by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Shillong : Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma on Thursday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for replicating the Megha Health Insurance Scheme, one of the flagship programme launched by the state’s Congress government, on the national level.
In his Budget 2018-19 speech on Thursday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced a flagship National Health Protection Scheme under which Rs 5 lakh cover will be provided per year to 10 crore poor and vulnerable families in the country.
“The Central government in fact invited the State government to present this exemplary health initiative to other states. I must thank him (Prime Minister) for replicating the scheme,” Sangma told IANS over phone.
Noting that Megha Health Insurance Scheme is one of the transformations in the state’s health sector, he said: “There is no programme as inclusive as ours. Our scheme did not confined only to BPL (Below Poverty Line) families, but we extended it to everybody….”
“Not just this health scheme, we have one of the best Intensive Care Units in government Ganesh Das hospital and Tura hospital. We have made it slow but steady progress in health care sector. And the most important is that we have been able to take care of the expenditure for the medical treatment,” he added.
On Modi’s allegation about the state’s “poor” health sector, Sangma said that “it was unfortunate for the Prime Minister… obviously because he did not do his homework properly”.
The Chief Minister also exuded confidence that his party will retain power in Meghalaya, while saying the results of the Rajasthan bypolls where the party wrested two parliamentary and one assembly seat from the ruling BJP an indication “people’s actual anger and frustration” against the BJP and a sign that Congress will return to power in the 2019 general elections.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
Jairam Ramesh
By Bappaditya Chatterjee,
Kolkata : The Narendra Modi government has made mockery of “a good idea” like Aadhaar by implementing it “horribly”, says Congress leader and former union minister Jairam Ramesh.
“Aadhaar is a very good idea implemented horribly. The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) vision of Aadhaar was that it should be implemented only for delivery of social benefits. Aadhaar was meant to be an instrument of eliminating fraud and duplicate identity in delivery of social programmes.
“I never expect aadhaar for airline tickets, bank accounts, mobiles…this is ridiculous. They (the Modi government) have made mockery of Aadhaar,” he told IANS in an interview on the sidelines of the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Festival.
Further, Ramesh said, “People are dying because of Aadhaar card as they are not getting ration, pension without the biometric card. Aadhaar is inducing deaths of people.”
The former Union Environment Minister accused the Modi government of weakening and tweaking environment laws to favour industries.
“All the environmental laws are being weakened and diluted. Ministry of Environment has become a rubber stamp body. In the name of ease of doing business, it is being tweaked to favour industry…they are trying to weaken National Green Tribunal, forest conservation laws,” he said.
Criticising the river-linking project, Ramesh said, the “Ken-Betwa river linking project, of which Modi is going to lay the foundation stone soon, will destroy the Panna Tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
The technocrat-turned-politician also took a swipe at Modi for his speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos.
Addressing world leaders and global corporate honchos at the plenary session of the WEF, Modi dwelt on the threat of climate change.
“Prime Minister Modi goes to Davos and gives big bhashan (lecture) on environment and climate change. But his actions are entirely different.
“The Ministry of Environment has become the Ministry of Environment approvals. It is supposed to regulate. But they are not serious about it,” he said.
Asked about the present government’s role in the United Nations climate change conference, he said: “Now, BJP is parroting what I said in Cancun in 2010 that all countries must mitigate. BJP and (Arun) Jaitley criticised me. Now, the same thing you are saying nine years later.”
Lauding the erstwhile UPA government for putting the country’s economy on a higher growth trajectory, he said whatever the Modi government is doing is by building on the success of previous governments.
“When Modi talks about high growth, he forgets that during the ten years of UPA government (2004-2014), the average rate of annual growth was 7.4 per cent, which was quite high. In fact, in the last two years, the growth has been lower than the long term average. We hope the growth will recover from the next year onwards.”
In this context, Ramesh gave credit to the P.V. Narsimha Rao government and the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh for delivering a landmark budget in 1991 with a direction of liberalisation.
“In the last 26 years, we have had six Prime Ministers. Nobody has changed the direction of 1991 (for economic liberalisation) given by Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. In the last three decades, the Indian economy grew on an average of almost 6.6 per cent per year. So it is a huge achievement.”
Ramesh also criticised the Modi regime for demonetisation and the way the new indirect tax was implemented.
“I personally feel that the (current) slow down of economy is not irreversible. Demonetisation was a bad idea implemented badly. Goods and Services Tax (GST) was a very good idea implemented poorly. So both these shocks have combined to reduce economic growth,” the Rajya Sabha member said.
He accused the BJP government of failing to create employment and instead destroying jobs.
“Jobs are not only not being created but destroyed also. For the first time, in IT industry in Bangalore (Bengaluru), jobs are being destroyed. Job creation is a very serious issue today. This is not being created because investments are not taking place. The investment rate in India today is less than 28 per cent of GDP which is the lowest in the last 35-40 years.”
(Bappaditya Chatterjee can be contacted at bappaditya.c@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged all political parties to pass the Triple Talaq Bill in the Parliament’s Budget Session.
“We could not pass the Triple Talaq Bill in last Parliament session. But I want to urge all the political parties to pass that bill in the Budget Session as it is meant to safeguard the rights of Muslim women,” Modi told the media in Parliament.
The Prime Minister’s remarks came just before the opening of the Budget Session of Parliament.
