Modi, Putin and the World Order (I)
Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 16.12.2014 | 11:39
A challenging moment and the strong sensitivity
A handful of people in Delhi would know that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a secret plan to take the Chinese President Xi Jinping who visited India in September to see his native town of Vadnagar in Gujarat, an ancient settlement with a history that goes back to 2500 B.C.
This idea came naturally to Modi because Vadnagar, known in history as Anandapura, was twice visited by the great seventh century Chinese scholar Hsuan-Tsang on his loop route to central India (627 A.D. to 643 A.D.) and the detailed chronicle of his travels devoted an entire chapter on Anandapura, describing the ‘dense’ population of that appendage of the Malava kingdom ruled by the Yadavas of central India, the region’s produce, climate, and literature and laws, its ten Buddhist ‘sangharamas’ with a thousand priests studying the Little Vehicle of the Sammatiya schools, its several tens of Deva temples, and so on.
But Modi’s secret plan was also a reflection of his distilled worldview, rich in political symbolism, insofar as it flagged his devotion to the ‘Asian century’.
Surveying the India-Russia annual summit last week in Delhi between Modi and President Vladimir Putin too, what needs to be taken note of as the most pronounced salient is the Indian leader’s empathy with the latter’s nationalist constituency. The following remarks by Modi conveyed his unreserved support of Russia – and Putin’s decisive leadership of his country, in particular – and, indeed, this has been articulated against the backdrop of the Cold-War like trends in world politics and the concerted Western strategies to ‘isolate’ Russia:
«President Putin is a leader of a great nation with which we have a friendship of unmatched mutual confidence, trust and goodwill. We have a Strategic Partnership that is incomparable in content… The character of global politics and international relations is changing. However, the importance of this relationship and its unique place in India’s foreign policy will not change. In many ways, its significance to both countries will grow further in the future…
«President Putin and I agreed that this is a challenging moment in the world. Our partnership and the strong sensitivity that we have always had for each other’s interests will be a source of strength to both countries…»
Suffice it to say, Putin’s policies, which single-mindedly aim to restore Russia’s prestige and effectiveness on the international stage, hold natural attraction for Modi. The Russian leader has refused to back down in the face of immense pressure from the West and is looking elsewhere in the international community for partnerships, especially with countries such as China and India.
[India Russia] [Modi] [Putin] [Response]
Analysis: Pakistan and the Chinese century
Syed Shoaib Hasan
Pakistan, China flags - .— Reuters/File
Writing in Vanity Fair magazine recently, Nobel Prize-winning economist and one of the world’s top intellectuals Joseph E. Stiglitz highlighted a fact that marks the end of an era in world history and holds immense promise and benefits for Pakistan and its citizens.
According to Stiglitz, at the turn of new year, China will become the world’s largest and most powerful economy — overtaking the US and thus launching an era which he says “will last for a very long time, if not forever”.
How this has been established and why it has escaped the attention of the world’s news media is not the subject here and is best explained by the Nobel Prize-winning professor and the fourth most influential economist by academic citation himself.
What is important for Pakistan is that this rise in its ‘greatest friend’s’ stature could be the most fortunate event in what has so far been a rather forgettable new millennium for Islamabad. From the fallout of the 9/11 attacks to the growth of internal insurgencies and an increasingly beleaguered economy, the country has been dragging itself along with predictions of doom and disaster hanging over its head.
But China’s ascendancy — coinciding with the end of the Afghan conflict — means a new dawn could be approaching. It’s not all conjecture: between them, Pakistan’s past two governments have managed to inveigle a $43.5 billion investment deal from Beijing. What is needed now is the proper management and planning of the resulting schemes.
Debate on investment
The biggest current example is of course the Pakistan-China trade corridor, seen as a game changer for the country. It also remains a top priority for the current government, something emphasised by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself. Yet the project, which envisages the construction of a vast transport and communications infrastructure to connect Chinese Kashgar to the Gwadar port, is already in dispute.
“Our problem is that our priorities remain narrowly confined to political and provincial domains,” said Daud Khan Achakzai, head of the Pakistan senate subcommittee on communications and transport. “This project will be developed over a period of at least 15 years and it needs long-term vision and planning, whereas each new government has been trying to amend it to best benefit its constituency.”
In such a move recently, the PML-N led government has diverted the original route through Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, to include Punjab and parts of Sindh. This has resulted in an uproar from the benches, especially from KP and Balochistan MNAs.
Achakzai, who is from Zhob, says that while he agrees that Punjab and Sindh should also derive benefits from the project, this should not be at the cost of an already greatly discriminated Balochistan.
“Each province should get its just share; as should Pakistan,” he contends.
“We must have a greater debate over the investment from China, as they stand to gain over 10 days in transport time for goods and energy. Currently, it takes them 12 days to ship goods and fuel from the Middle East, whereas the corridor would cut this down to 24 to 36 hours.”
[China Pakistan] [Logistics] [Gwadar]
India-Vietnam Axis: Energy & Geopolitical Imperatives
Kapil Patil
Nautilus Institute
This paper was originally published with support from the Hanyang University’s Energy, Governance and Security (EGS) Center, available in Global Energy Monitor Vol. 2, No.9.
India’s previous policy of avoiding alliances with great powers and/or playing an overt geopolitical balancing game seems to be no longer a foreign policy option in an increasingly multi-polar world order. India is finally waking up to this harsh reality in the light of the ongoing power transition in East and South East Asia that has resulted from China’s growing assertiveness in the region. At the regional level, a new Sino-Indian competition, especially in the states on each other’s peripheries, is shaping the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). While China seeks to enhance its strategic influence in Sri Lanka on the Indian periphery[1], the evolving Chinese role beyond its core interests in East Asia is impelling India to pursue strategic partnership with Vietnam – on China’s southern periphery – which seeks to deter Beijing’s military presence in the South China Sea. New Delhi’s growing energy interests in the South China Sea region are also adding a new dimension to the Sino-Indian strategic engagements in the IOR region.
[India Vietnam]
Is Narendra Modi the Leader of the World’s Largest Democracy…Or the World’s Most Successful Fascist?
Both, actually (see endnote).
That’s a duality that the United States is prepared to accommodate as it looks to a revitalized India as a strategic asset if not an outright ally in its crusade to counter “Rising China”.
