Silicon Valley Unwelcomes Modi

[Riaz Haq]

"The 21st century belongs to India', declared Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to thousands of his adoring fans at SAP Center in San Jose, California. As he spoke inside the Arena, protestors carrying anti-Modi posters condemned the presence in Silicon Valley of the person they choose to describe as the "Butcher of Gujarat".

My Invitation and Ticket:

I had received an invitation and a ticket to attend Prime Minister Modi's reception at SAP Center. I thought about attending it long and hard. I was really conflicted about attending and, in the end, I chose not to.

Modi's Soaring Rhetoric:

As Prime Minister Modi wowed almost exclusively Indian-American techie audience in Silicon Valley, there were many who compared his rhetoric to US President Barack Obama's 2008 soaring speeches promising "Change" in America which, for many, have led to a huge letdown in the last 6 years. Modi led his audience with chants of "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and "Jai Baghat Singh" and the they responded by cheering the Prime Minster on with screams of "Modi! Modi".

“[India] has moved on from scriptures to satellites,” Modi said. “The world has started to believe that the 21st century belongs to India.”

"Unwelcome Modi" Rally:

As the Indian Prime Minister spoke to thousands of his adoring supporters inside San Jose Arena, a group estimated by some at 3000 staged a rally against him.

"Prime Minister Modi's 'Rock Star' visit to Silicon Valley can't make up for his rock bottom performance in human and civil rights," Virali Modi-Parekh of Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA) told NBC News. "Since Modi's been in office, violence against religious minorities has spiked. But Modi turns a blind eye while churches are burned and Muslims and Christians are being forcibly converted. There is a culture of fear and victimization, especially against minorities in India, which undermines Modi's standing as a business partner."

Campaign against Modi's presence in Silicon Valley included billboards across Silicon Valley focusing attention on Modi's human rights record; hundreds of bottles of Purell hand sanitizer sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, each with a name of a person killed in the Gujarat riots; challenges from South Asian LGBTQ employees of high-tech companies of India's Penal Code 377; a "faculty statement" from 125 academics on Modi's history; a "die-in" dramatizing continuing attacks against minority groups; and social media campaigns using the hashtags #ModiFail, #ChallengeModi, #ModiLiestoUS, #ZuckWashYourHands, according to NBC News.

Academics Letter:

Over 100 US academics wrote an open letter to Silicon Valley tech executives warning them against doing business with Prime Minister who came to push his "Digital India" initiative. The US professors reminded the technology executive that Modi and his Hindu allies are using their power to censor dissident voices in India.

Hindtuva activists allied with Modi have been attacking dissidents with impunity since the Prime Minister's elevation to power in Delhi. M.M. Kalburgi, a 78-year-old professor, was assassinated by the Sangh activists recently. Hours after Kalburgi's murder, Bhuvith Shetty, a member of the Hindu militant group Bajrang Dal, tweeted in celebration: "Mock Hinduism and die a dog's death. And dear K.S. Bhagwan you are next."

Two other high-profile rationalists, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, were shot point-blank 18 months apart in the western state of Maharashtra. Dabholkar, a 68-year-old activist who worked on behalf of villagers exploited by local gurus and so-called godmen, campaigned for the state government to pass an anti-superstition bill. It's been two years since he was killed in the city of Pune, and no one has been charged, according to a report in Los Angeles Times.

Digital Censorship:

Facebook has published data indicating that India leads the world in censoring Facebook posts.  Indian government demanded Facebook blocks 4,765 times in a six month period.India’s approach to Internet speech has been a flash point for years, with the government saying it wants to regulate content that is offensive to religious or ethnic groups, and companies such as Facebook and Google (GOOG) bristling at the restrictions, according to Bloomberg News.

Source: Bloomberg

Summary:

There's no question that Mr. Narendra Modi is wildly popular with Indians at home and abroad. The Prime Minister has made a lot of promises to the Indian people. And the more he speaks, the higher the expectations. Meanwhile, India's exports have declined every month for the last 9 months and the corporate profits of Indian companies continue to be weak. At the same time, Mr. Modi's allies in the Sangh Parivar are stepping their activities challenging the "Secular" foundations of the Indian Constitution. So the question is:  Is the Modi phenomenon beginning to unravel already?

