of century later, he saw the same worldview — in newly-elected President Donald Trump.

Recounting a meeting where he seemed to have angered Trump by contradicting him, Comey tells us that the encounter had left him “shaken” for he had “never seen anything like it in the Oval Office” under the previous two presidents he had served.

“As I found myself thrust into the Trump orbit, I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organisation above morality and above the truth,” he writes in his autobiography.

And as we go on to find out in the book, this is another aspect of the significant role that Comey would play in the 2016 US Presidential Election, apart from his decisions on “the matter” (the word is significant, as we learn) of Hillary Clinton’s email server being perceived as having damaged her campaign.

These interactions with Trump, where Comey’s “loyalty” was sought in the wake of the probe into Russian support/links against his campaign team and he was even purportedly told to drop the case against a recently-resigned aide (National Security Adviser Michael Flynn), could have far-reaching consequences — for the new President.

While Comey was unceremoniously fired, his claims would lead to a Special Counsel investigation that has reached uncomfortably close to Trump — Luke Harding’s “Collusion — How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House” shows how.

But while around half of Comey’s book is devoted to his decisions and experiences in the Clinton and Trump episodes, it has much more than these two major issues, and is certainly not an explosive, tell-all account — he is too principled and conscientious a lawyer and public servant to reveal what is the court’s domain to the public.

But it does clarify his position in the Clinton matter, where he seeks to explain what the issue was all about, and what lay behind him telling Congress in October 2016 — a few days prior to the election — that the probe was being reopened.

As he reveals, the decision hinged on whether to inform Congress — which could influence the election — or conceal it — which could have been as problematic for the FBI if evidence of prosecutable criminal activity emerged later. “Put that way, the choice between a ‘really bad option’ and a ‘catastrophic option’ was not that hard a call,” he argues.

This is Comey’s memoir with the parts on Clinton and Trump the highlights, but the good lawyer he is, he builds up to them, showing why he acted the way he did by detailing his formative influences and his career.

These include the childhood experience when a criminal burst into his home and threatened him and his brother, a wise boss at the department store where he worked part-time, bullies at school, and encounters with the Mafia bosses and killers as US Attorney.

Then, as Deputy Attorney General in the George W. Bush Presidency, there was the “Stellar Wind” surveillance — where he had to forestall two senior administration officials trying to obtain a hospitalised Attorney General’s concurrence — and torture of terrorists and terrorist suspects by the CIA, and being appointed FBI chief by Barack Obama in 2013.

While the comparison of the three Presidents — and their cabinet colleagues — is well brought out and extensive (say, their political styles to sense of humour — or lack thereof), the main point is their attitude to justice, or rather to those tasked with ensuring it. As we learn from history, and increasingly from the news, there is no doubt what the rankings will be.

This, along with Comey’s observations on the ethics of leadership and the pursuit of justice free from any political considerations, is what makes this book more than a political memoir.

(IANS)

The fate of 8.54 lac students who appeared for their SSLC examination, that concluded on Friday, April 6 without any issues, will be decided on May 7. The results will be available in all the high schools on May 8. Similarly, steps are being taken to announce the PUC results at the end of April.

In total 8,54,424 students belonging to 14,385 high schools have written the SSLC examinations this year. There were 33 subjects and seven instruction mediums in which the examinations were conducted in 2817 centres across the state. SSLC board will announce the results on the evening of May 7 on the internet and will send the information to respective high schools on the same day. The results will be available in all schools on May 8.

By Vikas Dutta
It is an over-century-old scandal that may seem familiar today. A country that prided itself on its ideals of liberty and justice uncovers an embarrassing espionage case, but matters are so orchestrated that an innocent, conscientious officer is accused and convicted — just because of his religion. This polarises society, but things come to a head only when an influential author jumps to defend the scapegoat — and suffers for it.

The French Revolution brought the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity into modern political discourse, but the Dreyfus scandal of the 1890s raised the question whether these had permeated into their homeland. As this book tells us, the case exposed faultlines between France’s monarchist, religious and anti-Semitic right and the liberal, republican, and (later) socialist sections — a rift which would haunt the country in the coming century and cripple it in the face of aggression.