And it drives US government efforts to shield Modi from the consequences of his alleged involvement in a fascist pogrom in Gujarat in 2002.
The US State Department has declared that Narendra Modi, as India’s head of state, receives sovereign immunity from US lawsuits, even if they allege human rights violations he committed as an individual while Chief Minister of Gujarat .
Attorneys for the victims beg to differ, and a US Superior Court has charged the State Department to respond to their objections by December 10.
For over a decade, Modi’s detractors have been attempting to force the spotlight on the fascist elements of his ideology and politics, and have failed to exact any meaningful political cost as he has risen to the position of ultimate power in India.
Will his critics succeed in bringing him to book this time? Don't count on it.
[Modi] [Counterbalance] [Dual standards]
APEC a wake-up call for Modi
The media is awash with reports regarding the forthcoming APEC summit in Beijing (November 10-11). No doubt, it is going to be a mega event in Asia-Pacific politics and another signpost of the maturing of China’s leadership role in world politics in the 21st century.
Unlike the last APEC summit in Vladivostok in 2012, which was a glittering event costing $21 billion to Russia, but ended up without much output, China aims at injecting heavy content into the upcoming events in Beijing. FM Wang Yi outlined three principal goals: i) “make new outcomes” in Asia-Pacific partnerships; ii) jointly building an “open Asia-Pacific economic pattern”, and, iii) “mapping out a blueprint” for APEC’s future development.
Nothing brings out the build-up more vividly than the Canadian PM Stephen Harper’s existential dilemma for whom the dates clash with his country’s Remembrance Day, an anniversary that holds poignancy after the recent terrorist strike in Ottawa, and yet, he doesn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to meet up with the Chinese leadership, which Canadian business and industry is strongly urging.
Meanwhile, all eyes are on a possible ‘bilateral’ between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Japanese PM Shinzo Abe. Tokyo has been quietly, assiduously seeking a summit. A Xinhua commentary today is apparently still hanging tough, but appearances can be deceptive — and in this case they almost certainly are — since things are indeed taking a big turn and Tokyo has even extended an invitation for a visit by Xi to Japan.
India is going to be a notable absentee at the summit in Beijing and it evokes a complex set of emotions — of isolation, longing, despair, admiration, hope and expectation.
[APEC]
Modi’s UN speech shows his foreign policy will walk a well-worn path
18 October 2014
Author: Krishnendra Meena, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Many have hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maiden speech to the United Nations General Assembly as a historic shift away from the speeches of past Indian heads of government. But in reality, Modi’s speech is more a continuation of the Indian government’s stance on many international issues, albeit with more flourish and charisma, which comes naturally to Modi when he speaks in Hindi.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the 69th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters, 27 Sept, 2014. (Photo: AAP)
Modi’s speech covered international issues like terrorism, UN Security Council reform, global development, climate change, the Pakistan question in India’s foreign policy and India’s neighbourhood. Modi’s remarks on most of the issues bore a close resemblance to the previous government’s views. First, Modi began with the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, or ‘the world is one family’, which has often been used by Indian leaders in the United Nations since the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, in 2005, his predecessor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opened his UN speech with the same phrase from Hitopdesha and Panchatantra, Sanskrit fables with morals relevant to statecraft. The phrase is appropriate to express globalist ideas. Many such instances are visible in Modi’s speech to the UN.
The call for reform of the UN Security Council has been a constant feature of India’s UN policy since the end of the Cold War. For the last ten years former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh consistently spoke about reform at international fora. The previous United Progressive Alliance government was thus able to garner support from the international community with President Obama declaring US support for reform during his visit to India in November 2010.
[Modi] [Continuity]
Can Obama Patch Things Up With Modi? It Might Save His Asia Pivot.
BY Neil Joeck
September 22, 2014 - 11:59 AM
President Obama has been subjected to substantial criticism for his handling of foreign policy since he took office on Jan. 20, 2009. An important complaint has been his failure to capitalize on the breakthrough in Indo-American relations begun with President Clinton's wildly popular visit to India in 2000 and cemented by President George W. Bush's bold decision to adjust U.S. nonproliferation policy in order to expand India's role as an ally and emerging power on the global stage. President Obama started off with some fanfare when he hosted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for a state visit in November 2009, but subsequently adopted a Pakistan-centric vision for U.S. policy. Admittedly, exploiting the openings made by his two predecessors was not made easier by the dysfunction with India's political leadership (captured in uncomfortable detail in a recent book by Singh's former media advisor, Sanjaya Baru, The Accidental Prime Minister). 2013 proved to be a particularly tumultuous year, marked by an embarrassing contretemps over the actions of an Indian diplomat in New York, India clamping down on American perquisites in New Delhi, and the hasty departure of the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi.
[Modi] [India US] [Nuclear deal]
Xi sees factory China and back office India as global engine
By Rupam Jain Nair
AHMEDABAD India Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:23am EDT
(Reuters) - The "world's factory" and the "world's back office" could together drive global economic growth, Chinese President Xi Jinping said as he began a rare visit to India on Wednesday, playing down mistrust that has long kept the Asian giants apart.
India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, is determined to build closer relations with the world's second-largest economy, whose leader arrived on Modi's 64th birthday armed with pledges to invest billions of dollars in railways, industrial parks and roads.
"As the two engines of the Asian economy, we need to become cooperation partners spearheading growth," Xi wrote in a column in The Hindu newspaper before landing in India, where he received a warm and carefully choreographed welcome.
He said that, together, China's strong manufacturing base and India's software and scientific skills had massive potential both as a production base and for creating a consumer market.
Xi flew with his wife directly to Ahmedabad, the main city in Modi's home state of Gujarat, where the Indian prime minister greeted him with a handshake and a bouquet of lilies
[China India]
Xi starts India visit in Modi's home state
Xinhua, September 17, 2014
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat on Wednesday, starting his three-day visit to the South Asian neighbor.
It is Xi's first trip to India since he took office in March 2013, and also the first state visit in eight years by a Chinese president to the country.
Xi is scheduled to attend a few joint events with Modi in Ahmedabad Wednesday afternoon before flying to the capital New Delhi in the evening.