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Rise of the Sangh Parivar in India

Over 100 US Academics Warn Silicon Valley Against Business With Modi

Modi's Pakistan Policy

Pro-Modi Indian-American Enters Silicon Valley Congressional Race

India is World's Biggest Oligarchy

Gujarat Riot Victims Hindu Nationalists Admire Hitler

India Has World's Largest Population of Poor, Hungry and Illiterates

Pakistan Needs More Gujaratis? 

India's Israel Envy

[Riaz Haq]

#Indian PM #Modi faces disillusioned supporters on US visit. #ModiInUSA #India via @AJAM http://alj.am/hjff 

Modi’s big challenge is that he can’t seem to pass a law without stepping on the toes of at least some of his supporters, let alone his vocal critics. His attempts at economic reform have alarmed his rural base, while his party’s overtures to the Hindutva or Hindu nationalist faction have stung his pro-business image. A recent proposal to give security agencies access to encrypted data like personal emails alienated many young Modi fans, and small reforms to governance in Delhi ruffled businessmen who found their former access to power had been closed off. And some of Modi’s most ardent supporters have turned impatient, if not outright critical. 

Kataria says he supports what Modi is doing, but wonders why there hasn’t been any progress on the Hindu right’s more concrete goals. “There’s a provision in the constitution for the uniform civil code. I don’t know why he isn’t doing it,” he says. “A lot of extreme Hindus have been very upset with him.”

This could be a strategy to allow Modi to project himself as a progressive reformer without alienating his hard-right base, suggests Rohit Chopra, a communications professor at Santa Clara University and author of “Technology and Nationalism in India.” “The BJP says, ‘We’re inclusive, we’re only concerned with development,’ and every now and then someone in the BJP proper will throw a bone to these extremist organizations just to pay the dues, and the minister of culture will say something inflammatory about Islam or Christianity.” 

A business-friendly image

The problem is, bigotry is bad for business, and Modi’s silence at these outbursts has miffed industrialists who have largely supported him. In April, for instance, Adi Godrej, chairman of one of India’s largest conglomerates (and a member of the Zoroastrian religious minority), warned that if left unchecked, “overt Hindutva elements” would drive away foreign investors.

BJP officials insist their government’s main priority is the economy. “We recognize these individuals, that they have their opinions and demands,” says Seshadri Chary, a member of the party’s National Executive Committee. “The government’s priority now is to concentrate on economic development and give fillip to the economy, bring down prices and take all those measures which will help integrate the economy with opportunities around the world.”

Those economic reforms have been hard to enact. The prime minister has traveled around the world to encourage investment, and successfully raised foreign direct investment by 48 percent. But his government has moved slowly on its plan to sell $10 billion worth of shares in state-owned companies this year, and was unable to get its biggest economic reform bill passed, which would have overhauled land regulations in India and made it much easier for companies to acquire farmland for major industrial projects. The land bill ran into stiff resistance from the opposition and rights groups who said the law would allow corporations to forcibly take away land from farmers — and incidentally, from affiliates of Modi’s own RSS, who labeled the bill anti-poor and anti-farmer. And the government’s attempt to overhaul labor laws prompted a strike by labor unions including the RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the nation’s largest. 

Meanwhile, business leaders, who were optimistic about the economic reforms promised by the prime minister, have grown increasingly critical of the slow pace at which they are being enacted, high interest rates and continued retrospective taxation on capital gains made in previous years. A Moody’s survey of Mumbai businesses from July cited “policy stagnation” and “sluggish reform momentum” as the biggest danger to economic growth, while only half the respondents from a July survey by the Assocham, or The Associated Chambers of Commerce of India, said they were confident of an economic recovery, compared to 82.6 percent in March.

