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 …
The logic behind the government’s Make in India initiative is clear. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated in his speech at the launch of “Make in India Week” in Mumbai on 13 Feb 2016: We launched the Make in India campaign to create employment and self-employment opportunities for our youth. We are working aggressively towards making India …
Continue reading The Lion’s Meow: a closer look at Make in India
With all the flak that that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) got for its "policy paralysis" and anti-growth policies (apparently both can simultaneously occur), one would hardly have expected a sharp economic revival in its final year in office. However, new and improved government economic data shows that in 2013-14 (i.e. the fiscal year ending …
The economic record of the United Progress Alliance (UPA) is a major election issue, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making the case that weak leadership and a welfarist ideology led the UPA to fritter away India's economic future. At a press conference earlier today, BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha posed 18 …
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