Ahmedabad is the center of textile industry and a commercial hub in India. It is the largest city of Gujarat and also the former capital of the state.
Modi had served as chief minister of Gujarat for over a decade before being sworn in as the country's prime minister in May.
[China India] [Modi]
China–India border dispute: when Xi comes calling, will Modi be ready?
14 September 2014
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
When President Xi Jinping arrives in the Indian capital next week, he will become the first leader of a major power to pay a state visit in the Narendra Modi era. It is rare for a Chinese head of state to visit India this early in his tenure. It took Jiang Zemin seven years and Hu Jintao four years to pay their solitary visits to New Delhi.
[Border war] [Modi]
India: Selling Out To Monsanto. GMOs and the Bigger Picture
By Colin Todhunter
Global Research, August 08, 2014
On 15 August, India will mark its 67th anniversary of independence from Britain. It may seem strange to some that a nation would publicly celebrate its independence while at the same time it less publicly cedes it to outsiders. The gleaming façade of flags and fly-pasts will belie the fact that national security and independence do not depend on military might and patriotic speeches. Eye-catching celebrations will take place in Delhi and much of the media will mouth platitudes about the strength of the nation and its independence. The reality is, however, an ongoing, concerted attempt to undermine and destroy the very foundation and security of the country.
The bedrock of any society is its agriculture. Without food there can be no life. Without food security, there can be no genuine independence. A recent report by the organisation GRAIN revealed that small farms produce most of the world’s food and are more productively efficient than large farms
[Agriculture] [Overseas farming] [GM]
Modi Rewrites India’s Tryst with Destiny (I)
Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 07.08.2014 | 00:01
On the face of it, China has so far been reluctant about India's admission as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO].
According to latest reports, however, this may be about to change. Beijing has had a profound rethink.
The reports quoting Indian officials in New Delhi and Russian pundits in Moscow speak about a decision having been taken at the SCO foreign ministers meeting last Thursday in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, that the grouping will formally invite India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia as members at its next summit in September.
To be sure, Russia would be immensely pleased and a sigh of relief is audible in Moscow. A Russian pundit estimated that India’s admission into the SCO, which has been a long-cherished goal for Moscow, will pave the way for the grouping to hold itself out as “a centre of power in world politics.”
Make no mistake, the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of a huge arc that comprises the Asia-Pacific, South and Central Asia and West Asia are dramatically shifting and that grating sound in the steppes will be heard far and wide – as far as North America.
[Modi] [SCO]
Modi Rewrites India’s Tryst with Destiny (II)
Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 08.08.2014 | 01:03
Part I
During his visit to New Delhi last week, United States Secretary of State John Kerry was asked at a media interaction where India would stand in Washington’s scheme of things as regards its recent sanctions against Russia.
Kerry accepted that he was disappointed but appeared resigned to India’s stance. “We would obviously welcome India joining in with us with respect to that [sanctions]. But it is up to them. It is India’s choice.”
It does not need much ingenuity to figure out that the SCO is taking the decision to admit India at a defining moment in the post-cold war era politics.
[Modi] [SCO]
Arundhati Roy accuses Mahatma Gandhi of discrimination
Prize-winning author questions position in India of 'person whose doctrine of nonviolence was based on brutal caste system'
Jason Burke in Delhi
The Guardian, Friday 18 July 2014 18.32 BST
Indian writer and political activist Arundhati Roy said the generally accepted image of Gandhi was a lie. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
Arundhati Roy, the Booker prize winning author, has accused Mahatma Gandhi of discrimination and called for institutions bearing his name to be renamed.
Speaking at Kerala University in the southern Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram, Roy, 52, described the generally accepted image of Gandhi as a lie.
"It is time to unveil a few truths about a person whose doctrine of nonviolence was based on the acceptance of a most brutal social hierarchy ever known, the caste system … Do we really need to name our universities after him?" Roy said.
The caste system is thousands of years old but still defines the status of hundreds of millions of people in India. So-called untouchables, or Dalits, continue to suffer discrimination.
[Gandhi]
Invite Modi to deliver joint address to U.S. Congress: lawmakers
Narayan Lakshman
Two Republican Congressmen urge House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner
More than three months ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting the U.S. the enthusiasm seems to be brimming over here, this week in the form of two Republican Congressmen urging House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner to invite Mr. Modi to deliver a joint address to both houses of Congress when he arrives in Washington.
In the letter Ed Royce of California and George Holding of North Carolina asked that Mr. Modi “be granted the honour of addressing a Joint Meeting of Congress,” given that his visit to Washington would be “a seminal event for the nation’s vibrant Indian American community,” and since the U.S. had “no more important partner in South Asia,” than India.
The Prime Minister is expected to hold a bilateral discussion with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington around the time that he attends the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in late September.
His visit to the U.S. will mark a long-awaited thaw that comes nine years after the George W. Bush administration slapped Mr. Modi with a visa ban for presiding over Gujarat in 2002, when a deadly anti-Muslim pogrom engulfed the state and authorities were accused of not doing enough to halt the violence.
[Modi] [Double standards]
India’s foreign policy under Narendra Modi
A change of power in one of the world’s leading superpowers, as India will undoubtedly become, begs pertinent questions about whether it’s possible to adjust the course of its foreign policy. If we can expect any changes at all in Indian foreign policy, what will they entail? However, before wrestling with questions about the future, we must understand the recent past and present.
India’s position in the foreign policy arena in the last 2-3 decades has evolved due to a variety of internal and external factors of a fundamental and inter-connected nature. Of them, the main ones were brought about by the destruction at the end of the cold war of India’s previous foreign (and partly economic) policy mainstay, namely the USSR, as well as the beginning of the formation of a new geopolitical game in the mid-90's, the “center of gravity” of which began to shift from Europe to Asia. The process of the PRC becoming a new world superpower has significantly affected this change.
At the same time, as socialism was purposely and steadfastly discredited in the 90's in Russia, a sharp decline in the volume of economic connections with a former key ally couldn’t help but disrupt the “quasi-socialist” status of India’s economy and stimulate the process of its turning to Western countries.