If Dreyfus was eventually exonerated and the country remained a liberal democracy — however imperfect — it was in no small measure due to the energetic efforts of Emile Zola. But he didn’t emerge unscathed and may have also lost his life due to it, as Michael Rosen shows in this book.

There were several attempts to persuade authorities hear the Dreyfus matter on the basis of proper evidence, instead of anti-Semitism. Among these was Zola’s famous open letter beginning “J’accuse”, accusing the state of a deliberate miscarriage of justice — which earned him a case for libel (in France then, it was also institutions, not only individuals, that could be libelled).

It was this case’s consequences for the writer, his country and the world — as well as literature — that are revealed here.

Noting that very few people outside France know much about Zola’s life, Rosen says they would have heard little or nothing about this particular but significant episode of his exile in London as the Dreyfus case raged.

“… Strictly speaking, it wasn’t exile, it was flight. The world-renowned novelist — as he was even then — fled from France, having been fined and given a prison sentence. This was not due to any of the usual writer’s transgressions — duels, crimes of passion, dissolution, immorality or indecency in their writing. It was a political offence. On behalf of the disgraced army officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus, Zola took on the highest courts in the land and lost.”

But this was no simple scandal, for “these events split France down the middle, brought the fundamental nature of the French state into question, and have left their marks on France ever since”. And Zola himself was in personal danger, with a rightist newspaper attacking him in terms that seemed, as the author says, an invitation to a lynching, and passions were so inflamed that he could have been shot dead on the street.

But the cost was also personal, as this book shows, for Zola had a uniquely delicate task of balancing the two women in his life — the mother of his children, and his wife — as this book brings out in detail.

Drawing on the author’s correspondence with his family and friends, his own writings about his exile, contemporary newspapers and other accounts, Rosen, otherwise known as a children’s author, poet and broadcaster, uses Zola’s nearly year-long enforced stay in London and around to sketch an unforgettable picture of him at a period of “turmoil, change and stress on three fronts: political, literary and personal”.

In the process, he also focuses on some of Zola’s considerable corpus of work — not well received by all sections due to its “naturalness”, or frank explorations of sex as well as descriptions of childbirth among other things — as well as the era’s social, literary and journalistic mores, and the Dreyfus case itself.

But this book is more than a tragi-comic account of Zola’s stay in London — initially hampered by the fear of discovery given his triumphant visit five years ago and his lack of English, as well as his measures to get his “wives” and his family to him. It is also a signal recognition of how literary creativity can flow even in unfamiliar climes and of a writer’s bravery in going against entrenched, unreasonable, yet popular, attitudes and prevailing over them — eventually.

The Delhi High Court on Monday directed Young Indian Pvt Ltd (YI), whose major stakeholders are Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, to deposit Rs 10 crore in the Rs 249.15 crore income tax proceedings against the firm.

A bench of Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and A.K. Chawla asked the company to deposit half the amount with the Income Tax Department before March 31 and the remaining by April 15.

The High Court directed the IT Department not to enforce the demand of Rs 249.15 crore. The court listed the matter for April 24 for further hearing seeking response from IT Department on the plea.

The company requested the court to stay the recovery of tax and interest of Rs 249.15 crore raised in pursuance to a December 27 notice issued under section 156 of the IT Act for the assessment year 2011-12.

The company submitted that it is a charitable firm and does not have any income and the Income Tax authorities have wrongly raised a demand of Rs 249 crore for the assessment year 2011-12.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy had filed a complaint about “cheating” in the acquisition of Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which published the National Herald newspaper, by Young Indian, “a firm in which Sonia and Rahul Gandhi each own a 38 per cent stake”.

Swamy had accused them of allegedly conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by just paying Rs 50 lakh, by which Young Indian Pvt Ltd obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which AJL owed to the Congress.

Former Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, party leaders Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey, Sam Pitroda and Young Indian are accused in the case.

(IANS)