#livemint

How is Soho House, who reported over $73 million in losses last year, expanding and adding two more houses in India? The pending sale?🤔

A columnist who didn’t want to be named in this piece voiced a common criticism of Ayyub—“I don’t think activism is journalism." “I am not an activist, I am an active journalist," says Ayyub. “I am not a journalist who won’t cry when she sees the suffering of riot victims. In the new world order, journalism has new meaning." Ayyub believes wrong must be called out, just as feminists are calling out the witch-hunt against Rhea Chakraborty after the suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Or just as her editor at the Post, Karen Attiah — and countless other black journalists — have in recent times repeatedly called out the discrimination against African-Americans. “I cannot remove my lived experience as a Muslim from my journalism. That’s not me making myself the story."

Ayyub and Arif were headed to pick up Alphonso mangoes from a farmer who was selling directly to housing societies. Near the Kopar Khairane slum (in New Mumbai), they saw a child playing alone in the middle of the road. Ayyub got out of the car to investigate. “His mother said he’s happy, let him be. We have nothing to eat. If he sits at home he will only bother me." The woman’s husband was a municipal sewage cleaner who had lost his job and her last meal was a banana she had eaten the previous day. One thing led to another and, in seven days, Ayyub raised ₹1.25 crore on Ketto. She put out a call for relief workers on Twitter; one gent showed up with his white Mercedes and volunteered to chauffeur the team; a computer shop in Dharavi doubled up as a place to store food supplies. When the money ran out, they raised another ₹50 lakh. They used the money to send migrant workers back home, to fund emergency medical procedures, buy oxygen cylinders and tarpaulin for flood-prone regions. They distributed 13kg packets of ration to 60,000 families across five states, she says. “The relief work kept me sane," she says. “I was out every day."

The UP law infringes people’s rights to privacy, choice of partner, and freedom of conscience. Religion, after all, is an idea; one can believe it, disavow it, disregard it, embrace another idea, or choose not to embrace any religious idea at all. Not only is that consistent with respect for the individual’s dignity, it is also consistent with freedoms assured by the Indian Constitution. The UP law on interfaith marriages ignores an individual’s autonomy. It strengthens regressive authority. Its effect has been to frighten a religious minority with the prospect of subjugation. And it draws from the belief that those who make up nearly half of India’s adult population—its women—cannot be trusted to decide what’s good for them. Such a repressive law deserves scorn and needs to be repealed.

The first round of evacuations would bring back around 200,000 people by the middle of May and then by mid-June a total of 350,000-400,00 would be flown back, a foreign ministry official said. "By then, we are hopeful that foreign travel will be re-opened," the official said. Four of the ten flights that Air India will operate on Thursday will bring back people from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Doha and all into the southern state of Kerala, according to a seven-day flight plan released by the government. Nearly 300,000 have signed up for the flights from the Middle East for which Air India is charging a little less than a normal commercial fare. Passengers will be screened at the departing airport and only those who are asymptomatic will be allowed to board. Once they land, they will be quarantined for two weeks, the government said. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, whose state has large numbers of people working in the Gulf, voiced concerns over the risks of not testing people for the virus before bringing them home. “There will be around 200 passengers on each flight. If two or three of them are carriers, it would affect everyone on that flight," he said.

Responding to the distress among India's huge diaspora, the government has asked national carrier Air India to provide aircraft to bring back Indians who want to return from the Middle East, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Indian Navy has also been asked to help by sending two ships to evacuate citizens from the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean. Migrant workers, students and business people were left with no way home after India suspended air travel in March, just before entering a nationwide shutdown that remains in force until May 17. And there have numerous tales of hardship, both financial and emotional, from people desperate to see sick relatives, attend funerals or births, while others have simply lost their jobs and are running out of money stranded abroad.