[Riaz Haq]

The Power of Social Media: Emboldened Right-Wing Trolls Who are Attempting an Internet purge -

Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in a “town hall” meeting at the headquarters of Facebook in Menlo Park, California. At the event, Modi answered pre-screened queries from the audience and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook. During this conversation, the prime minister heralded the power of social media as a vehicle for democracy and good governence, before adding that it “allows for accountability instantly.” Modi declared, “I ask all world leaders not to avoid social media and to connect to it.” However, in his eulogy to the power of the internet, the prime minister appeared to have forgotten about an aspect of social media that doesn’t lend itself to either a functional democracy or accountability. It is a spectre that has been haunting journalists in India: that of internet trolls.

The internet is no stranger to trolls—users who post inflammatory, threatening or disruptive messages—with Twitter itself having admitted to not having proper policies in place to protect its users from harassment. The Indian Twitter troll, however, is an oddly specific creature. This troll belongs to a motley digital mob comprised of Hindutva converts, misogynists, minorities, Congress baiters and “sickular”—a pejorative portmanteau coined for those percieved as having a secular point of view—haters, all united by their atavistic chest-thumping bhakti—devotion—for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.


The use of social networking platforms by the BJP demonstrates their agility in using technology for the cause of “Hindu Rashtra.” Behind the apparently toxic rants of the Hindutva troll, there is a method and design. It is interesting to note that Modi hosted the 150 social networkers at his official residence on the occasion of the launch of the Digital India Campaign in Delhi. The prime minister could have easily taken up a digitally-enabled education or health project to kick-start his campaign; instead, he chose to meet people who have become a byword in online terror, hate and misogyny—a symbolism ignored by most, the press and the victims included. With Modi pushing for deepening of digitisation, the size and virtual power of his abusive online army will only increase in the days ahead in its political-ideological battle for a “Congress-mukt” Bharat, cold comfort for the likes of Ravish Kumar, Sagarika Ghose and the rest. -

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/power-social-media-emboldened...

[Riaz Haq]

#India's #Modi claims ancient #Hindus did plastic surgery, found stem cells, built TV, nukes, missiles,airplanes,cars http://on.ft.com/1AxgDrG 

Narendra Modi, Indian prime minister, has relaunched his country’s controversial claims to some of the world’s greatest scientific achievements with his suggestion that ancient India was adept at genetics and plastic surgery, including the grafting of the elephant’s head onto the god Ganesh.

His remarks – ironically made at the opening of a high-tech hospital in Mumbai – have revived a political debate about the growing influence of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (the Organisation of National Volunteers) over the governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party.

Hindu fundamentalists are delighted by Mr Modi’s words, left-wingers are appalled or mocking and many foreigners are simply bemused that India’s real cultural, scientific and medical achievements are being overshadowed by simplistic references to the mythological past.

“For the intelligentsia and the educated people it’s so preposterous and absurd I think they don’t want to comment on it,” says political commentator Vinod Mehta. He argues that Mr Modi is currying favour with the Hindu right to secure their support. “Periodically you will hear him say these kinds of thing. I don’t think there’s a 1 per cent chance that the prime minister believes it.”

Here are five types of achievements claimed for ancient India:

• Stem cell research and other medical advances such as plastic surgery: Mr Modi mentioned the miraculous birth of the warrior king Karna in the Mahabharata, the Hindu epic, outside his mother’s womb as evidence that “genetic science was present at that time”. As for Ganesh, he said there must have been a surgeon who grafted the elephant head onto a human body “and began the practice of plastic surgery”.



• Cars and aircraft: Indian legends refer to horseless chariots and to aeroplane-like vehicles called vimanas. In the Mahabharata, the hero Arjuna, for example, sees “an incredible ship of the sky” which lands softly on the ground. “Wonderful lights flashed on the vimana’s smooth body. As Arjuna rose and approached the craft, a door opened at its side and a flight of steps flowed out from it.”



• Nuclear weapons and high-speed missiles: Arjuna’s arrows are often likened to missiles, sometimes with deadly payloads. At one point he shoots “a silver shaft charged with that final weapon” at his enemies. “It is an adamantine thunderbolt… Like a small sun, it erupts among the Trigarta legions and nine of every ten men Susharma brought to war are pillars of ash.”



