JCB Prize for Literature discontinued

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

JCB Prize for Literature discontinued

The context: India has a long history of high-profile literary prizes—starting with the Sahitya Akademi awards—established in 1954. Over the years, we’ve had other honours—sponsored by private entities. Examples: Crossword Book Award (since 1998) and the Hindu Literary Prize (started in 2010 but was discontinued in 2019). But the most glamorous of the lot was the DSC Prize—which debuted at the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2010. Anyone writing on South Asian themes—irrespective of nationality—was eligible. Yet it died quietly and without much fanfare in 2019.

What happened now: Yet another prestigious literary award has fallen by the wayside—the JCB Prize for Literature. Launched in 2018, the big-ticket Rs 25-lakh annual award honoured the best work of fiction by an Indian author. It quickly took the place of DSC as the star attraction at the Jaipur litfest—since JCB has also sponsored the festival in the past.

Wtf happened? While DSC seems to have been killed by the pandemic, the JCB’s demise is far more sudden and mysterious. On Saturday, Literary Director Mita Kapur confirmed the shutdown, saying: “I am not going to deny something that is evident. But for everything else, ‘no comment’.” That’s an ignominious end to a prize that has honoured 35 Indian novels—by our brightest literary stars like Perumal Murugan. Btw, the NGO licence of the JCB foundation that gave out the prize has been cancelled—again for unknown reasons.

Another likely reason: The corporate sponsor JCB itself:

Maybe it is important to accept and acknowledge here that the corporate entity behind the prize, JCB, has had its own inadvertent image problem in India with its bulldozers being pressed into service for demolition of private property as a means of punitive administrative steps undertaken by several state governments. This even led to an open letter criticising the prize, signed by over 120 writers, translators, and publishers in 2024.

Does it matter? While the JCB award got a lot of attention in the literary world, it barely had any substantive impact:

[D]espite efforts ranging from special films, appearances at literary festivals, and bookshop partnerships, none of the novels could be said to have gained a boost because of their appearance on the longlist or shortlist. Why, even the winning books have not reported anything remotely close to the kind of sales that India’s two International Booker Prize winners did.

For instance, the recent International Booker winner, Banu Mushtaq’s ’Heart Lamp’ has already sold close to 100,000 copies in India alone. OTOH, none of the JCB winners became a bestseller.

But, but, but: Some book bloggers are celebrating JCB’s downfall.

I believe this is long overdue… because prizes like the JCB had quietly become tools of cultural and intellectual gatekeeping, celebrating a very narrow, carefully curated slice of what they believed Indian literature ought to be.

The bottomline: The end of the JCB literary prize may be a catastrophe for agents, publishers and writers. Most readers will barely notice its absence. But isn’t that true for almost any literary prize in India? Maybe the real problem is that we only care about awards when they are doled out by Westerners. Scroll has the most interesting take on the shutdown. (Mumbai Mirror)

Zohran Mamdani: Wannabe NYC mayor with a desi backstory

On Tuesday, New York City will vote in the Democratic primary election to choose the party nominee in the mayoral election. There are 11 candidates but the race is really between Andrew Cuomo and an Indian-American called Zohran Mamdani—who went from unknown to possible giant-slayer in weeks. Here’s why you should be interested.

Who is Zohran Mamdani: Born in Uganda in a Gujarati Muslim family, Mamdani has been living in the US since the age of seven. But he only became a US citizen in 2018. Fun fact: His mum is filmmaker Mira Nair and his father is Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani. His middle name is Kwame, after Ghana’s revolutionary first PM.

A short, lefty résumé: He has only four years as member of New York’s state assembly—elected in 2021. He’s a left-leaning liberal—who supports freezing rent, free public transit and publicly-owned grocery shops—funded by increasing corporate tax rates. He is backed by true blue Dems like Bernie Sanders and AOC.

Meet Goliath: At the start of the primary race, Andrew Cuomo was the favourite by a mile. He served as New York governor for a decade and spent three years as the state’s attorney general. But, but, but: Cuomo is also the kind of establishment Dem that the base loves to hate—part of the Clinton clique, loved by Wall Street and titans like Michael Bloomberg. Never mind the sexual harassment allegations that lost him the governor’s job.

A Cinderella story: Turns out slick don’t stick with Dem voters. Cuomo’s lead has dropped from 30 points in March to 10 and under in the latest poll. Mamdani has turned out to be the dark horse—winning hearts with his grassroots charm and TikTok game. Mamdani’s most viral moment—his response to Cuomo calling him inexperienced:

Making news in India: His comments on Modi-ji:

The sad news: Latest polling data suggests that Mamdani is still unlikely to defeat Cuomo in the primary—Cuomo winning with 55% of the final vote. But at the very least, his campaign has revealed the ugly underside of so-called liberal Dems:

A mailer targeting Jewish voters from a Cuomo-aligned super PAC doctored Mamdani’s photo – darkening and lengthening his beard – and declared that he “rejects NYPD, rejects Israel, rejects capitalism and rejects Jewish rights”. Much of this centres on Mamdani’s outspoken support for Palestinian rights.

Reading list: Axios has the overview on Mamdani’s campaign and the latest polling data. Al Jazeera explains why he matters for the rest of the world. For profiles on Mamdani, check out The Guardian and The Atlantic (splainer gift link).

