In a 31 Mar 2018 Indian Express op-ed, PM advisor Surjit Bhalla accused critics of the government of purveying “fake news” in an effort to create a “political atmosphere helpful to the (weak) challenger”. He contended that “liberal elites” are trying to “change people’s perceptions”, and quoted Joseph Goebbels: “if you incessantly repeat a lie, …
Continue reading When the facts fail you, start tossing Nazi references
Despite the frenzy of distractions since, by now you have likely heard the news that demonetisation failed. As NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain put it in Truth vs Hype, the news sent the government into “a spiral of deflection, of moving goalposts and of swamping us with cherry-picked data”. He's being very polite, avoiding the accurate and …
In a Forbes magazine article that caused a happy stir in right-wing social media, Harry G. Broadman argued that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “governing prowess” had “boosted India’s GDP growth” and “produced sizeable increases of inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI)”. He stated that the reforms implemented by Modi in his first three years were …
An Economic Times (ET) report on 26 Apr credited the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) for a dramatic turnaround in the state’s electricity situation. The news report claimed that UP had “shed blackouts within a month of the BJP taking over the reins, moving from perennially running short of electricity …
Continue reading Spinning an electricity turnaround in Uttar Pradesh
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is proud of the government’s scheme to distribute millions of low-cost, energy efficient LED bulbs. And why not: Modi told the Lok Sabha on 7 Feb that the distribution of 21 crore LED bulbs had helped households save ₹11,000 crore in electricity bills. Even the name bears his unmistakable imprint: “Unnat …
Continue reading Why you shouldn’t be bedazzled by Modi’s LED claims
A look at "Make in India", published as an oped in the Hindustan Times: How does one judge Make in India? Recent news that foreign direct investment (FDI) flowing to defence in 2016-17 was an absurd trickle of ₹61,000 (or perhaps $61,000, the Ministry of Defence didn’t specify) seems to have not caused much of …
There’s nothing like the word Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) to make even the most boosterish Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter sweat a little. And it’s not just because of what happened in Bihar in 2015, when an alliance of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Indian National Congress (INC) inflicted a defeat on the …
Continue reading The compelling logic of a Grand Alliance in UP
Now that the dust has settled on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s historic victory in Uttar Pradesh, let’s get down to the big question: how close does it get the ruling National Democratic Alliance to a Rajya Sabha majority, and when? The government’s minority status in the RS has slowed and even halted important elements of …
As counting day on 11 March approaches, it seems as difficult as ever to gauge which way the political wind in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is blowing. Even before the campaign began, pre-election opinion polls offered little help, showing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance neck and neck, with the Bahujan …
Continue reading Uttar Pradesh is the BJP’s to lose. Or is it?
In case you’re wondering where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promised “Acche Din” went, the answer is getting clearer. As part of the Uttar Pradesh campaign, BJP-affiliated social media has been spreading clips of a 16 Sep TV appearance by party president Amit Shah, where he directly answers this question. So let’s examine the six claims that Shah, …
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