•Televsion: A controversial book by retired schoolteacher Dinanath Batra, distributed in schools in Mr Modi’s home state of Gujarat, lays claim not only to motorcars and stem cell research but also to television in ancient India. Indian sages, it says, use their yogic powers to attain visions, and one royal adviser receives a live telecast of the battle of Mahabharata. “There is no doubt that the invention of television goes back to this.”



• Mathematics: Like the claim to longstanding medical knowledge, this is based on real achievements in ancient times, even if many recent advances have been made beyond India’s frontiers. In particular India is credited with the system that became known as the “Arabic” numerals 0-9. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying: “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”

[Riaz Haq]

Is #India's #Modi's "Neighborhood First" Policy collapsing? #Nepal #Pakistan #Maldives http://www.dailyo.in/politics/modi-in-usa-nepal-constitution-india-... … via @dailyo_

Ajit Doval, said to be “handling” Nepal, took his eye off the game. Presumably, he was busy with Pakistan and the NSA talks-that-were-never-held. Doval is also the PM’s special representative with China, which means he is fully updated with developments in that country. The episodic attention to Nepal was a readymade recipe for disaster.

Third, by the time a furious PM asked his foreign secretary to travel to Kathmandu to make amends, it was already too late. Jaishankar’s tough and unforgiving attitude made things worse, at least in the eyes of the Nepali leadership, whom he told in no certain terms that a Constitution that marginalises the Madhesis was a bad idea. As to the 117 Madhesi MPs from parties like the Nepali Congress who voted in favour of the Constitution — evidently, there was a party whip and they couldn’t refuse — he wanted to know why they had betrayed the cause.

Episodic

The real problem with the PM’s Neighbourhood First policy is that it is excitable and episodic. The Pakistan story is too old to recount. Even the success in Bangladesh almost didn’t happen when the Assam BJP wanted to keep the state out of the land boundary agreement. Now rumour is that India is about to execute yet another about-turn with the Maldives —Sushma Swaraj is expected to visit soon — and make nice with its proto-dictator Abdulla Yameen.

Remember that PM Modi had cancelled his visit to Male when Yameen threw the democratically elected former president Mohamed Nasheed into jail. India is now petrified that Yameen is opening the floodgates to China and believes it must keep the dialogue going to try and prevent that from happening. Delhi remembers well the recent Chinese statement: “The Indian Ocean is not India’s.”

Although Ajit Doval is said to be also “handling” the Maldives, he and Jaishankar clearly agree that a democrat-president can be sacrificed for a pragmatic cause (read China). It is significant that the foreign secretary didn’t bother to visit Nasheed who was under house arrest (he is since back in jail) when he visited Male a few weeks ago. In fact, if pragmatism is the name of the game in Delhi, Nasheed is among the few who can really tell Delhi about the Chinese — and what happened when they tried to woo him.

So as the prime minister charms America, flanked by his two key aides Ajit Doval and S Jaishankar, the thought surfaces: Let him also spare a thought for India’s crisis-ridden neighbourhood.

[Riaz Haq]

#SiliconValley’s #Indian-#Americans and #Modi’s digital delusions - http://FT.com #India #BJP #ModiInUSA http://on.ft.com/1RevaNl 


In public relations terms, Narendra Modi’s “Digital India” campaign is a world beater. Few national leaders can pull crowds of 20,000 or more at home, let alone overseas. On Monday India’s prime minister attracted 18,000 at San José’s SAP arena in Silicon Valley.
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The executive suite gap was on full view last week at the White House state dinner for Mr Xi. No fewer than three Indian chief executives were on the guest list — Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, Mr Nadella and Ajay Banga, chief executive of MasterCard.
In contrast, there were no Chinese-born S&P 500 leaders. Mr Xi was feted last week in Seattle by US business leaders, such as Apple’s Tim Cook and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, en route to his summit with President Barack Obama. Yet it is hard to imagine him receiving the adulation that greeted Mr Modi at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters this week. The Indian prime minister’s town hall conversation with Mark Zuckerberg began with chants of “Modi, Modi” from the company’s Indian-born employees.
Here, however, Mr Modi’s “Make in India” drive hits a ceiling. Impressive portions of the US economy are led by people who were made in India. But they show few signs of wanting to go home.

