I’ve been bewildered for over two years now about how people have been predicting a BJP win in 2019…A simple question is this – is Modi more popular now than he was in 2014? The same, or less? It’s something each one of us can answer empirically. I have not met a single person, not even a hardcore BJP supporter, who feels Modi’s popularity hasn’t waned relative to 2014. Have you?
Tag: Narendra Modi
Education is the basis of the growth of any nation. Power, steel, and coal may be what we need for building things, but without educated minds the steel might just as well rust through disuse. The world is getting more and more complex, and our children and young adults need quality education in order to help India compete in the global marketplace. How well are we doing here?
This Hindu Fascist emergency will never be officially declared; it need not be. Emergency is the constituent aspect of fascist politics. Indira’s formal emergency was a limited response to an unfolding of a crisis, that actually threatened the survival of the Indian State. Modi’s informal emergency is an unlimited reaction to create a crisis against democratization of Indian society, that threatens the survival of the caste system.
Convergence of an existing ‘fitness fad’ amongst India’s aspirational middle class with the #HumFitTohIndiaFit social media campaign as a precursor to the International Yoga Day, has helped to convert an exclusionary and violent somatic nationalism of the RSS into a secular principle. This appeals greatly to the Indian middle-class. It allows India Inc. to feel the rush of patriotic sentiment without having to get its hands dirty in a refurbished akhada. It allows those of us who live in comfortable high-rises with attached gyms and swimming pools to smell our own sweat and feel incredibly proud for having performed an immensely patriotic act.
This is lifestyle patriotism of the most insidious variety. It turns citizens into consumers, yoga into a collapsed 5-minute workout video, and the very real issue of both individual health as well as the health of a vast citizenry into nothing more than a social media gimmick.
By this time, most of you would have heard of Modi’s huge blunder in China where he misspelled “STRENGTH” as “STREANH” and became a laughingstock.
Now, let me make myself clear on one thing: I don’t expect Modi to know good English. So I do not judge him poorly for his poor mastery of English.
I would have been perfectly happy if Modi gave a speech to the Chinese in languages he is comfortable with – Hindi or Gujarati.
But given that he chose to speak in English despite having the option, he bears the responsibility for the goof-up.
The past four years provide a grim picture of neglect of public health by the government and further, a disdain towards policies that promote welfare. The period has seen several outbreaks of infectious diseases such as dengue and chikungunya, often reaching epidemic proportions in many parts of the country. The epidemics have laid bare the inability of the country’s health systems to protect people’s health. Yet successive budgets presented by the Central government have strengthened the perception that this government is ideologically committed to reducing public expenditure on welfare and public services. The period also saw examples of extreme failure to provide healthcare of acceptable quality both in the Public and Private sectors. The failure of public services was epitomised by the horrendous report of deaths of hundreds of children in a hospital in Gorakhpur, which lies in the constituency of the Chief Minister of UP. Yet we were informed from the ramparts of the Red Fort that the children who died in Gorakhpur’s hospital were victims of a ‘natural calamity’.
O Daddyji, o daddyji, they don’t just laff these aurat-log,
they laugh at us, they do, they do
Its worse, its worse, its so much worse
They slurp their beer, they do, they do
Cheerleading “economics” year after year, we have ended up creating an unequal country which has few parallels. About a third of the fruits of economic growth experienced since 1980 has gone to the richest 1% of the country. Hardly any other country has seen such yawning gap between the rich and the rest. The degree of inequality has been growing. In the beginning of this century the top 10% of the population cornered 40% of the income. By 2014 their share rose to 50%.
Given the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a degree in Entire Political Science and not in Entire Economic Science, it is only to be expected that he is a bit weak in monetary and fiscal policy. He has now admitted as much in a recent interview given to Zee TV
It is one thing to say that demonetisation has failed empirically, but quite another to assume that it will lead to BJP’s defeat. On the contrary, Mr. Modi has jumped from one policy to the other, and every time, the residue in public consciousness is the honourable intention. Meanwhile the opposition parties seem to be completely unaware of these dynamics.
