Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced financial assistance of USD 1.4 billion in the form of budgetary support, currency swap and concessional lines of credit to fulfill socio-economic development programmes in the Maldives.
After Indian filmmaker Nandita Das expressed her disappointment about her film “Manto” not getting cleared for release in Pakistan, Pakistan’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry has extended help while an online petition has urged Prime Minister Imran Khan to lift a ban on its screening.
Meet Allirjah Subaskaran, 46, who produced India’ costliest 3D movie 2.0 starring Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar. Subaskaran fled Sri Lanka with his family at the height of the ethnic conflict there three decades ago, and moved first to France, and then later settled in the U.K. He said that he loved watching Tamil films while growing up, and that’s why he started Lyca Productions, a production and distribution company based in Chennai, in 2014.
Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Indian economic historian Dr.Utsa Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. It’s a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hectic travel schedule and his government’s advertising blitz over the past four-and-a-half years have cost Indian taxpayers about 65.9 billion rupees (US$ 920 million). The globe-trotting prime minister’s 84 trips around the world cost roughly $280 million, while the government spent US$ 640 million on promoting Modi’s flagship projects and achievements, according to new government data, writes Iain Marlow in Bloombergquint
Realizing that it had failed to keep its promise to usher in “Achchey Din” (Good Days); that there had jobless growth; and that certain major decisions like demonetization had backfired; BJP governments, both in the Center and the States, had revived the Hindutva movement to capture the imagination of the voters. But the results of the recently concluded State Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram showed that economic and regional issues had upstaged “Hindutva” – the ideology of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is based on Hindu-majoritarian dominance over religious minorities, particularly the Muslims.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost 180 seats that it won in 2013, and the Congress gained 162 across three state assemblies–Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Chhattisgarh–as results were declared on December 11, 2018, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of electoral data. In 2013, the BJP won 377 seats and the Congress 118 in these three states. The BJP had no seats in Mizoram in 2013, and this is the first state election for Telangana, which was created in 2014. This means the BJP lost 48% of the seats it won in 2013, and the Congress gained 137%.
Hindutvic rhetoric will have to be matched by performance on the economic front if it is to be effective because Hindutva can only be icing on the cake as past experience shows.But extremist and ideologically driven parties like the BJP do not set out of the established line and think anew. Therefore the BJP will continue to favor the big corporations; hope that the middle classes will be taken care of by mesmerizing Hindutvic and nationalistic rhetoric; and the farmers will be silenced by promises of higher Minimum Support Prices – all policies which have failed to deliver the goods.
Since Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014, a series of top government economic personnel have quit. The list is long considering the fact that the Modi regime is only four years old. Those who have quit so far are two Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governors, Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel; a Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, Arvind Panagariya, and a Chief Economic Adviser, Arvind Subramanian. Anyone watching the Modi government’s handling of economic affairs would know that the stated reasons for quitting and the sweetly worded tweets were but attempts to hide the ugly truth that these eminent men were unable to work under Modi’s crassly political agenda set by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS).
“Pakistan has made its state an Islamic State. If they have to stay together with India, then they have to develop as a secular state. If they’re willing to become secular like us, then they seem to have an opportunity.” Gen.Bipin Rawat said at a function to review the passing out parade of 135th course of the National Defence Academy in Pune.