The Narendra Modi thread

[Sachin=GOD]

In the past few days Modi has given interviews to TV9, IndiaTV, ANI and now CNBC Awaaz. Was he asked about the following issues in any interview - gas pricing, snoopgate, farmers suicide in Gujarat, Saurabh Patel, fake encounters in Gujarat etc?

[bulbul]

In the past few days Modi has given interviews to TV9' date=' IndiaTV, ANI and now CNBC Awaaz. Was he asked about the following issues in any interview - gas pricing, snoopgate, farmers suicide in Gujarat, Saurabh Patel, fake encounters in Gujarat etc?[/quote'] Modi is guilty for all of these :omg:

[ravishingravi]

In the past few days Modi has given interviews to TV9' date=' IndiaTV, ANI and now CNBC Awaaz. Was he asked about the following issues in any interview - gas pricing, snoopgate, farmers suicide in Gujarat, Saurabh Patel, fake encounters in Gujarat etc?[/quote'] Out of those, apart from farmer suicide, rest are irrelevant issues in my book. There is nothing to ask Modi. Btw aapne bhi AAP ka chashma laga diya. Why should Modi talk on gas pricing ? It is stupidest thing I have ever heard. But it is smartest move by Kejriwal. He really did go for the jugular there and pulled it off.

[Sachin=GOD]

Out of those, apart from farmer suicide, rest are irrelevant issues in my book. There is nothing to ask Modi. Btw aapne bhi AAP ka chashma laga diya. Why should Modi talk on gas pricing ? It is stupidest thing I have ever heard. But it is smartest move by Kejriwal. He really did go for the jugular there and pulled it off.

why shouldn't he be asked about snoopgate or fake encounters? As for gas pricing - that matter is still not clear at all and it is a big national issue (may not be an election issue) so whats wrong in asking his views on that? In that IndiaTV "interview" he was asked about things like his dressing sense but issues like fake encounters and snoopgate and gas pricing etc aren't deemed important enough to deserve a question.

[Desi Cartman]

In the past few days Modi has given interviews to TV9' date=' IndiaTV, ANI and now CNBC Awaaz. Was he asked about the following issues in any interview - gas pricing, snoopgate, farmers suicide in Gujarat, Saurabh Patel, fake encounters in Gujarat etc?[/quote'] Also notice that these are not 20 minute interviews, its basically free advertising for almost 2 hrs especially when one is not asked hard questions. Having said this, baba cant even do this :giggle:

[Crookbond]

Blog: Attacked on Twitter for my column on Modi http://www.ndtv.com/elections/article/election-news/blog-attacked-on-twitter-for-my-column-on-modi-510479

While I expected the piece to elicit disagreement, I was taken aback at the sheer quantity of the nastiness, vitriol and hatred that came my way in the form of tweets and emails from professed Modi supporters. Many were sexist, calling me 'ugly and brown'; others denounced me as a jihadi who was part of an Islamic takeover of the world. 'Idiot commie'; 'retarded *****'; 'white arselicking sepoy'; 'Congi-paid libtard,' 'anti-Hindu uneducated low-life rascal'...the list is amazing. One called for me to be subjected to Tarun Tejpal's fingers. If this is the level of public discourse we can expect in India under the auspices of the BJP, then it's time to be very pessimistic indeed. For someone who is a fierce published critic of the monarchy and the British Empire, it was also bizarre to be denounced as a colonial slave of the British Queen. As I've written elsewhere recently, it is, in fact, Hindutva, which is a deeply colonised ideology. What was quite striking is that that kind of abuse I was receiving was very similar to the epithets that are routinely hurled at me by British chauvinists and right-wingers whenever I've criticised this country or its colonial practices.