It was in these conditions that Realpolitik supporters in India began to actively speak about the exhaustiveness of quasi-neutral politics at a time of cold war, as well as “the Non-Aligned Movement,” the unofficial leader of which remains India, and about the need to find new crucial partners. An ever-growing drift away from “unfounded idealism,” professed under the 1971 India-Russia Friendship Treaty Hindi-Russi Bhai Bhai, toward the establishment of India as a modern political-military pole has become the main ingredient in the country’s foreign policy evolution the past 20 years.
The increasing rapport between India and the US has become a principal component of this drift.
[Modi] [Military industrial complex] [FDI]
Modi’s foreign policy agenda
by Ramesh Thakur
• May 23, 2014
On the one hand, the world is intrigued by India’s new leader, Narendra Modi, who inflicted such a devastating defeat on the grand old party of Indian politics and has replaced the well-known and widely respected Manmohan Singh.
On the other hand, the world is anxious about the foreign policy implications of someone who has held no national post and will lead the government of a billion-strong, nuclear-armed country with the world’s fourth-biggest economy in purchasing power parity ($5.4 trillion to Japan’s $4.7 trillion).
The world should stop worrying. The elements of foreign policy continuity under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress-led governments of AtalBihari Vajpayee (1999-2004) and Manmohan Singh (2004-2014) are far more numerous and substantial than the readjustments on the margins.
Vajpayee turned around the relationship with the U.S. with sustained engagement after the 1998 nuclear-tests setback. His diplomatic overtures to Pakistan and China successfully insulated foreign policy from domestic political pressures and delinked the two border disputes from deepening engagement on a broad range of other fronts.
Singh’s impulse and instincts were the same, but his far weaker position in the domestic structure left him no space to push foreign policy initiatives. He outsourced Sri Lanka and Bangladesh policies to difficult coalition allies in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Even his signature civil nuclear cooperation deal with the U.S. is unconsummated after domestic opponents successfully hobbled it with a draconian nuclear liability law.
Anatomy of India’s General Election (II)
Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 20.05.2014 | 19:00
Part I
Modi and the road not taken
There are two competing narratives regarding what to expect from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His acolytes keep switching between overlapping descriptions of him to convey their adoration of their idol – Loha Purush (Iron Man) and Vikas Purush (Development Man).
They believe passionately that Modi will put their country back on a high-growth track, root out corruption, and resort to a new, muscular foreign policy that enhances India’s global standing. Last Friday night, Modi said in a victory speech in his home state of Gujarat, “I didn’t get a chance to sacrifice my life in India’s freedom struggle, but I have the chance to dedicate myself to good governance. I will develop this country. I will take it to new heights».
A second narrative, on the contrary, is of ‘Apocalypse Now’, almost entirely borne out of Modi’s background as a pracharak or activist of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS], a far-right paramilitary organization founded in direct imitation of European fascist movements, which believes as the centerpiece of its ideology in India being essentially a Hindu nation. The founder of the RSS Madhav Golwalkar wrote, “foreign races… must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture… or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights».
[Modi]
Anatomy of India’s General Election (I)
Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 19.05.2014 | 15:50
A neo-Gaullist storms Delhi darbar
The stunning victory of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] in the recently-concluded general election in India needs to be understood from three perspectives – first, the sheer dimensions of the victory; second, its meaning; and, third, what it portends for India’s political economy in the coming five-year period in terms of national policies…
Without doubt, the BJP has secured a historic mandate from the people of India. A victory was expected but not on such a massive landslide. The party won 283 seats in the 540-member parliament, which is by far the highest ever tally in its history. The BJP secured an impressive one-third of the votes. More important, to borrow the words of the party chief Rajnath Singh, the mandate is «comprehensive in geographical spread». The party, which has been traditionally restricted to the so-called ‘Hindi belt’ in the northern states of India has spread its wings nationally and reached all nooks and corners of India. It is of symbolic importance that it secured handsomely half the seats in the northernmost Jammu & Kashmir state as well as won the southernmost parliamentary constituency of Kanyakumari, apart from doing well in much of India’s northeast and making a clean sweep virtually in the western states.
Equally, the party’s pan-Indian mandate comprises support of a broad cross section of Indians, cutting across the divides of Hindu castes and creed. Suffice to say the BJP government returns India to single-party rule in a way that was thought to be inconceivable in the opinion of most observers up until last week. What explains it?
[Modi] [BJP]
India's Election: The Next Prime Minister Is A Dangerous Man
By Isaac Chotiner @ichotiner
The results of India's election, which are rapidly appearing today, seem to show a huge win for the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A victory had been expected, but this looks like a massive landslide. The next prime minister is almost certain to be Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, a state in western India. He is known for his economic agenda, which is seen to be relatively business-friendly (expect stocks to react very positively to the news), and his controversial brand of Hinduism. Modi's ideology is certainly going to be important over the next several years, but his worrying personality might end up mattering more. It may be time to bring back an old slogan: over the next five years in India, the personal will be political, and probably not in a good way.
It's easy to describe Modi to people who have never heard him speak, or read about his past. He is a depressingly familiar type. He is secretive; he is vindictive; he has creepily authoritarian tendencies (a woman in Gujarat was placed under surveillance by Modi for months in a controversy that somehow didn't seem to register with voters); he ricochets between aggression and self-pity in a manner familiar to anyone who has heard nationalists of any stripe; and he is simply incapable of sounding broad-minded. During the 2002 Gujarat riots, hundreds of people (mostly Muslims) were killed in communal violence on Modi's watch. (This is why he has been denied a United States visa for many years.) The extent of Modi's role in spurring on the horrors has been extensively debated; suffice it to say that he once said his only regret about the mass murders was that he didn't handle the media well enough.
[Modi]
Modi promises a ‘shining India’ in victory speech
By Annie Gowen and Rama Lakshmi, Published: May 16 | Updated: Saturday, May 17, 7:26 AM E-mail the writers
NEW DELHI — India’s opposition party swept to victory in India’s national election Friday, setting the stage for Hindu nationalist and economic reformer Narendra Modi to become India’s next prime minister.
Modi, 63, chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, ran a ruthlessly efficient months-long campaign, spreading his message of hope and revitalization at thousands of rallies around the country. Ultimately voters overwhelmingly chose his message of change, with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies garnering well over the 272 seats needed for a clear majority in Parliament.