An AI miracle for art restoration

An MIT student has developed an AI-based method which can restore ancient paintings in a matter of a few hours. The method involves placing a transparent “mask” or thin film on top of the artwork—that contains “thousands of precisely color-matched regions” of the original artwork. For example:

[A] 15th-century oil painting requiring repairs in 5,612 separate regions. An AI model identified damage patterns and generated 57,314 different colors to match the original work. The entire restoration process reportedly took 3.5 hours—about 66 times faster than traditional hand-painting methods.

The best bit: placing the transparent film is a reversible process which is great news given the many paintings that have been destroyed by bad restoration hitjobs:

Because there's a digital record of what mask was used, in 100 years, the next time someone is working with this, they'll have an extremely clear understanding of what was done to the painting… And that's never really been possible in conservation before.

Why this matters: Traditional restoration is both expensive and time-consuming—which is why 70% of institutional art collections remain hidden from public view due to damage. So this is a big win for art-lovers everywhere. You get a sense of how it works below. (Ars Technica)

what caught our eye

business & tech

Wall Street is going wild for Circle—a $50 billion crypto firm that just holds your cash, earns interest, and calls it a business.
After a fake Drake and The Weeknd song went viral, the music industry is now building tech to spot AI tracks before they spread.
Scientists have figured out how to store messages in ice bubbles—a potential game-changer for data storage on the Moon, Mars, or deep Arctic.
BBC News has a good read on how China went from lagging behind to leading the global EV race—turning electric cars into an everyday norm.

sports & entertainment

Chris Brown has now pleaded not guilty in London over that 2023 bottle attack on a music producer after his Cardiff gig.
Rishabh Pant’s fiery Leeds knock ended in a brainfade—and now Dinesh Karthik’s calling out coach Gautam Gambhir for not getting the messaging right.
Elio just handed Pixar its worst-ever box office debut—proof that original stories are still losing the fight against sequels and reboots.
Hollywood Reporter explains why, after 17 years at The Atlantic, Derek Thompson is going solo on Substack to ride the 'Abundance' wave.

meanwhile, in the world

The DRC has extended its cobalt export ban by three more months, hoping to prop up prices after a steep slump earlier this year.
The US has issued a Level 2 travel advisory for India over rising crime and terror risks—Economic Times has the deets.
Trump confirmed a DRC-Rwanda peace deal brokered in Washington—then griped he won’t get a Nobel for it.
China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh held a round of trilateral foreign office talks this week, the first since Bangladesh’s top official visited Beijing in March.
A 68-year-old ICE detainee died in transit—the first such death in over a decade—as experts warn more could follow under the Trump admin’s mass deportation drive.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says his $17 billion fortune will go to his 106 (and counting) biological children—fathered via years of mailing out his sperm to willing recipients.

meanwhile, in India

In a major breakthrough, the NIA has arrested two men for sheltering the terrorists behind the Pahalgam attack that killed 26 people.
India says it will never revive the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan—citing terror attacks and vowing to divert river flow for internal use. But upstream sits China, holding the real cards. Our Big Story has more details.
Air India was pulled up by the DGCA for flying Airbus planes with unchecked escape slides and outdated paperwork—days before last week’s deadly Boeing crash.
The DGCA also flagged Air India for repeated crew scheduling violations and ordered the removal of three senior officials—also slapping the airline with a show-cause notice.
Speaking of Air India again, the airline has begun paying Rs 25 lakh each as interim compensation to families of those killed or injured in the Ahmedabad crash.
India’s newest missile-packed warship, INS Tamal, gets commissioned in Russia on July 1—with a BrahMos bite and 26% desi muscle.
Despite years of financial reforms, a new Piramal report says India’s poor still borrow from moneylenders, shopkeepers, and family.
Eight Christians were injured in Odisha after a Hindutva mob allegedly attacked them for refusing to convert—Christian leaders say it was a Bajrang Dal-led assault.

Four things to see

One: After 104 days in a Louisiana detention centre, Mahmoud Khalil is finally free. He was detained without explanation or cause for being a Palestinian activist on the Columbia Uni campus. A judge ruled his continued detention “highly, highly unusual.” But the Trump administration still wants him deported—even though he has a green card. You can see his reunion with his wife and newborn son at Newark Airport—with politicians and supporters in tow. We appreciate the keffiyeh. (BBC News)

Two: Tesla's robot taxi finally went into operation in Austin, Texas—for a limited zone and a flat fee of $4.20. But, but, but: it is not open to the public—only to social media influencers. And it is also not completely “unsupervised”—as the ride includes a Tesla employee in the front passenger seat “who can react to a dangerous situation by hitting a kill switch.” So maybe not a ‘launch’ in any real sense of the word. FYI: Musk is betting heavily on robot taxis to save his tailspinning company. Watch it in action below. (The Verge)

Three: Aamir Khan’s ‘Sitaare Zameen Par’ hit cinemas on June 20—but only after a CBFC committee insisted the film open with a quote from PM Modi. See the screengrab below. (The Hindu)

Four: Meta just dropped its latest version of its smart glasses—this time in collab with Oakley. Designed for athletes, it is hardy enough for workouts. The Verge has all the nerdy feature deets. See Zuck sporting a pair below—catch the launch video here.