[ganeshran]

Reliance entered into an agreement promising gas for around 1.7$ for 17 years. Today they are demanding $8 for the same gas unit. It has already been hiked twice Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Sachin=GOD]

Also notice that these are not 20 minute interviews' date=' its basically free advertising for almost 2 hrs especially when one is not asked hard questions. Having said this, baba cant even do this :giggle:[/quote'] Yeah. That IndiaTV was pure comedy. And talking of hard questions - forget about the hard ones, even on most of the easy questions he rarely gave a to the point answer. Instead he went into "125 crore Indians" or "blame Cong" or "Gujarat mein yeh kiya, woh kiya". As for Pappu - at least he was asked tough questions by Arnab - its a different matter that his answers were comical.

[Number]

Another fully paid and great interview by great leader

Good interview. Best thing he mostly talked about his own vision than Congress/Gandhi/Sonia/Rahul this and that.

[Mariyam]

No need for homage or gratitude from Indian jihadis. They just shldn't turn into traitors by helping out paki jihadis or taliban jihadis.

Someone writes a lousy article which you don't agree with and they become jihadis?

[Sachin=GOD]

:hysterical:

[Mariyam]

:hysterical:

Raju weds Shashi And a vote for Modi? Haven't they read about BJPs official stance on section 377? Masochists, I tell you.

[Crookbond]

Won't appeal to Hindus or Muslims, but to all; ready to face defeat: Modi http://www.hindustantimes.com/elections2014/the-big-story/will-not-appeal-to-hindus-or-muslims-ready-to-face-defeat-modi/article1-1209629.aspx

“I will not make any appeal to Hindus or Muslims, but to the entire 125 crore people of India. If it suits them, then it is fine. If it does not suit them, I am ready to face defeat in the elections, I am ready to be wiped out,” the Gujarat chief minister told CNBC-TV18. “My mantra is that all are one. I cannot accept a divide between brothers of the country in the name of secularism. In the name of secularism, the nation has been divided.” .... “We want Soniaji to meet Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, anybody. It is part of democracy... but a particular community was told whom to vote for. This is against the Constitution and electoral laws. It is not wrong to meet, but the message that has gone out is a matter of concern.”

Good words, now time for action.

[Sachin=GOD]

Months and months of selling "Modi" rather than "BJP" results in this and I am sure that this isn't an isolated incident - this would have happened in many places where people only know Modi but not the party he represents.

[Sachin=GOD]

