‘Modi’s Foreign Visits Always Raise Stature & Goodwill Of India’

Piyush Mishra, a research scholar in DDU University Gorakhpur, says Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visits to USA and Egypt have done Indian and the diaspora proud. His views

Each time Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits a foreign nations on official tour, you can see India’s stature moving up a few notches. He acts like a true ambassador of our country and its rich culture. His interactions with Indian diaspora, diplomats and dignitaries are command respect and Indian identity is duly represented.

The recent official visit to the US and Egypt was also a matter of pride for the Indians as it presented India on the world forum. Such trips are minutely observed in geopolitics by both our friends and rivals. The US visit thus sent a strong message to countries like China and Pakistan, as well domestic forces that always indulge in creating social unrest in the name of guarding the interests of minorities, human rights, freedom of expression, etc. When Modi was accorded with Egypt’s highest civilian honor ‘Order of The Nile’, it showed the mirror to the likes of all those concerned about baseless ‘assumptions and assertions’.

Thanks to the frequent trips of Modi, our foreign policies have not only strengthened manifold, but India has been making its presence felt on global platforms like Quad and G20 with enhanced authority. On the contrary, India’s stand on the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war is also been taken notice of by all the so-called bosses of the world and it was also noticeable during the visit when none of the countries questioning it.

With India’s achievements showcasing in a range of areas from technology, manufacturing, and start-ups to exports in the defence sector, it is also not a surprise that the foreign investment in the country has increased by 25 percent in nine years due to the collective efforts of Team Modi. Adding to this, the credentials of being the world’s fifth (largest) economy, we are a powerhouse of talents and technology which the world is taking due note and our capabilities and strengths have found new takers after the visit.

It is unfortunate that certain Indian opposition leaders and the so-called `guardians of the Constitution have found an ‘opportunity’. One example of such target attack was by former US President Barak Hussain Obama, and a Wall Street Journal reporter. Such leaders (Indian or foreigners) resort to inane and unsavory comments to cater to their die-hard supporters and promoters. But their actions only serve to expose their true intentions.

Though such buffoonery is a part and parcel of every foreign visit of PM Modi, constructive discussions and differing perspectives are handled very tactfully by him and this tendency only reflects a myopic and petty approach.

Irrespective of all the fruitless efforts to pull down India and Modi, the Indian Prime Minister stands in the front ranks of the world’s most popular statesmen and he humbly admits that he has acquired this status because of the solid backing and trust of 140 crore Indians in his homeland.

As told to Rajat Rai

rajnath on Obama's Remark On Indian Muslims

Rajnath Criticises Obama’s Remark On Indian Muslims

Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday criticised former US President Barack Obama for his comments on Indian Muslims and suggested that Obama look at how many Muslim nations were attacked during his administration.

“Obama ji should not forget that India is the only country which considers all the people living in the world as family members. He should also think about himself as to how many Muslim countries he has attacked,” Defense Minister said.
This comment came after US former President Barack Obama, during a media interview, said if ethnic minorities are not protected, there is a strong possibility of the country “at some point starts pulling apart”.

Obama’s made the remarks during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and said if President Joe Biden meets with PM Modi, “the protection of the Muslim minority in a majority Hindu India is something worth mentioning”.

On Sunday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also hit out at Obama and said that under his reign, the United States had bombed six Muslim-dominated countries.

While addressing a press conference in Delhi, Nirmala Sitharaman said, “It was surprising that when the PM was visiting the US and telling people about India, a former US President (Barack Obama) was making a statement on Indian Muslims…I am speaking with caution, we want a good friendship with the US, but they comment on India’s religious tolerance. Perhaps 6 Muslim-dominated countries were bombed due to him (Obama)… More than 26,000 bombs were dropped.”

Meanwhile, at the conference, the union minister defended PM Modi from questions surrounding the treatment being meted out to the Muslims in India and pointed out that out of 13 honours, that the Prime Minister received from different countries, six awards were from such nations where Muslims are in the majority.

“The honourable prime minister himself during the press conference in the US has said how his government works on the ‘Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas’ principle and doesn’t discriminate against any community whatsoever but the fact remains that repeatedly when people join in in this debate and highlight issues which are non-issues in a way because if there are issues in states which are to be raised they are being raised at the state level,” Sitharaman said at the press conference. (ANI)

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US Midterm Polls

US Midterm Polls: Democrats To Retain Senate

Democrats will keep their narrow Senate majority for the next two years, CNN projects, after victories in close contests in Nevada and Arizona. Democrats now have 50 Senate seats to Republicans’ 49 seats.