The government had failed to get the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017 also known as the Triple Talaq Bill passed in the Rajya Sabha during the Winter Session that concluded on January 5.
Modi also said that “the Budget Session is important and the entire world is extremely optimistic about India”.
“Even several credit rating agencies like World Bank have given positive opinion about India,” Modi said.
“The budget will add new vigour to India’s development and will fulfil aspirations of the people,” he said.
He also said that in this session the parties would get a month’s time and they should make most use of our healthy system of parliamentary committees and discuss various aspects of the budget.
“Let us think about the well-being of rural India, our farmers, Dalits, tribal communities, labourers,” the Prime Minister added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Even as Narendra Modi was waxing eloquent on India as a “humanising and harmonising force” in Davos, none of these laudable attributes was on display in the country as rabid outfits with ideological links with the Prime Minister’s party were vandalising cinema halls and malls and attacking a school bus with children crying inside.
The most virulent of these marauding groups currently is the Karni Sena, which claims to represent the Rajput community, and the reason for its violent onslaughts on convenient targets is its anger about the supposedly distorted portrayal of the 14th century Rajput queen, Padmini or Padmavati, who may well have been a mythical figure, in the Bollywood film “Padmaavat”.
Although another Rajput group as well as professional film critics have rejected this charge and one of the latter has even said that the valour of the Rajputs and the self-immolation of the queen have been excessively glorified, the vandals have not been assuaged.
One reason why they have continued with their rampages is that the governments run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Rajasthan, the traditional home of the Rajputs, and in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have been reluctant to act against the goons.
The official and political unwillingness to rein in the marauders is explained by their ideological affinity to the BJP, which identifies them as representatives of the community which is a potential vote bank. There have been others of their kind who have also indulged in murder and mayhem with impunity because of their awareness that a BJP government will treat them with kid-gloves.
The Karni Sena, therefore, is not the only Frankenstein reared by the right-wing Hindutva brigade. There are also those who assault and even kill anyone suspected of eating beef or transporting cattle and still escape punishment because of lack of evidence as in the case of the beating to death of Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan although he had a permit for taking cattle through the state in his truck.
Over the period when the BJP has been in power at the Centre and in several states, the boldness of these thugs has grown because of their immunity from any legal action. Nothing showed this defiance of the constitutional order better than the refusal of the Rajput activists to accept the Supreme Court’s clearance of the film, which had earlier been certified for release by the censor board.
The decision of some of the BJP-ruled state governments to appeal to the Supreme Court against the screening of the film (which was summarily rejected) must have also emboldened the brigands for it showed that the rulers sympathised with them just as when the governments had banned the film even before its release.
The vandals must have also been encouraged by the support which they have received from the saffron brotherhood’s formidable army of online warriors who have blamed Muslims for the attack on the school bus. As is known, these Hindutva netizens have a remarkable talent for spreading disinformation.
Despite the judicial negation of the ban, the prohibition is still virtually in force because the theatre owners are too scared to show the film lest their property is destroyed. Evidently, there is little faith in the ability or willingness of the BJP-led governments to maintain law and order.
Given this inability or disinclination, it is not surprising that the Karni Sena has not been called to account by either the Centre or the states for the threats which the organisation has held out against the leading actress in the film, Deepika Padukone, and the director, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, about beheading them and boasting that their graves have already been dug.
Considering that these dire warnings have been issued with great gusto on television, there is obviously scope for legal action. When the government’s opponents have been booked for sedition on charges which haven’t passed muster in the courts, the Sena activists should also have been arrested. Yet, the number of arrests that has been made are few and far between and hasn’t helped in dispelling fear.
It is possible that even these arrests would not have been made but for the presence in India of the 10 ASEAN leaders for the Republic Day celebrations. What impression they will carry back about the arson and depredations being shown on television is not known. But foreign investors cannot but be perturbed about their prospects in India despite the promised cutting of red tape and the rolling out of the red carpet.
What the rampant lawlessness in the BJP-ruled states have revealed is the divide between Modi’s promise of development and the frightening ground reality where institutional authority, like that of the Central Board of Film Certification, is ignored and its chief is told by these anarchists not to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival in Rajasthan, and judicial orders are ignored. Yet, political considerations palpably hinder any serious attempt to bridge the gulf.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business Summit, Events, News, Politics, Social Round-up
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a bilateral summit meeting with his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen here on Saturday, the External Affairs Ministry said on Friday.
“Tomorrow, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is here with a large delegation, will be on a State visit,” Preeti Saran, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said at a media briefing here.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will call on Hun Sen on Saturday morning following which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold delegation-level talks with the Cambodian leader.
Hun Sen will also call on President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday.
Hun Sen arrived here on Wednesday to attend the Commemorative Summit hosted by India on Thursday to mark 25 years of the India-Asean Dialogue Partnership.
The Cambodian leader was among the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Heads of State or government who attended Friday’s Republic Day celebrations here as guests of honour, a first in the history of independent India.
The Asean comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
India is a major developmental aid partner for Cambodia and has so far extended lines of credit totalling $65.20 million to the Southeast Asian nation for water development and transmission line projects.
India-Cambodia trade basket is small and stood at a little over $153 million in 2016, according to figures provided by the External Affairs Ministry.
Hun Sen last visited India in 2012 to participate in the Commemorative Summit to mark the 20th anniversary of the India-Asean Dialogue Partnership, during the course of which he held a bilateral summit with then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
—IANS