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According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, Asian-Americans will overtake Hispanics to make up the largest share of US immigrants by 2065. A growing number will be Indian.
Can Mr Modi leverage their US success in India? He may have it back-to-front. Companies led by Indian-born executives are no fonder of India’s bureaucratic minefields than any other.
At the US-India strategic and commercial dialogue last week — the counterpart to the US-China annual meetings — US investors read out a depressingly familiar list of complaints.
Foreign businesses must still navigate a Kafkaesque maze of permissions to receive project approvals. Even then, however, they are vulnerable to arbitrary and retrospective tax bills. Amazon, which is putting large sums into its growing India operation, is already mired in a dispute with New Delhi. Its travails are hardly an advertisement to do business in India.
The high point of Mr Modi’s US visit was Mr Zuckerberg’s unexpected confession of Indophilia. Facebook’s chief executive disclosed he had been planning to sell Facebook in its early days but had been advised by Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, to visit the Hindu temple where he had meditated decades earlier. Mr Zuckerberg returned from his month-long India trip with a sense of renewal.
“If Facebook was a country it would be the third largest in the world — and the most connected,” said a delighted Mr Modi.
True enough. But countries are a little more complex than social media groups. It is not enough for India to be liked, or even loved. To attract Chinese levels of investment, it must generate returns.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3261d8ae-66c4-11e5-97d0-1456a776a4f5... 

[Riaz Haq]

Groundswell of anger in #Nepal agnst #India. #Nepalese accuse #Indians of deliberate economic blockade to pressurize http://wpo.st/JtMd0 

At first India was publicly unhappy with the new constitution that its Himalayan neighbor passed last week. Then Indian trucks carrying cooking fuel, gasoline, salt, sugar and rice stopped crossing the border with Nepal after local protests erupted against the new charter.

The result: There is now a groundswell of anger against India in Nepal, a country still struggling to recover from the devastating earthquake in April that killed over 9,000 people and left tens of thousands more homeless.

The Nepali people are accusing India of punishing them by deliberately blocking the supply of essential goods. What makes matters worse is that the landslides caused by the earthquake have destroyed alternate supply routes from China and increased the landlocked nation’s reliance on imports from India.

People in Nepal are calling it the “unofficial economic blockade by India.”

On Monday, Nepal’s Home Ministry said the country is facing an "emergency" situation in fuel supply. Long lines are a common sight at gas stations across the country. Angry protesters are shouting anti-India slogans on the streets. Nepal’s cable television association has stopped showing 42 Indian news and entertainment channels across the country because of rising anger among the people.

Indian officials say that there is no official embargo and that the truck drivers carrying goods are afraid of going into Nepal because of the violent demonstrations by the ethnic minority groups living in the country's southern plains. The groups, considered close to Indians, are seeking greater political power in the new constitution.

Dozens of people have been killed in the protests. “The reported obstructions are due to unrest, protests and demonstrations on the Nepalese side, by sections of their population,” Vikas Swarup, India’s foreign ministry spokesman, said last week. But analysts in Nepal contest the Indian statement.

The head of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party, Narayan Man Bijukchhe, said India has declared a “communal war” with Nepal. The former attorney general in Kathmandu, Yubaraj Sangraula, called the lack of supplies “an act of aggression.”

The shortage of fuel and goods has brought back horrific memories for many people in Nepal who suffered an official economic blockade by India in 1989. New Delhi shut down border crossings into Nepal and cut off links to an Indian port after a trade dispute. That blockade lasted 13 months.

