Emotional Modi

The 100th edition of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Mann ki Baat radio address was marked by the government and BJP in a major way with live broadcasts arranged at thousands of places. The prime minister, too, made it a special programme by not only connecting with individuals he had interacted with over the past nine years but also revealing the detailed manner in which he goes through stories of ordinary people who write to him. There have been occasions when Modi has become emotional in public as he did when recalling his childhood and mother Hiraben’s sacrifices during an interaction with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2015. During Maan ki Baat on April 30, Modi talked about how he became emotional and choked when speaking of the letters he receives that bring out the struggles and achievements of citizens, often requiring the All India Radio team recording his monthly talk to pause proceedings. Despite his hard-headed and practical approach to politics, the emotional side of the prime minister is evident to those who have worked with him. More recently, the devastation caused by a major earthquake in Türkiye saw Modi recalling the massive 2001 Bhuj quake that led to thousands of deaths and severely dislocated the lives of survivors. The prime minister’s radio address came about as part of several suggestions offered to him after he assumed office in 2014.

Kharge, Not Adani

The Congress campaign in Karnataka is noticeable for the near-complete absence of any reference to the Adani shares controversy, with even Rahul Gandhi sticking to promises of local development and raising the demand for a caste census. The state Congress has been lukewarm to raising an issue that they feel lacks any resonance at the ground level. Better to stick to allegations of corruption, they feel. The concern of local Congress people is that previous efforts to raise issues like alleged graft in the Rafale fighter deal failed to gain traction and, in fact, seemed to have rebounded on the party. Congress’ current worries, however, are not about Rahul Gandhi but rather about the intemperate comments from party chief Mallikarjun Kharge whose “poisonous snake” reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has energised the BJP camp. As in many other states, Modi enjoys widespread support in Karnataka but BJP’s challenge has been to use this goodwill to counter incumbency in an election where local issues tend to hold attention. Kharge’s remarks, perhaps intended to please party bosses, has put the prime minister at the centre of the state election and allowed him to accuse Congress of habitually badmouthing him even as he strives for the welfare of the poor.

Speeding Up Bullet Train

The Bullet Train project has achieved another milestone recently with the completion of a 50km elevated viaduct across Valsad, Navsari, Vadodara and Ahmedabad districts. With the exit of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, the pace of the project that was lagging in Maharashtra has picked up considerably. Most encouragingly, land acquisition in Gujarat and Maharashtra is 99.75 per cent and 98.9 per cent complete. In Dadra, Nagar and Haveli, it is 100 per cent. This is a huge hurdle that the Indian Shinkansen (Bullet Train) has crossed as acquisition in Palghar area of Maharashtra has been severely affected due to the Shiv Sena (Uddhav) faction’s opposition to the project despite the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) having successfully reduced its requirements to mostly linear strips. The controversy over the Metro project in Mumbai has also been resolved with the state government restoring the plans for a carshed at Aarey Colony instead of Kanjurmarg as proposed by MVA. The major engineering work on the undersea tunnel and state-of-the-art station at the Bandra-Kurla Complex is also progressing as the state had a lot of catching up to do with all civil contracts being finalised in Gujarat. The Bullet Train project, as with Metro projects in other cities like Delhi, has attracted its set of critics who are pointing to high costs without taking into consideration the massive technology transfer that India will benefit from. In a different era, the introduction of Rajdhani trains, which revolutionised train travel in India, was also opposed as ‘elitist’.

Talking Tough To China

The recent meeting of defence ministers as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) saw Defence Minister Rajnath Singh firmly reiterate to his Chinese counterpart that normalisation of relations will not be possible unless friction points on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are resolved. The public release of the interaction serves to underline the continuing chill in India-China relations that is keeping the border volatile even though there has been no recent incident after the attempt to overrun an Indian post in Yangtse in Arunachal Pradesh. The border dynamic is very unstable and fresh tensions cannot be ruled out as India continues to speed up construction of infrastructure along the LAC. The unambiguous Indian statements, however, are drawing a more careful response from China with its foreign office sticking to stating that the border areas were under control and disputes about the LAC should be placed in their proper context; in other words not allowed to impact the entire bilateral relationship. The careful articulation, while typical of the foreign office and in contrast to outlets like Global Times, coincides with evidence of growing India-US cooperation which includes largescale land, sea and air military exercises. This is a real worry for Beijing that has, as former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale has written in an influential tract, mostly seen its ties with India through the prism of New Delhi-Washington cooperation.

A Jamtara In Nuh

A recent crackdown on ‘Jamtara-type’ cyber scams in Nuh adjoining Gurugram has once again cast an unfortunate light on the area more generally referred to as Mewat. The cyber scams were remarkable for the elaborate system of ‘training’, with would-be fraudsters being charged as much as ₹1 lakh by ‘gurus’ running schools of crime. The latest episode has led to dozens of arrests in an area infamous for cattle smuggling which leads to violent clashes between the illegal traders and self-styled gau rakshaks and is also in the news for illegal mining that last year saw a police officer being mowed down and killed. The communal element in the violence in Nuh often captures headlines but few reports make an effort to analyse the likely reasons for persistent crime in the region where police finds it difficult to patrol. The district, along with Alwar in neighbouring Rajasthan, has been a hub for criminal activities and it will require joint action by both states to ensure interstate gangs are curbed. It is no surprise that Nuh has also witnessed poor development indices and it is only in recent years that education outcomes for girls have shown some improvement. Backwardness and lack of amenities have held back the area, with even attempts to provide electricity to interiors being resisted by locals in the past.

Bullet trainsGurugramIndia-ChinaMallikarjun KhargeMann ki BaatNarendra ModiNuh