The Democrats need to win just one more seat to retain majority control – with Nevada and Georgia the two states outstanding paving the way for Joe Biden to spend two more years filling the federal courts with his nominees and staffing his administration largely the way he sees fit.
Retaining Senate control is a huge boost to President Biden over the remaining two years of his first term in the White House.

It means Democrats will have the ability to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees — avoiding scenarios such as the one former President Barack Obama faced in 2016 when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. It also means that Senate Democrats can reject bills passed by the House and can set their own agenda, reported CNN.

Meanwhile, Republicans appear to be inching closer to a majority in the House of Representatives – with big implications for the next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Republicans appear to be slowly inching closer to the 218 seats that would deliver them a House majority, but several congressional races — including in California and Colorado — remain uncalled.

Georgia will hold a run-off election on December 6, after neither Senate candidate won an outright majority.

Georgia’s race between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker is headed to a December runoff after neither candidate cleared the 50 percent threshold on Tuesday.

Even if Republicans win the Georgia runoff, though, Vice President Kamala Harris would continue to cast the tie-breaking vote in an evenly divided Senate to guarantee the Democratic majority.

Only one Senate seat has changed hands so far in the 2022 midterm elections: Pennsylvania, where Democratic Lt Gov John Fetterman, who campaigned as he recovered from a May stroke, defeated Republican Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Republicans successfully defended seats in hard-fought races in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, while Democrats retained their seats in competitive contests in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

In Nevada, CNN projects that Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a former prosecutor, and state attorney general, will defeat Republican Adam Laxalt, her successor in the attorney general’s office and the son and grandson of former senators.

In Arizona, CNN projects that Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will defeat Republican Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who was endorsed by Trump and supported by tech mogul and emerging GOP megadonor Peter Thiel. (ANI)

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The Great American Obsession

America is great. America is the greatest nation on earth. Make America great again.

Is it an obsessive spiral of self-delusion, an illusory immaculate conception, or, nothing but repetitive, compulsive jingoism?

The Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2016 chose Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee, with Barack Obama backing her against ‘socialist’ Bernie Sanders, who, was immensely popular, especially among the young and educated. She won 56 per cent votes of the delegates – he got 47 per cent, with the big money lobbies pitched against him.

Wrote Ron Fournier (The Atlantic, June, 2016): “Obama hopes to reframe the election for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. Voters are demanding radical change, but the former secretary of state is the emblem of status quo and Trump is living disruption. She represents a political system that most Americans don’t trust; that failed to protect their livelihoods in the shift from industrialism to globalism; that made promises it didn’t keep; that puts more value in the results of the next election than the needs of the next generation. She could lose that fight…”

Michelle Obama had earlier, as a rejoinder to Trump, asserted that she wakes up in a home built by slaves and yet her daughters—“two beautiful, intelligent, black young women”—take for granted that a woman can be president. “(D)on’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again,” she said.“Because, this, right now, is the greatest country on earth.”

Obama repeated: “America is already great,” he said at the convention. “America is already strong. And, I promise you, our strength, our greatness, does not depend on Donald Trump…What could be more American than what happened in this place?…  What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people—the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many, coming together to shape their country’s course?”

This convention was touted as a radical rupture in the history of the Democratic Party because of the progressive influence of Sanders. In a country where the Left is either absent or derided, Sanders and his supporters created a parallel discourse. The convention thereby reflected a different mood: Wall Street reforms (inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement), curbs on obscenely rich capitalists, stringent financial regulations, $15 an hour minimum wage, social sector reforms, waiver of students’ loans, abolition of death penalty, criminal justice reforms, including the closure of the notorious private prisons, among other reforms.

ALSO READ: Can America Be United Again?

Crucially, despite Obama’s poetics and rhetoric, it was a pointer that he did little – including for the Black community, the unsung, the downtrodden, low station dreamers, among others. That, despite his noble intentions, the sublime discourse – he turned out to be a brilliant failure.

Joe Biden has seen it all from close to the ring. So, at 78, will he still hold on to the same silly old strings?

His popularity ratings dipped by around 53 per cent after the big botch-up in Afghanistan, which, of course, was begun by George W Bush. Hence, how is this botch-up pronounced in the self-righteous, self-proclamation of ‘greatness’?