[Modi] [BJP]
Modi's Thatcherite talk cannot restore India's flagging fortunes
India's superpower dreams are giving way to the same old reality of poverty
India's economic boom fizzled two years ago, ending in the sort of stagflation that bedevilled Britain in the 1970s Photo: EPA/PIYAL ADHIKARY
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
8:29PM BST 14 May 2014
India’s economic model has essentially failed. Talk of matching East Asia’s growth rates has been exposed as wishful thinking. Superpower dreams are giving way to the same old reality of poverty, depleted ground water and graft.
We can now see that growth averaging 8.2pc from 2004 to 2012 was an anomaly, kept alive by fiscal largesse at the top of the cycle. A torrid global boom masked all sins, itself the result of negative real interest rates in the West, the yen carry trade from Japan, China’s reserve accumulation and ultimately a flood of dollar liquidity that leaked everywhere from the US Federal Reserve.
India’s manufacturing industry remains stuck at 14pc of GDP. This is a far cry from levels in Thailand (30pc), South Korea (31pc) or China (32pc), or Japan in its day, the typical threshold for catch-up economies graduating to a higher league. India has actually lost 5m manufacturing jobs over the past decade, slipping from 55m to 50m.
The economic boom fizzled two years ago, ending in the sort of stagflation that bedevilled Britain in the 1970s. India’s “misery index” is back where it was a quarter of a century ago when the old Hindu Model was overthrown and the country embraced free market globalism, up to a point. The International Monetary Fund expects growth to languish at 4.6pc this fiscal year, with inflation at 10.5pc. “India has very little room to adopt countercyclical policies,” it said.
Voters have turned to Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist and celibate “monk” from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh movement who rose from tea boy to run the state of Gujarat as a relative haven of free enterprise. Billed as India’s Margaret Thatcher, or its Shinzo Abe, some wonder whether he is not really a Hindu Putin, a strongman who plays with ethnic fire sitting on top of a fraying economy.
[Modi]
Why India doesn’t support Western sanctions on Russia
6 May 2014
Author: Priya Chacko, University of Adelaide
Commentators have expressed surprise at India’s failure to criticise Russia for its incursion into Crimea. Not only did India abstain from voting on the UN General Assembly Resolution condemning Crimea’s annexation but it has also opposed the imposition of Western sanctions. Together with its fellow members in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) forum, India has rejected Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop’s suggestion that Russia be excluded from the G20 summit.
Also, India’s National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon has delivered the US a political snub stating that ‘there are legitimate Russian and other interests involved and we hope they are discussed and resolved’.
[Russia confrontation] [India] [Counterbalance]
Indian-origin academics in UK 'dread' Narendra Modi in power, issue open letter
Tuesday, 22 April 2014 - 10:29pm IST | Place: London | Agency: PTI
Around 75 professors and other academics of Indian origin working at some of Britain's prestigious institutions such as Cambridge and Oxford university and London School of Economics today issued an open letter, sharply attacking Narendra Modi and saying, "The idea of Modi in power fills us with dread".
The academics led by Prof. Chetan Bhatt and Gautam Appa of the London School of Economics issued the open letter in the UK's Left-leaning 'Independent' newspaper. "As the people of India vote to elect their next government, we are deeply concerned at the implications of a Narendra Modi-led BJP government for democracy, pluralism and human rights in India," the letter said targeting the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate.
"Narendra Modi is embedded in the Hindu Nationalist movement, namely the RSS and other Sangh Parivar groups, with their history of inciting violence against minorities. Some of these groups stand accused in recent terrorist attacks against civilians," the letter titled "The idea of Modi in power fills us with dread" reads. The letter followed a similar open letter by Indian-origin author Salman Rushdie and artist Anish Kapoor among others in the 'Guardian' earlier this month. The letter in 'Independent' published here today reads: "There is widespread agreement about the authoritarian nature of Modi's rule in Gujarat, further evidenced by the recent sidelining of other senior figures within the BJP. This style of governance can only weaken Indian democracy."
"Additionally, the Modi-BJP model of economic growth involves close linking of government with big business, generous transfer of public resources to the wealthy and powerful, and measures harmful to the poor.
[Modi] [Diaspora]
Doing Big Business In Modi's Gujarat
This story appears in the March 24, 2014 issue of Forbes Asia.
When his son was married in the coastal state of Goa last year, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s guest list included the richest man in the country and many a chief executive and top banker and bureaucrat. Most, however, just stopped by the night before to bless the happy couple and skipped the actual wedding. But one prominent friend stayed through all the ceremonies over a couple of days, genial and relaxed like a favorite uncle. It was Narendra Modi, chief minister of Adani’s home state of Gujarat.
Ranked No. 609 in the world with an estimated worth of $2.8 billion, Adani runs India’s largest port, a power company and a commodities trading business. A large chunk of his business is located in Gujarat, and the government under Modi, who has been running the state since 2001 and now is the favored prime ministerial candidate in the national elections this spring, has been more generous to Adani than to any other industrialist there.
Adani has, over the years, leased 7,350 hectares–much of which he got from 2005 onward–from the government in an area called Mundra in the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat. FORBES ASIA has copies of the agreements that show he got the 30-year, renewable leases for as little as one U.S. cent a square meter (the rate maxed out at 45 cents a square meter). He in turn has sublet this land to other companies, including state-owned Indian Oil Co., for as much as $11 a square meter. Between 2005 and 2007 at least 1,200 hectares of grazing land was taken away from villagers.
[Modi] [Crony capitalism]
When Not To Go To School
By Ranjita Biswas
KOLKATA, Apr 19 2014 (IPS) - In large parts of rural India, the absence of separate toilets for growing girls is taking a toll on their education. Many are unable to attend school during their menstrual cycle.
According to the country’s Annual Status of Education Report in 2011, lack of access to toilets causes girls between 12 and 18 years of age to miss around five days of school every month, or around 50 school days every year.
“There is a sharp increase in the dropout rate, mainly among girls, as they move from primary to upper primary, because we cannot till date provide them proper toilets."