Being Muslim Under Narendra Modi

AHMEDABAD, India — Late last month I bought an Indian comic book online. I hadn’t bought one since the mid-80s, when I was a boy and would walk to the bookstore in my hometown in Kashmir to pick up copies of D.C. and Marvel Comics, or Amar Chitra Katha, a series based on the lives of major contemporary, historical and mythological figures in India. My latest purchase, “Bal Narendra” (“Boy Narendra”), was styled after Amar Chitra Katha. I turned the pages with a mixture of anticipation and foreboding. The book purports to tell stories from the childhood of Narendra Modi, the longtime chief minister of Gujarat, one of the richest states in India, and the polarizing Hindu nationalist candidate for prime minister in the ongoing election. The tales are part of Mr. Modi’s high-octane campaign effort to present himself as a bearer of good governance, growth and efficiency. Bal Narendra, the son of a tea-seller in a small town of Gujarat, embodies many virtues: courage, wit, diligence, fairness, compassion. He sells tea at a village fair to raise money for flood victims. In devotion to the religious tradition of his village, he swims across a lake full of crocodiles and hoists a flag on top of a temple on an island. When some bullies rough up a weaker child at school, he marks them by throwing ink from his fountain pen on their shirts and denounces them to the principal. - this reminds me of of the propaganda spread by dictators in the past. Just saying... The publishers of the comic book — available exclusively from Infibeam, an Amazon-like online retailer run by a Gujarati entrepreneur close to Mr. Modi — would have you believe that now that he is all grown up, Bal Narendra is just as brave, clever and just. If anything, however, Mr. Modi’s public record paints the picture of a leader unapologetically divisive and sectarian. It was on his watch as chief minister that more than 1,000 people, many of them Muslims, were killed throughout Gujarat in 2002, when rioting erupted after some 60 Hindus died in a burning train in Godhra. A Human Rights Watch report that year asserted that the state government and local police officials were complicit in the carnage. Mr. Modi has not visited the camps of the Muslims displaced by the violence or apologized for his government’s failure to protect a minority. Instead, he has described the reprisal killings of Muslims that year as a simple “reaction” to an “action,” namely the deaths of the Hindu train passengers — and has said he felt as sad about them as would a passenger in a car that accidentally ran over a puppy. His only regret, he once told a reporter for this paper, was failing to manage the media fallout. Even as candidate for prime minister, Mr. Modi has not given up his sectarian ways. Nor has his party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Of the 449 B.J.P. candidates now running for seats in the lower house of Parliament, all but eight are Hindu. The party’s latest election manifesto reintroduces a proposal to build a temple to the Hindu god Ram on the site of a medieval mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya, even though the destruction of that mosque by Hindu extremists and B.J.P. supporters in 1992 devolved into violence that killed several thousand people. Amit Shah, a former Gujarat minister and Mr. Modi’s closest aide, is awaiting trial for the murder of three people the police suspect of plotting to assassinate Mr. Modi. (Mr. Shah calls the charges a political conspiracy.) He has made speeches inciting anti-Muslim sentiment among Hindu voters, including in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, despite an outbreak of sectarian violence there last September. The problem isn’t just about rhetoric. Judging by the evidence in Gujarat, where Mr. Modi has been chief minister since 2001, a B.J.P. victory in the general election would increase marginalization and vulnerability among India’s 165 million Muslims. Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, has become a wealthy metropolis of about six million people and three million private vehicles. Office complexes, high-rise apartments, busy markets and shopping malls have replaced the poor villages that once dotted the land. The city has a mass transit system called People’s Path, with corridors reserved for buses. But Ahmedabad ceases to swagger in Juhapura, a southwestern neighborhood and the city’s largest Muslim ghetto, with about 400,000 people. I rode around there last week on the back of a friend’s scooter. On the dusty main street was a smattering of white and beige apartment blocks and shopping centers. A multistory building announced itself in neon signs as a community hall; a restaurant boasted of having air-conditioning. The deeper we went into the neighborhood, the narrower the streets, the shabbier the buildings, the thicker the crowds. The edge of the ghetto came abruptly. Just behind us was a row of tiny, single-story houses with peeling paint. Up ahead, in an empty space the size of a soccer field, children chased one another, jumping over heaps of broken bricks. “This is The Border,” my friend said. Beyond the field was a massive concrete wall topped with barbed wire and oval surveillance cameras. On the other side, we could see a neat row of beige apartment blocks with air conditioners securely attached to the windows — housing for middle-class Hindu families. Mr. Modi’s engines of growth seem to have stalled on The Border. His acclaimed bus network ends a few miles before Juhapura. The route of a planned metro rail line also stops short of the neighborhood. The same goes for the city’s gas pipelines, which are operated by a company belonging to a billionaire businessman close to Mr. Modi. “The sun is allowed into Juhapura. The rain is allowed into Juhapura. The wind is allowed into Juhapura,” Asif Pathan, a 41-year-old resident, said with sarcasm. “I get a bill for water tax and pay it, but we don’t get piped water here.” The locals rely on bore wells, which cough up salty, insalubrious water. Mr. Pathan has been living in Juhapura since 1988, when his father, a retired district judge, bought a house here from a Hindu man. “My father said, ‘When the storm comes, you don’t get more than 10 minutes to run,"’ Mr. Pathan explained, referring to the threat of sectarian violence. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Juhapura was a mixed Hindu-Muslim neighborhood, but with the string of sectarian clashes in Gujarat — in 1985, 1992 and 2002 — more Muslims began to move here, seeking relative safety among people like themselves. Prejudice begets riots, and riots only exacerbate prejudice, and so the population of Juhapura has almost doubled since 2002. After the 2002 riots, Mr. Pathan, a teacher, began tutoring children in Juhapura. Then he quit his job and, with his father’s support, bought a large patch of land by the highway that runs through Juhapura. In 2008 he started his own school. Now, around 1,300 children there attend classes in both Gujarati and English in airy classrooms. “We simply have to help ourselves,” Mr. Pathan said. But self-help only goes so far, in Juhapura, and elsewhere. A large chunk of Narol, an area on the southern edge of Ahmedabad, was once a patch of uninhabited brushland that belonged to a wealthy political family. After Mr. Modi’s government refused to help relocate victims of the 2002 riots, several secular and Islamic organizations and small-time Muslims developers got involved. They bought land, cleared it, and built tenement houses, asbestos-lined roofs and all. About 120 homes were assigned by lottery to Muslims displaced from Naroda Patia, in northeast Ahmedabad. The cluster is called Citizens’ Nagar, or Citizens’ City, and wherever you stand in the self-made neighborhood you can see, half a mile away, a big brown mountain: the largest garbage dump in Mr. Modi’s boom city. When I walked around Citizens’ Nagar last week, the brown mountain was burning into thick gray clouds under a harsh afternoon sun. The wind pushed pungent fumes toward the tenements. I struggled to breathe and feared I would vomit. “Every year we have lived here I feel weaker,” said Mohsin Syed, a wiry 25-year-old from Naroda Patia who now works as a carpenter in a factory nearby. “I can’t run like I used to. I don’t eat like I used to.” He complained of pain in his joints, said he needed surgery for kidney stones, and added, “This place, this pollution, takes a decade off one’s life.” His father, Najeebudin Syed, a large man with a short beard, told me that the many petitions he has sent to local authorities describing living conditions in the area have been ignored. “Once a week, they bring garbage from the Ahmedabad hospitals — bandages, medicine, refuse of all kinds. The smell is so foul, so bitter, that we know in a minute it is from the hospitals,” he said. Some days, the carcasses of dead animals are brought to the dump. That evening, back in my hotel room, I read another story from the comic book “Bal Narendra.” The boy is at a camp of the National Cadet Corps — the Indian version of the Eagle Scouts — when he notices a pigeon in a tree entangled in the strings of a kite. Holding a razor blade between his teeth, he climbs up, cuts the lines and frees the injured bird. I remembered Juhapura’s putrid water and the carcasses on the brown mountain, and wondered how a Prime Minister Narendra would wield that blade.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/being-muslim-under-narendra-modi.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0&referrer=