Is it all always eyes-wide-open-wide-shut? So, what happened in Afghanistan and Vietnam? Or, what is happening right now in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, among the Kurds? Or, whatever happened in Latin America for decades – and this was no magic realism!

Yet, are things changing on the ground?

In India, the prime minister has not faced a single press conference till date since the summer of 2014 when he took over. However, the White House does regular media briefings. Nothing is ever stage-managed. The president answer questions in a free and frank atmosphere. Difficult questions can be parried, but not blocked. Indeed, even Donald Trump faced a hostile media routinely – and he never crushed a query!

The White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, answers questions without any censorship. On September 20, she answered several uncomfortable questions on the drone strike in Kabul and the deportation of immigrants to Haiti. Since The New York Times and others exposed the killing of a family in the drone strike, this was perhaps the first time that she was talking on behalf of the American president. “This was done in error… Every loss is a tragedy,” she said, stating that investigations are on to make this mistake accountable. The journalists persisted.

Apart from this, her presentation marked what is perceived to be a paradigm shift in terms of the ‘progressive reforms’ being pushed by Biden. For those who have seen the homeless on the streets in New York, in freezing cold, this would be a pointer. The Press Secretary disclosed about a new initiative, ‘House America’:  “Homelessness was on the rise before the pandemic, and the last couple of years have just exacerbated the problem. On any given night, more than half-a-million Americans were enduring the pandemic without the safety and protection of a home. Thanks to the President’s American Rescue Plan — and Congress’s — everybody’s American Rescue Plan — communities now have historic housing resources to help more Americans obtain the safety of a stable home, including 70,000 emergency housing vouchers, $5 billion in HOME grants, and significant investments to preserve and protect housing on Tribal lands. In addition, communities have $350 billion in state and local Fiscal Recovery Funds from the Department of Treasury to support many needs, including homelessness and housing instability…The initiative will promote the use of ‘housing first’ — the proven theory that the best way to stabilize the life of someone experiencing homelessness is to ensure that they have a home first without preconditions — and so we are moving forward with that…”

ALSO READ: The Hill Biden Has To Climb

Biden’s ‘build back better’ model has four anchors: racism, economy, climate change and Covid. His latest is compulsory vaccination of 100 million private sector workers, federal contractors and health care workers. In a country where almost 60 per cent people have got free double vaccination since he became president, this follows the ambitious 100 million vaccination target in the first 100 days since he took over. In any given circumstances, these are important achievements.

The Pew Research Centre has documented in June 2020 that unemployed Americans have increased by more than 14 million — from 6.2 million in February to 20.5 million in May 2020. The numbers must have grown substantially by September 2021. This is also many times worse than the Great Recession.

Biden appointed Bernie Sanders as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, knowing what to expect in the face of Right-wing opposition from within the Democrats and Republicans. And Sanders has been demanding a $6 trillion package. Biden has committed a $3.5 trillion package, targeting the economic recovery of the marginalized communities. Said Sanders, “The bottom line here is this country faces crises… working families are struggling and it’s about time we paid attention to their needs.”

Now House progressives are pushing to stop a $24 billion boost to defense spending in 2021. The Pentagon is reportedly spending $740 billion per year. It seems there are no lessons learnt from the Afghanistan and Middle-east fiasco, even while the arms lobby remains entrenched. 

“Despite trillions of dollars poured into our endless military spending, this budget has failed to meet the greatest threats that our nation and our world faces today, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the needs of 140 million people living in poverty,” Representative Barbara Lee of California said in a letter to Representative Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee. “Now is the time to shift our investments away from endless wars and toward addressing human needs.” (The Nation, September 21, 2021).

These are all signs of shifting social currents. An entire new generation is against war, inequality, racism, imperialism, capitalism, global warming, mindless consumerism. They refuse to proclaim that ‘America is the greatest nation on earth’. And they don’t really like the rich – including the ones who are indulging in space tourism these days with millions jobless, hungry and homeless.

New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a gown with the slogan ‘tax the rich’ at the Met Gala in New York recently. Her argument — push the debate on wealth redistribution in America!

“I thought about the criticism I’d get, but, honestly, I and my body have been so heavily and relentlessly policed from all corners politically since the moment I won my election that it’s kind of become expected and normalised to me,” she wrote on an Instagram story. “…Ultimately, the haters hated and the people who are thoughtful were thoughtful…But, we all had a conversation about taxing the rich in front of the very people who lobby against it, and punctured the 4th wall of excess and spectacle.”