[Riaz Haq]

DAY AFTER IN BEEF MURDER DADRI VILLAGE #INDIA: #MUSLIMS PREPARE TO LEAVE, #BJP DEFENDS BRUTAL MURDER, NO SIGN OF CM http://ish.re/S9LB

Now even the pretence of remorse is not there. BJP leaders from Western Uttar Pradesh have supported the brutal murder of Mohammad Akhlaq, “when we hurt people’s sentiments, such clashes take place. This was not a communal riot. The Hindu community worships cows. Whose blood won’t boil if they see cow slaughter.”

This belligerence, demonstrated by no less than the vice president of BJP’s west UP unit Shrichand Sharma has deepened tensions in Dadri district where both communities had lived in relative peace over the years. Terror-struck Muslim families are all preparing to leave the area, some have left, others are packing their bags to go. Where? They don’t know but fear for their lives is making them leave the homes where they lived for decades to face a future that is bleak, to say the least.

A former legislator from Dadri Nawab Singh Nagar spoke in the same aggressive vein maintaining that the family was at fault. He too, has been quoted in media reports stating, “it is obvious that such an incident will lead to anger among people and there will be communal tension. If this was the case, the family is in the wrong. If they have consumed beef, they are also responsible. This is a village of Thakurs and they express their sentiments in a very strong way. If they have done this, they should have kept in mind what the reaction would be.”

In short: if you eat beef you deserve to die. And you will be killed.

There has not been a word on this from Prime Minister Narendra Modi or BJP president Amit Shah. Not a restraining word, that feeds into the perception that the violence and the murder, clearly supported (if not instigated) by the BJP and its affiliates. Instead the local BJP unit has demanded the release of the six persons arrested from a mob of over 100 persons, threatening to hold a mahapanchayat to release the killers, and instead take action against the victims for “cow slaughter.” Another local BJP leader Vichitra Tomar has been quoted in the Indian Express that is the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the ghastly crime in some detail, demanding, “the release of all the people who have been arrested in connection with the Bisada incident, who are all innocent. We also demand legal action against those who are engaged in cow slaughter, as it is meant to incite sentiments of Hindus.” This mahapanchayat, clearly projected as a threat to break law and order by the BJP, is scheduled for October 11 with the party already campaigning aggressively in the area for a large attendance.

Fear has gripped the area, with all residents reminded now of similar mahapanchayats that led to brutal attack on the Muslims in Muzaffarnagar last year during the Lok Sabha campaign.

[Riaz Haq]

#Modi's #India's Manufacturing Activity at 7-Month Low - http://NASDAQ.com http://www.nasdaq.com/article/india-manufacturing-activity-at-7mont... …

A gauge of manufacturing activity in India fell to a seven-month low in September, providing fresh evidence that a recovery in the South Asian economy remains sluggish.

The seasonally adjusted India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index, prepared by Markit, fell to 51.2 from 52.3 in August, according to Nikkei research released Thursday. A figure above 50 indicates an expansion while a reading below that signals contraction.

"Growth of Indian manufacturing production was weighed down by a difficult economic climate," Pollyanna De Lima, an economist at Markit, said.


New orders rose at the weakest pace since June, with export-order growth slumping to the slowest in two years. As a result, manufacturers cut jobs to keep costs in check.

"This bodes ill for the economy in the near-term and suggests that manufacturers' expectations for future output growth are clouded with uncertainty," Ms. De Lima said.

Input prices fell for the second straight month—the first back-to-back decline since the financial crisis—benefiting from a sharp fall in global commodity prices. However, weak demand pressured manufacturers to lower prices.

India's economy grew 7% last quarter, much weaker than the 8%-plus growth the government had predicted in the federal budget presented in February.

Earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India slashed its main lending rate by a bigger-than-expected 0.50 percentage point, highlighting growth remains weak despite high optimism in the economy.

Nevertheless, an improvement in the manufacturing sector, which has been at the center of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic agenda, is taking place gradually.

Ms. De Lima said India's growth prospects for the July-September quarter are encouraging, with the manufacturing sector looking set to provide a stronger contribution to gross domestic product than it did in the April-June quarter.



Read more: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/india-manufacturing-activity-at-7mont...

