Modi years in Review :: April 2021 --- 'more than one person died from Covid19 every minute' !!

(Nine years plus Narendra Modi in office -  a review : Some salient features, some criticism) 

"More than one person is dying from the virus every minute as Modi tries to avoid lockdowns" (April 21, 2021) Covid19 season !!

Although the PM aimed to give a "do not panic" message to the people, others do not seem to endorse his optimism. “I would urge the states to use lockdowns as a last resort. Our focus should be on micro-containment zones ... We will take care of the economic health [of the country] as well as the health of the people," said Modi.

Congress spokesman Ajoy Kumar was not convinced by the PM’s words. "Contrary to what the prime minister has tried to say, there is every reason to panic. There is a panic-like situation everywhere, including in smaller states like Jharkhand," he said.

 

August 2021....

India's long walk to Olympic glory

Many athletes, especially women, fought patriarchy and poverty to end the nation's medal drought at the Tokyo Games

"For a long time, Indians believed in the old dictum that one could win or lose but what is important is the game. The show must go on in the spirit of the game. When India came back empty-handed from the Olympic Games every four years, there would be no post-mortem examination of the failures.

But India proved to be a changed nation at the recent Tokyo Olympics. Her athletes were hungry for a win." --- I wrote for UCAN, a Catholic website on Aug 10th, 2021.

Link

“Tokyo 2020 for India marks a turning point from a social point of view. This is proving an era of the underdog. Many, especially the women of Haryana in northern India, have successfully fought patriarchy and poverty in search of a better life,” sports journalist A. Andalib said.

A few still stay in mud houses. Sports proved a game changer for them. For a long time, Indian boys and girls focused on the classroom, aiming to be doctors, engineers, management professionals or top bureaucrats. The Indian education system still values the ability to mug up what is given in textbooks and reproduce it verbatim in examinations.

Sport was never important for the educated middle classes.

(US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) meets Cardinal Pietro Parolin (left) at the Vatican on June 28 as part of his three-nation tour of Europe.) (Photo: AFP/UCAN)

In July , 2021, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken visited India .... and let down liberals and other detractors of the PM

"Blinken's blinkered vision of Indian democracy suits Modi" -- UCAN headline 

and this is how the article ran.....

"...once in power, the strategic situation seems to have brought some changes on the ground. So, when it comes to candid talks about human rights and media freedom in India, especially under self-declared Hindutva champion Narendra Modi, the differences between the Biden administration and the Trump administration seem to have done a vanishing act, almost." -- I wrote 

In September 2019, Donald Trump said: "Like a father would bring it together. Maybe he [Modi] is the father of India. We will call him the father of India."

Notably, in July 2021, India hands over martyred queen's relics to Georgia

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St. Queen Ketevan's body was buried in Goa after she was tortured to death by an Iranian king  

April 2021, Covid situation was turning worse .... and we reported, 

PM's warm words fail to calm India's Covid-19 panic

"More than one person is dying from the virus every minute as Modi tries to avoid lockdowns" (April 21, 2021) 

Although the PM aimed to give a "do not panic" message to the people, others do not seem to endorse his optimism. “I would urge the states to use lockdowns as a last resort. Our focus should be on micro-containment zones ... We will take care of the economic health [of the country] as well as the health of the people," said Modi.

Congress spokesman Ajoy Kumar was not convinced by the PM’s words. "Contrary to what the prime minister has tried to say, there is every reason to panic. There is a panic-like situation everywhere, including in smaller states like Jharkhand," he said.

 In the foreign policy.....

"The balance in Russian-Indian relations is shifting decidedly toward New Delhi. Russia’s break with the West and ever closer ties with China as a result of the war against Ukraine will make sustaining its partnership with India more challenging. "-- says a write up in

Link

"The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of India and China, the U.S.-China tensions, the deepening of U.S.-India ties, and the Russian-Chinese partnership intensified by Russia’s break with the West and the war against Ukraine have had a profound effect on Russian-Indian relations.

Of the three pillars of the Moscow–New Delhi relationship, only one remains: the arms trade. Russia remains a major supplier of weapons to India, and Russian equipment still makes up a vast portion of Indian Armed Forces’ force structure; but Russia is facing competition in the Indian arms market. India’s desire to diversify its supply of weapons and develop its own defense industry has resulted in declining Russian arms deliveries to India in recent years.

Russia’s break with the West because of its war against Ukraine has accelerated its pivot toward China. Against the backdrop of U.S.-China and China-India tensions, Russia’s position as China’s junior partner will make it harder for Russia to preserve partnership with India. 

Moscow’s leverage versus both New Delhi and Beijing is shrinking as they have greater capabilities of their own than they had previously and have new partners that offer more than Russia." 

It has been said that Moscow plays a weak hand well, but sustaining strong security ties with both China and India will become more difficult for it. The question is how China will react to Russian arms sales to India, and what Russia will do if pressed by China to curtail them. 

For reasons of geographic proximity, economic ties, and personal relations between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the odds favor Beijing over New Delhi to have a bigger say in Moscow." 

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Russia’s relationship with India has followed a different course. India has not received the same degree of top-level attention as China, for several reasons. At the top of the list are geography and geopolitics. 

For Russia, with its long border with China and adversarial relations with the West, avoiding a two-front confrontation is an imperative. Otherwise, it would risk making the same mistake the Soviet Union made during the Cold War. 

Is Indian democracy turning into an electoral autocracy?

March 22, 2021

extracts

V-Dem Institute in Sweden has downgraded India’s status from a ‘democracy’ to ‘an electoral autocracy,' while another NGO, US-based Freedom House said "India’s status declined from 'Free' to 'Partly Free' as a nation due to a multiyear pattern in which the Hindu nationalist government and its allies have presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population."

The Freedom House report made caustic and vitriolic comments on the status of Muslims in India under Modi, whose government led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is wedded to pro-Hindu political ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has dismissed the reports as acts of hypocrisy. "I am self-assured about my country, I don't need certificates from other countries, who clearly have some agenda," he said.

"Do you want a truthful answer? It is hypocrisy. We have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval," Jaishankar told a TV journalist. (UCA News) 

(Some well known anti-Hindu forces thought about Hindu appeasement -- that's also 'New India')

Aiming not to offend Hindus in Kerala, which goes to the polls in April, Vijayan’s Marxist-led government dropped the idea of pressing for the entry of women of reproductive age into a popular temple against Hindu tradition. It is argued that the communist regime is feeling the pressure of BJP's growing acceptability in Kerala, and antagonizing the Hindus may become politically detrimental to the communist parties.

One of the BJP's most chauvinistic leaders, Yogi Adityanath, a monk-turned-Chief Minister of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, said it bluntly: "It is our success that Mamata Banerjee is now forced to chant Hindu Mantras. This is the change we talk about. This is New India."