Tag: narendra modi

"Jab tak rahega samosa mein aaloo, tab tak rahega Bihar mein Lalu," would be the rustic anecdote by RJD president Lalu Prasad who would often use it to charm the rural electorate, while addressing an election rally. Barred from contesting elections after his conviction in 2013 in fodder scam, Lalu was free to campaign for his party nominees and others during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and 2015 Assembly elections. And he did it in his own inimitable style, laced with wit and humour. But in 2015, RJD emerged as the single largest party in the Bihar Assembly. Missing him more are his committed supporters, who form about 20 per cent of the electorate. "Bhaiyon-behno, Bijli aayee?" Nitish was then a part of Mahagatbandhan. Lalu’s bail plea will be heard in the Supreme Court on April 10. In his absence, Lalu’s younger son Tejashwi Yadav, the former Deputy CM, is holding the fort. But the young lad also knows that he cannot be a substitute to his charismatic father.

VARANASI, INDIA - In the Indian city Hindus consider the center of the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has commissioned a grand promenade connecting the sacred Ganges River with the centuries-old Vishwanath temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, the god of destruction. In his five years as prime minister, Modi has pushed to promote this secular nation of 1.3 billion people and nine major religions — including about 170 million Muslims — as a distinctly Hindu state. And some Varanasi Muslims fear the project could embolden Hindu hard-liners who have demanded for decades that the 17th century Gyanvapi mosque — which they claim was built over an earlier Vishwanath temple demolished in the Mughal era — should itself be torn down. Around a Hindu festival day in March, Islahi said, a group tried to install a Hindu statue near the mosque to assert a claim on the property. The campaign includes restoring the Hindu names of cities that were renamed by Mughals centuries ago and excluding the Taj Mahal, a Muslim tomb, from government tourism materials. Though Varanasi draws millions of devout Hindus each year, scholars and residents emphasize its identity as a city where people of many faiths have long lived together harmoniously. But the temple project is a BJP-led effort to stamp India’s Hindu mores onto a multicultural society, historians and political scientists say. Last October, Modi unveiled another dream project: a statue in Gujarat of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, an Indian independence leader, politician and Hindu. But with the Vishwanath temple and other symbolic projects, one of Modi’s undisputed successes has been to insert religion into the center of the political debate in India. Khanna and his siblings, parents and grandfather live and run a wholesale garment business near the Vishwanath temple that deeds on weathered paper show the family has owned since Mughal times.

More than ever before, the Indian nation and its nationalism are defined by Brahminism today. Many of us found this latest slogan from Modi quite distasteful and callous, referring as it did to a section of society engaged as security persons or chowkidars – a class of heavily underpaid people, exploited by making them work long hours and with little or no dignity in their work. Notwithstanding the entirely ridiculous campaign invoking chowkidars by the learned prime minister, – through which the government wants to salvage its image of patronising big capital and abetting the escape from India of other cronies – Swamy has been quite honest and sincere. He doesn’t hide his Brahminism the way his party does. In fact, when he says he ‘cannot be a chowkidar’ given his Brahminical divinity, the joke is actually on the government who cannot even counter Swamy’s utterances because his is the divine truth that actually informs their everyday politics: the politics of brutalizing Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities as ordained by the nation conceived by Brahminism. What Subramanian Swamy said was in continuance of the action and statements of the likes of Bandaru Dattatreya, whose interference led to the institutional oppression of Rohith Vemula resulting in his death. The government is yet to come clean on this. This is the outcome of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) ideological model of India being a ‘Hindu rashtra’ (nation), while what they actually mean is an India structured on the principles of Brahminism. How else to characterise Rahul Gandhi’s numerous temple visits and the dumbstruck efforts of leaders like Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, who never confront the hydra-headed face of the RSS cultural model ideologically. It is the battle to rescue politics itself, for if not done now, we will soon have a political system which will be bereft of any politics, let alone the politics of social justice.

PM Modi urged people to vote wisely ahead of Lok Sabha 2019 polls He listed out the contributions of the NDA government since 2014 In his blog, Narendra Modi slammed the dynasty politics in Congress party "Development over decay, security over stagnation, opportunities over obstacles, vikas over vote-bank politics, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in his latest blog on Wednesday. Hinting that governance improved in India after his government came to power, PM Modi wrote: "Indians were tired of our beloved nation being in the Fragile Five, where corruption, cronyism, and nepotism made headlines instead of anything positive." 'India first' instead of 'family first' Targeting the Congress party, PM Modi said the government has been working for "India first" instead of "family first". He also urged people to ask why the Rajya Sabha was not working as productively as the Lok Sabha, hinting at opposition ruckus. Freedom of speech, courts Expressing his views on freedom of speech, PM Modi said dynastic parties have "never been comfortable" with a free and vibrant press. The recent UPA years saw the bringing of a law that could land you in prison for posting anything offensive, he said. "Every middleman is linked to one family," Modi added. When our air warriors strike at terrorists, Congress questions that too." Last but not least, the prime minister urged people to "think wisely" and asked them to compare the past with the present. "Think wisely: As you go to vote- remember the past and how one family's desire for power cost the nation so greatly.