More than 100 people died in bank queues trying to get to their own hard-earned money. Eight thousand crore rupees were spent to print notes. Billions of hours were wasted waiting patiently in bank queues. Bank staff forgot all their other works as well as night sleep. The working poor lost livelihood, for the notes to pay them with were nowhere to be found. All this, it appears, is a trifle in the worship of the fuehrer, er, the Bharatmata.
Do you know what today is? INDIAN FOOLS DAY.
The good news is, Urijit has finished counting the notes.
The bad news? 99% of all the demonetized notes in Nov 8, 2016 have come back.
“His birthday is everybody’s birthday
Let’s say born to light
The day of burning the lamp of hope
Let’s say born to light”
Since the celebrationist account of GST can be found everywhere (TV shows, newspaper, social media, chit chat with public), here is a Non-Bhakt economic analysis of GST…
Results are in on Demonetisation … India is being ruled by AN INCOMPETENT PRIME MINISTER… He has ruined the Indian economy with a stupid, ill-considered move. An overweening belief in himself, to the exclusion of advice from even a close set of real economic/financial experts, is undoubtedly the biggest cause of this debacle. If Modi had even consulted those with some economic/financial knowledge in his own party, he would have realized that demonetization is a blatantly STUPID move.
Cutting across political lines, the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly today unanimously resolved to demand the Centre to withdraw its recent notification on regulating of livestock markets which will impact the economy and food culture of the state.
Dear Raiot readers, after the year-end monetary megalomania of Modi-bhaiya, Bhogtoram Mawroh brings us some black humour as respite from the RBI madness.
In Modi’s case, the decay of the mitron particle over the past three years has been accompanied by the emission of copious amounts of bullshit.
Documents seized by the Income Tax Department in private corporations imply pay-offs were made to the PM and leading politicians.
Malignant Narcissists are paranoid and don’t trust anyone, apart from one or two cronies who are like extensions of themselves. And although they have an unquestioning belief in their own perfection, they constantly need another, like these cronies, to tell them so, to give them ceaseless attention and to feed their ego.
One of the world’s most infamous Malignant Narcissist Hitler had two cronies he stayed loyal to for life, Goebbels and Goering.
Modi has Amit Shah and Adani who he seems to be deeply loyal and committed to.
I hardly have to remind anyone of Modi’s obsession with selfies, an obvious sign of negative narcissism but since becoming Prime Minister, the everyday, simple-living, high-thinking chief minister of Gujarat has transmogrified into a veritable peacock.
Ka synshar paidbah ka dei kata ha kaba baroh ki nongshongshnong ki iadon bynta ban thaw ia ki policy treikam bad ki Ain, ym dei…
Modi’s contradictions and lies channel the confusions of his supporters perfectly. In a manner reminiscent of the vanguards of China’s Cultural Revolution or the nativists flocking to Donald Trump, they accuse the old elites of holding back the nation and the culture from true greatness. They attack those responsible for the ruined past, the uncertain future, and the endless present. They assail the “anti-nationals” who stand in their way, beating and molesting people while shouting, “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” They demand people say it to prove they are not traitors, emboldened by a meeting of the BJP in March, led by Modi, that declared a refusal to use the slogan as tantamount to disrespecting the Indian constitution. They hammer, with swords and guns and smartphones and double-digit growth, at the doors of the beef-eaters, the environmentalists, the university students, the feminists, the Dalits, the leftists, the dissenting writers, the skeptics, the “anti-nationals”—anyone who will not declare, both fists clenched, “Bharat Mata Ki Jai!”
Modi is coming!
Modi is coming!
Call the cannibals out
Down from the trees
With their grass skirts and spears
And how will we greet him?
A Place For Literature
#ArundhatiRoy
“I have never felt that my fiction and nonfiction were warring factions battling for suzerainty. They aren’t the same certainly, but trying to pin down the difference between them is actually harder than I imagined. Fact and fiction are not converse. One is not necessarily truer than the other, more factual than the other, or more real than the other. Or even, in my case, more widely read than the other. All I can say is that I feel the difference in my body when I’m writing.”
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