[gs]

Being Muslim Under Narendra Modi http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/being-muslim-under-narendra-modi.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0&referrer=

Goebbel-esque propaganda by NYT. Makes me think as if all the states ruled by "seculars" are paradises!! Muslims living in ghettos and garbage dumps in major cities are not problems associated with Ahmedabad alone. It is the sickening reality of every major city in India for the past several decades. Wondering if Bal Narendra was responsible for these too?!?

[Sachin=GOD]

Goebbel-esque propaganda by NYT. Makes me think as if all the states ruled by "seculars" are paradises!! Muslims living in ghettos and garbage dumps in major cities are not problems associated with Ahmedabad alone. It is the sickening reality of every major city in India for the past several decades. Wondering if Bal Narendra was responsible for these too?!?

Yeah NYT did go OTT in the article. But what about Modi's propaganda through Bal Narendra - you don't see anything wrong in that?

[Desi Cartman]

What propaganda, either its correct information or it isnt. If it wasnt then by now a blog and 100k tweets would have attacked this article, writer and everybody else

[gs]

Yeah NYT did go OTT in the article. But what about Modi's propaganda through Bal Narendra - you don't see anything wrong in that?

Granted that too is propaganda, but not outrageous in the context of Indian elections. But NYT is singling out Modi for special treatment here. Some of the description in the article makes Ahmadabad appear like Krakow or Auschwitz which is far from truth. This is seriously vicious propaganda!!

[cowboysfan]

Months and months of selling "Modi" rather than "BJP" results in this and I am sure that this isn't an isolated incident - this would have happened in many places where people only know Modi but not the party he represents.

this is a problem special for bangalore imo and its one of the reasons why the voter turnout is always very low here.locals make up just around 30 % in bangalore and the migrants just dont care about politics because they cannot relate to local politicians even though its loksabha elections.