Muzaffarpur: A Janata Dal (United) Vice-President Prashant Kishor has assured the young people in Bihar that he can help them become members of parliament or members of legislative assemblies. "If I can help someone become Prime Minister and Chief Minister, I can also help Bihar's youth become MPs and MLAs," he said while addressing a public gathering earlier this week. Mr Kishor is credited with devising successful political campaigns for Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Gujarat assembly polls in 2012. He also conceptualised advertising campaigns and marketing strategies like Manthan and Chai pe Charcha for PM Modi in 2014. Mr Kishor, who hails from Bihar, had also worked with Nitish Kumar during the 2015 Bihar assembly election. The political strategist recently expressed contrasting views with party chief Nitish Kumar's method of realigning with the BJP and exiting from the grand alliance comprising of JD(U), RJD and Congress in 2017. Mr Kishor, who has been in support of youth participation into politics, had welcomed about 1,600 people including political leaders and businessmen in JD(U) from February 11 to 13. "With the vision of strengthening JD(U) and enhancing its worker base, Mr Kishor launched ''Youth in Politics'' campaign with the goal of bringing around 1 lakh youth into electoral politics," according to a press release issued by JD(U). The party said ex-members of panchayat raj institutions, mayors, block pramukhs and zilla parishad chairpersons, businessmen, entrepreneurs, students, women and others expressed their intent to join the party. NDTV Beeps - your daily newsletter

An exasperated Modi told this writer: Tell me if a Congress leader has visited a farm in the past 10 years. Were there no farming calamities then? The Congress lured farmers away from the BJP by promising to waive their loans if they came to power. While the sop may bring some relief to 100 million small farmers, the overriding feeling is that it was too little too late. It also ignored the 140 million agricultural labourers. When it came to agriculture, the Modi government made the same mistake many previous governments did. While the Modi government did make an effort in this direction, it fell far short. Whether the cash promised is sufficient to push them to vote for the BJP is doubtful. The sop would provide relief of a maximum of Rs 12,500 a year. As with farmers, even with jobs, perception matters and the government can ignore it only at its own peril.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is expected to try and shore up its political support with big ticket farm giveaways and tax cuts for the middle class in its final federal budget on Friday, months before elections. Modi is facing growing discontent over depressed farm incomes and doubts over whether his policies are creating enough jobs. Piyush Goyal, the interim finance minister, will present the 2019-20 budget to parliament, in the absence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is currently in the United States for medical treatment. Increase in rural welfare spending The government is set to step up rural welfare spending by 16 percent for the fiscal year beginning April to 1.3 trillion rupees ($18.25 billion), two government sources said, aiming to boost support in the countryside where more than two-thirds of India's 1.3 billion people live. Stung by opposition parties' victories in three state polls in December and needing to call a national election by May, Modi has already exempted many small businesses from paying taxes under a unified goods and services tax. Change in personal tax The government is now considering raising the income level at which people need to pay personal tax, long a demand for the country's influential middle class. More than 900 million people will be eligible to cast votes in the world's biggest ever democratic exercise and the pressure to woo them is intense. His promise of a minimum income for the poor has increased pressure on the government to make populist announcements in its budget. Tax cuts may be put on hold The electoral compulsions mean that major economic reforms, such as tax cuts for bigger companies and plans to bring down the budget deficit, could be put on hold at least until after the election, government sources said. That would fit with the expectations of a Reuters poll of economists.

A key test of this new alliance will come today when Modi’s government faces its first no-confidence vote in the parliament. “What is important is to see how many votes each side gets and which side has more cracks -- the opposition or ruling coalition,” said Arati Jerath, a New Delhi-based author and political analyst. Looking to 2019, it may be difficult for BJP to repeat its last performance in states of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where it nearly swept all the seats in 2014, said Harish Ramaswamy, political analyst and professor of political science at Karnatak University. The BJP is likely to lose around 50 seats from these five states, reducing its overall strength from 282 to less than 200 throughout the country, which falls short of a majority in 543-member lower house of parliament, he said. “As no grouping is getting close to a majority, pre-poll alliances are becoming more inevitable,” said Ramaswamy. “The strategy of opposition parties is not to concentrate on their votes, their seats; but to destroy votes of BJP." BJP had forged an alliance with as many as 28 parties in the last election, even though the support of regional parties was redundant when the BJP alone got enough seats for a majority. Congress party is working to forge alliance in states that include Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Odisha and Jammu & Kashmir, the party leaders said. It is in talks with Maywati, leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, for alliance separately for Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, they said. Another ally, Shiv Sena, is showing restiveness.