The country’s Supreme Court had ruled in 2011 that every public school has to have toilets. But a pan-India study, ‘The Learning Blocks’, conducted by the NGO CRY in 2013, shows that 11 percent of schools do not have toilets and only 18 percent have separate ones for girls. In 34 percent of schools, toilets are in bad condition or simply unusable.
Atindra Nath Das, regional director of CRY East, told IPS, “Children do not have safe drinking water, schools still do not have their own building and toilets are missing. No wonder 8.1 million children in India are still out of school.
“There is a sharp increase in the dropout rate, mainly among girls, as they move from primary to upper primary, because we cannot till date provide them proper toilets,” he said.
[Education]
Advisers to India's Modi dream of a Thatcherite revolution
By Frank Jack Daniel and Rajesh Kumar Singh
NEW DELHI Sun Apr 6, 2014 2:19am EDT
1 of 3. A leader of India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Lal Krishna Advani (R), listens to BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi during a workers' party meeting ahead of the general election, at Gandhinagar in the western Indian state of Gujarat April 5, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Amit Dave
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(Reuters) - When Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi gave a speech on the virtues of smaller government and privatization on April 8 last year, supporters called him an ideological heir to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died that day.
Modi, favorite to form India's next government after elections starting on Monday, has yet to unveil any detailed economic plans but it is clear that some of his closest advisers and many campaign workers have a Thatcherite ambition for him.
These supporters dismiss criticism of Modi for religious riots that killed some 1,000 people in his home state of Gujarat 12 years ago. For them, Modi stands for economic freedom.
"If you define Thatcherism as less government, free enterprise, then there is no difference between Modi-nomics and Thatcherism," said Deepak Kanth, a London-based banker now collecting fundsfunds as a volunteer for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Kanth, who says he is on the economic right, is one of several hundred volunteers with a similar philosophy working for Modi in campaign war-rooms across the country. Among them are alumni of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan tradingtrading floors.
"What Thatcher did with financialfinancial market reforms, you can expect a similar thing with infrastructure in India under Modi," he said, referring to Thatcher's trademark "Big Bang" of sudden financial deregulation in 1986.
Modi's inner circle also includes prominent economists and industrialists who share a desire to see his BJP draw a line under India's socialist past, cut welfare and reduce the role of government in business.
The BJP is due to unveil detailed economic plans on Monday and is expected to make populist pledges to create a massive number of manufacturing jobs and to restart India's stalled $1 trillion infrastructure development program.
But conversations with top policy advisers to Modi suggest an agenda that goes further than the upcoming campaign manifesto, including plans to overhaul national welfare programs. There is also a fierce debate inside his team about privatizing some flagship state-run firms, including loss-making Air India.
Bibek Debroy, a prominent Indian economist speaking for the first time about his role advising Modi during the campaigncampaign , told Reuters the Hindu nationalist leader shared his market-driven policy platform and opposed handouts.
"It is essentially a belief that people don't need doles, and don't need subsidies," Debroy said. Instead, the government should focus on building infrastructure to ease poverty, he said.
[Modi]
If Narendra Modi becomes PM, China, Pakistan can expect a tougher India
Reuters New Delhi , March 30, 2014
First Published: 11:06 IST(30/3/2014) | Last Updated: 15:26 IST(30/3/2014)
India will get tougher on territorial disputes with China and in its old rivalry with Pakistan if Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) leader Narendra Modi becomes the prime minister in May after a general election, two of his aides said.
Modi, who is the front-runner to win the five-week Lok Sabha election starting on April 7, has taken an aggressive tone against the two neighbouring nations. On the campaign trail, he has warned Beijing to shed its "mindset of expansionism" and in the past he has railed against Pakistan for attacks by militants in India.
Read: India's Modi: Economic inspiration or illusion?
"I swear in the name of the soil that I will protect this country," Modi said at a rally in Arunachal Pradesh last month, a region claimed by China.
India, China and Pakistan are all nuclear powers. They are also jockeying to take positions in Afghanistan as Western troops start to withdraw from the war-torn nation after a 12-year insurgency.
India has fought three wars with Pakistan and had a 1962 border skirmish with China. It came close to a fourth war with Pakistan in 2001 but since then, its foreign policy has been mostly benign.
Modi has painted the Congress party, which has been in power for more than 50 of the 67 years since India became independent, as weak on national security.
However, India is one of the top buyers worldwide of military hardware, purchasing about $12.7 billion in arms during 2007-2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, everything from basic military goods to an aircraft carrier.
[Modi]
Judge dismisses indictment against Indian diplomat
STR/EPA - Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, right, is seen with her father, Uttam Khobragade, in New Delhi, India, in January.
By Karen DeYoung, Thursday, March 13, 12:49 PM E-mail the writer
A federal judge dismissed an indictment Wednesday against an Indian diplomat whose arrest in December on visa fraud charges led to a major diplomatic crisis between the United States and India.
Devyani Khobragade, an Indian consular official in New York, did not have full diplomatic immunity when she was arrested in December for submitting false forms to obtain a U.S. visa for a household worker.
But the Indian government subsequently changed her job to one with full immunity, and the fact that this occurred on Jan. 8, the day before she was formally indicted, meant the indictment was invalid, Judge Shira A. Sheindlin of the Southern District of New York ruled.
The case had provoked outrage in India over both the arrest and the conditions of Khobragade’s brief detention, including a strip-search.
The State Department moved to resolve the situation by simultaneously recognizing her newly acquired immunity and declaring her persona non grata.
Rooting for Wrong Cricket Team? That’s Sedition, Kashmiri Students Learn
NEW DELHI — The police in northern India have filed sedition charges against 67 Kashmiri students after some of them cheered for the Pakistani cricket team during a televised match with India on Sunday night.
The charges were filed Tuesday following an official complaint against the students by Manzoor Ahmed, vice chancellor of Swami Vivekanand Subharti University in Meerut, according to M.?M. Baig, a Meerut police official. In addition to sedition charges, the students were charged with “instigating hate between two communities.”
Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, wrote in several posts on Twitter that the sedition charges against the students were an overreaction.
“I believe what the students did was wrong & misguided but they certainly didn’t deserve to have charges of sedition slapped against them,” Mr. Abdullah wrote.
He said he had spoken to his counterpart in Uttar Pradesh State, where Meerut is located, “who has assured me he will personally look into the matter of the Kashmiri students in Meerut.”