[Riaz Haq]

#Modi's #India’s growth faces more domestic than global obstacles, Crisil says http://toi.in/naeeob

Domestic factors are a bigger constraint for India's shift to a faster growth trajectory than the global factors, Crisil's chief economist has said.

"Indian authorities' efforts to contain its high fiscal deficit and inflation limit its ability to generously use countercyclical policy tools to boost the economy," said Crisil's chief economist Dharmakirti Joshi in an article published by Standard & Poor's.

Crisil is a subsidiary of Standard & Poor's.

"Weak demand, low capacity utilization and high leverage are impediments to reviving the private corporate investment cycle," he added.

The report notes that global developments since 2014 have had mixed impact on India.

While lower crude oil and commodity prices have helped to rein in fiscal and current account deficits and inflation, slack global growth has hurt India's exports.

Reforms aimed at enhancing financial sector access to the unserved and under-served, improving transparency in government decision-making and making it easier to do business will play an important role in pushing growth up over the next two to three years, according to the report.

The transition to a sustainable high growth path over the next decade will also require additional reforms such as goods and services tax, along with land and labour reforms.

[Riaz Haq]

Shekhar Gupta: Mainstreaming the Lynch-Fringe #india | Business Standard Column. #BeefMurder #BJP #Modi http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shekhar-gupta-main... …

Even after taking a close look at rise of the BJP as our pre-eminent national party, I can't say for sure when, and how, the term “fringe elements” emerged. Probably, it did in the run-up to the Ayodhya demolition in the winter of 1992. What we can say for sure is, if the moderate leadership does not challenge the fringe, it continues to morph, expand, and subsume the mainstream. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal were once fringe; today they are “sister” organisations. Sanatan Sanstha, Samadhan Sena and Abhinav Bharat are fringe today.

The Dadri incident is a chilling turning point in our politics. It marks the rise of Hindu supremacist mob militancy that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won’t unequivocally condemn or disown. It will criticise the killing, but qualify it in a half-dozen ways. You want to see how, refer to my friend, BJP MP and RSS intellectual Tarun Vijay’s article in Friday’s Indian Express. He says the lynching was abhorrent to the spirit of Hinduism and India as Mohammad Akhlaq was killed “merely on suspicion”, and that his daughter was so right in asking, what if it were proven that her father had not eaten beef, would someone bring him back?

This implies that if he had indeed eaten beef, and if the mob had clear evidence, retribution would be fair. The point should have been, so what even if he had eaten beef? It isn’t illegal in Uttar Pradesh (cow slaughter is illegal), and where it is, there are stern laws to deal with offenders.

Let’s join the dots. A temple loudspeaker was used for the priest to allegedly rally the (Hindu) faithful to come out seeking retribution. The local MP and Central culture minister was as qualified in his condemnation as Tarun Vijay, as were other BJP leaders. There is a clear, well-thought-out response to such incidents, whether it is the thrashing of dating couples in Mangalore, assassination of rationalists in Maharashtra and Karnataka, or criminally provocative statements, ranging from “Ramzade vs Haramzade” to “in spite of being a Muslim” and “go to Pakistan”. Read this then also with the go-slow on the terror cases allegedly involving radical Hindus. If Abhinav Bharat was indeed a minor rogue fringe group, why is it being protected now as if it were a victim?

The reason I call Dadri a landmark turning point in our politics isn’t just because it was probably the first time since the Partition riots that a temple loudspeaker was used to rouse a mob, though this was significant in itself, as temples calling the faithful isn’t even a Hindu tradition. The more important factor is the relatively muted response of the self-styled secular forces. Top leaders of the Congress haven’t even taken a padyatra or fact-finding mission to the village, just a 40-minute drive from Delhi. Lalu, Nitish, Mamata, all claimants to the secular vote, are afraid of messing with an issue involving the cow. Holiness of the cow has now become as multi-partisan an issue as hostility to Pakistan. In March this year, the predominantly Hindu state of Haryana, with no history of cow slaughter and which already had a cow-protection law, passed a new, heavily worded Gauvansh Sanrakshan (cow protection) and Gausamvardhan (cow propagation) Act.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shekhar-gupta-main...