Indian news media reported that a delegation of leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-of-center Hindu nationalist group that polls suggest will soon dominate India’s central government, met Mr. Ahmed and demanded stern action against the students
[Kashmir] [BJP] [Communalism]
Saudi, Iranian leaders involve India in regional peace
IANS
February 21, 2014 Last Updated at 19:58 IST
Visits to New Delhi by leaders of Saudi Arabia and Iran in quick succession would seem to suggest something new is happening in West Asia to which Indian attention is required .
Some historic changes have already placed the region on a path of hope: the election of President Hassan Rouhani, his historic telephonic "hullo" with President Barack Obama and positive movement of the Geneva process on Iran's nuclear programme.
Negative propaganda was not sticking on Tehran which, with every passing week, looked more statesmanlike, above the mess in the rest of the Middle East.
Well, the Saudis are on their way to restoring the balance.
When Saudi king Abdullah returned from hospital in February 2011 and saw his friends Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis toppled, he swore to arrest the so called Arab Spring. The message rang out of Riyadh: "No monarchies or Sheikhdoms will be allowed to fall." They were not allowed to fall. Libya was a different tragedy and it ended in a mess. But we shall let that pass.
The unholy mess in Syria was dragged on and on by multiple Salafist groups under the supervision of Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan. He turned up in Moscow and told Vladimir Putin that he could ensure incident-free Sochi Winter Olympics if only Moscow would pull back from its support to President Bashar al Assad in Damascus.
How would he guarantee that, pray? He said he controlled the extremists in the Caucasus. Putin said we have known for 10 years you control the militants. It sounds like a parody on outlandish diplomacy. All of this was actually leaked to the Russian media.
Well, Prince Bandar has been relieved of his duties to arm and fund Syrian rebels
[Saudi Arabia]
Enthusiasm for Chinese on the rise in India
By Wu Jin
China.org.cn, February 19, 2014
Tan Zhong, a Chinese-Indian bilingual educator in Indian universities, including the India National Defense College, University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, told the Global Times (Chinese) that the Indian people have become increasingly interested in learning Chinese in recent years, thanks to booming bilateral trade and exchanges.
Global Times: Was the Indian public enthusiastic about learning Chinese in the 1950s when there was a honeymoon period in bilateral relations between China and India?
Tan: Despite the frequent exchanges between China and India, not many Indians were learning the language. But when the border conflict between the two countries started in 1962, Indians began to realize that they should study and understand China. They were under the influence of the U.S.' promotion of the theory of “precise knowledge of the self and the threat that leads to victory” from Sun Tzu's Art of War (a classic work of military strategy in ancient China).
When the University of Delhi started offering Chinese classes in 1964, I helped recruit students. At that time, the class could only take 30 to 40 students, but there were hundreds of applicants. Shivshankar Menon, the incumbent Indian National Security advisor was one of the students in the third phase. But the class was really short of teachers, as only my wife and I worked there. Later, when I took up a post at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1979, there were no textbooks. So I had to borrow out of date copies of the People's Daily for reference.
Global Times: Is it easy for Chinese learners to find jobs in India?
Tan: In the past, most Chinese majors could not find a job. Therefore, they would continue their study for a master's degree. If that degree failed to get them a job, they would carry on to study for a Ph.D.
But now the reason for the popularity of Chinese has fundamentally changed. [Instead of a strategic demand], the increasing bilateral exchanges among the two peoples are sparking the Indian people's enthusiasm for learning Chinese. The number of Chinese tourists visiting India has continued to rise, and many Indian students who are learning Chinese obtain job offers even before they graduate.
The Pakistani president's visit to China
By Sajjad Malik
China.org.cn, February 17, 2014
Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain has chosen China for his first official overseas visit since taking office in September last year. During the three day tour from Feb. 18-20, the Pakistani leader will meet President Xi Jinping for a summit level interaction. Various economic, political and strategic issues will come up for discussion at the crucial meeting. He will also meet Premier Li Keqiang and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Zhang Dejiang. He is also scheduled to have meetings with some other senior Chinese officials and functionaries.
[China Pakistan]
Outcry as Penguin India pulps 'alternative' history of Hindus
Novelist Arundhati Roy leads chorus of protest after publisher settles lawsuit brought by militant group
Jason Burke in Delhi
theguardian.com, Thursday 13 February 2014 23.12 GMT
Hindus book protest
A protest near the US embassy in New Delhi against Wendy Doniger's The Hindus. Photograph: Anindito Mukherjee/EPA
Conservative activists in India have pledged to continue their campaign to purge bookshelves and schools of works they say are abusive to Hinduism, as a fierce row over a 700-page academic work on the faith intensified on Thursday.
Penguin Books India agreed this week to withdraw from sale and pulp all copies of The Hindus: An Alternative History, by the US-based academic Wendy Doniger, as part of a settlement after a group of Hindu conservative nationalists filed a case against the publisher.
"We are going to fight each and every example of this. We will leave nothing unchallenged that is against our customs, our religion, our nation," said Prakash Sharma, spokesman for the hardline Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) organisation, one of a series of conservative religious groups in India that aggressively campaign against artists and authors who they believe malign or misrepresent Hinduism.
[India] [Hinduism]
The Japan-India strategic equation is not working
3 February 2014
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
On 26 January, Shinzo Abe became the first Japanese prime minister to grace India’s annual Republic Day parade as its chief guest.
If New Delhi’s motive in according Abe the high honour was to elevate the profile of this year’s summit meeting and nudge him to sign on the dotted line of the proposed Japan-India civil nuclear cooperation accord, the outcome was far from satisfactory.
Two weeks prior to his arrival, Abe dispatched Natsuo Yamaguchi, the head of his pacifist-leaning coalition partner the New Komeito Party, to New Delhi to reiterate Tokyo’s limited window of compromise. The civil nuclear cooperation-related language in the Joint Statement reflects this obvious discrepancy in viewpoints. More broadly, until Japan’s ruling coalition — and its broader society at large — arrives at a durable consensus on the role of nuclear energy in the post-Fukushima age, the desirability of proceeding with nuclear technology trade with India, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, will continue to elude.
Japan and India: a transformative entente
Brahma Chellaney
Asia's future rests on the strategic triangle of China, India, and Japan -- countries that have never before been strong at the same time. In the coming years, Asian geopolitics will be greatly influenced by an inexorable tightening of the bonds between Japan and India, which hope to fend off China's growing assertiveness and territorial creep.
[China confrontation] [Japan India] [Counterbalance]
China on the radar, India invites Japan for Indo-US Malabar naval war games
Rajat Pandit,TNN | Jan 25, 2014, 10.46 PM IST
The joint statement issued after the Manmohan Singh-Shinzo Abe meeting on Saturday, in fact, welcomed India’s invitation to the Japanese maritime self-defence force to take part in the Malabar exercise.
RELATED
NEW DELHI: Injecting some much-needed thrust to its rapidly expanding strategic partnership with Japan , India has invited the Japanese forces to take part in this year's edition of the Indo-US Malabar naval war games that have riled China in the past. India and Japan on Saturday also decided to hold another joint working group meeting in March to discuss the sale of Japanese US-2i ShinMayva amphibious aircraft to Indian Navy, apart from ramping up defence ties through regular joint combat exercises and military exchanges as well as cooperation in anti-piracy, maritime security and counter-terrorism.
Both the Malabar war games and the proposed sale of amphibious planes are crucial in the sense that they mark a departure from the past, both for India and Japan. India has largely restricted the Malabar exercise to a bilateral one with the US after China protested against the 2007 edition of the war games in the Bay of Bengal since they were expanded to include the Australian, Japanese and Singaporean navies as well.
China has always viewed any multi-lateral naval grouping in its neighbourhood as part of a grand strategy to build a security cooperation axis in the Asia-Pacific region to "contain'' it. Shrugging aside such concerns this time, India, US and Japan will hold the Malabar war games off the coast of Japan in August-September this year.
The joint statement issued after the Manmohan Singh-Shinzo Abe meeting on Saturday, in fact, welcomed India's invitation to the Japanese maritime self-defence force to take part in the Malabar exercise. China, of course, figures high on the radar screens of both. India and Japan are wary of China's increasingly assertive behaviour , especially in the contentious South and East China Seas where it is locked in territorial disputes with its neighbours ranging from Vietnam to Japan, as well as the rapid modernisation of the People's Liberation Army.
While Japan has been quite vocal about all this, India has tried to strike a fine balance between countries like the US and Japan on one side and China on the other. India and China are also of course competing for the same strategic space in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), which New Delhi views as its own backyard.
[China confrontation] [Military exercises] [Counterbalance] [Japanese remilitarisation]
Reality Check for US’ Indian Partner
Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR | 14.01.2014 | 00:00
What happened in the US-Indian diplomatic row over the arrest and detention of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York and her return to Delhi last week is fairly straightforward: the US intelligence made a concerted attempt to “recruit” an Indian career diplomat, and Delhi successfully thwarted it.
The American side has been taken by surprise. Their perception of the working of the Indian foreign and security policy establishment turned out to be way off the mark. In the recent decade when glaring espionage activities by the CIA surfaced – when they smuggled out a top intelligence official (2004) or when they breached the security perimeters of India’s National Security Council [NSC] in 2006 – the spooks in the American embassy in Delhi got away scot-free.
Any country with self-respect would have reacted strongly when such subversive acts by a foreign power surfaced, but India chose to shove the incidents under the carpet for reasons that are beyond comprehension. Whether it was because of the sense of vulnerability on the part of the Indian functionaries holding fort in the foreign policy and security establishment at that time or because of political interference – Delhi was negotiating the nuclear deal during those years – remains anybody’s guess. All that can be said is that if the Americans developed a sneering contempt toward the Indian establishment, it wasn’t entirely their fault.
The Americans got the impression that the Indian establishment was impotent and highly vulnerable to US pressure and the elites were lacking in integrity and a sense of honor. Delhi must be one of the few capitals where minor flunkeys of the American embassy take undue freedom to backslap cabinet ministers at public receptions. Arguably, a point has been reached where it has become difficult to lend credence to media reporting – from Delhi or Washington-based reporters alike – on matters affecting the US-Indian “defining partnership”.
[Espionage] [Sting]
In India, a Spectre is Haunting Us All
by JOHN PILGER
In five-star hotels on Mumbai’s seafront, children of the rich squeal joyfully as they play hide and seek. Nearby, at the National Theatre for the Performing Arts, people arrive for the Mumbai Literary Festival: famous authors and notables drawn from India’s Raj class. They step deftly over a woman lying across the pavement, her birch brooms laid out for sale, her two children silhouettes in a banyan tree that is their home.
It is Children’s Day in India. On page nine of the Times of India, a study reports that every second child is malnourished. Nearly two million children under the age of five die every year from preventable illness as common as diarrhoea. Of those who survive, half are stunted due to a lack of nutrients. The national school dropout rate is 40 per cent. Statistics like these flow like a river permanently in flood. No other country comes close. The small thin legs dangling in a banyan tree are poignant evidence.
The leviathan once known as Bombay is the centre for most of India’s foreign trade, global financial dealing and personal wealth. Yet at low tide on the Mithi River, in ditches, at the roadside, people are forced to defecate. Half the city’s population is without sanitation and lives in slums without basic services. This has doubled since the 1990s when “Shining India” was invented by an American advertising firm as part of the Hindu nationalist BJP party’s propaganda that it was “liberating” India’s economy and “way of life”.
[Inequality] [Modi] [Communalism]
India pulls out of £466m AgustaWestland helicopter deal
Legal battle expected after Indian defence ministry confirms it is cancelling order with British-Italian firm in wake of bribery claims
Simon Goodley and Rajeev Syal
The Guardian, Wednesday 1 January 2014 15.13 GMT
India has terminated a £466m helicopter order with the British-Italian company AgustaWestland following accusations that the firm bribed officials.
The move – part of a long-running saga that looks certain to trigger a legal battle – appears to have finally destroyed a deal that was described by the helicopter group when it won the contract in 2010 as a significant order that would help sustain the company's nearly 3,300-strong workforce in Yeovil, Somerset.
It will also come as a severe blow to the UK's ambitions to develop into a centre for high-value manufacturing.
[Corruption] [Arms sales]