NEW DELHI — India’s opposition leader, Narendra Modi, swept into power as prime minister-elect Friday, as voters delivered a crushing verdict on the corruption scandals and flagging economic growth that have plagued their country in recent years.
I see the Republicans taking the Senate in 2014.
In a victory speech in Vadodara, the city in Gujarat state where he won his own parliamentary seat in a landslide, Modi addressed a wild, chanting crowd shortly after the Indian National Congress, which has controlled India’s government for nearly all of its postcolonial history, conceded defeat.
“Brothers and sisters, you have faith in me, and I have faith in you,” Modi said, in remarks that were interrupted several times by the crowd chanting his name. “We have the capacity to fulfill the common man’s aspirations.”
The contours of the victory by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the defeat of the Congress party became clear even before election officials finished counting the 550 million votes cast in the five-week general elections.
After midnight in Delhi, the Election Commission declared that the Bharatiya Janata Party had won 275 seats and was leading in seven more, enough support to form a government without brokering a coalition deal with any of India’s fractious regional leaders. That would give Modi the strongest mandate of any Indian leader since Rajiv Gandhi took office in 1984, riding the wave of sympathy that followed the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi.
The celebrations of Modi’s triumph began while the counting was underway. Drummers, stilt-walkers, and women in colorful saris converged at Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in Delhi, where party workers had laid out 100,000 laddoos, the ball-shaped sweets that are ubiquitous at Indian celebrations.
****************
Rahul Gandhi, the heir apparent to the political dynasty that has formed the Congress party’s backbone, appeared to have only narrowly won reelection Friday in his home constituency, a stronghold that he carried by more than 300,000 votes in 2009. In a humiliation for Gandhi, 43, a group of workers gathered around party headquarters in the capital city, chanting “Bring Priyanka, Save Congress,” a reference to his younger sister, who is seen as a more charismatic politician.
Then this thing was an emphatic repudiation of the India establishment.
Looks like people all over the world are sick of $elf-$erving governments and those that $taff them.
****************
The elections came during a period of rapid transition in Indian society, as urbanization and economic growth break down generations-old voting patterns.
Like Nixon's Southern strategy flipping the South.
With his conservative ideology and steely style of leadership, Modi, who came from a humble background and rose through the ranks of a Hindu nationalist group, will prove a stark departure from his predecessors in that office.
I'm not sure how to read this, and I suppose western and US policymakers will wait and see. I suspect increased tension with Pakistan, but China will be the key. Does Modi back off of cooperation in his national interest at the behest of the West?
In his speech, Modi hinted at expectations of political longevity, saying that he had heard even small children using the slogan from his campaign that meant it was his turn to govern.
Hindu youth!
“They will be coming to take part in elections after 15 to 16 years,” he said. “We are preparing the new generation also.”
Now he is sounding like Obummer and his indoctrination program.
Modi is a regional leader — only the second ever to take the prime minister’s seat — known for maintaining tight control over the bureaucracy and political system in Gujarat, the state he has led for 13 years. His image as a stern, disciplined leader attracted throngs of voters who hope that he will crack down on corruption, jump-start India’s flagging economy, and create manufacturing jobs.
Dictatorial tendencies, 'eh? Those damn nationalists!
But his reputation also worries many people. He is blamed by many of India’s Muslims for failing to stop bloody religious riots that raged through his home state in 2002, leaving more than 1,000 people dead.
Related:
"Police said Saturday they have arrested 22 people for helping separatist rebels accused of killing 29 Muslims in the worst outbreak of ethnic violence in the remote region in two years. Authorities called in the army in Assam state and imposed a curfew following violence blamed on rebels from the Bodo tribe, who have long accused Muslim residents of sneaking into India illegally from Bangladesh."
More on them later.
Related: "Rescuers have recovered 54 bodies from a ferry that sank in a river during a storm in central Bangladesh, resuming their search Saturday. Officials said 12 people were still unaccounted for. There has been confusion over how many were aboard the ferry when it sank Thursday in the River Meghna."
Also see: South Korean Chaos
Last I saw of it, and the missing Malaysian plane has fallen completely off the radar.
Others fear he will try to quash dissent and centralize authority in a capital that has long been dominated by the Indian National Congress and the liberal internationalists who support it. Last summer, when Modi’s campaigners insisted that the Bharatiya Janata Party could win the 272 seats necessary to form a government, the ambition seemed far-fetched.
This is definitely a concerned tone from my agenda-pushing, propaganda pre$$. The Indian people must have overwhelmingly rejected the $tatu$ quo because not even a rigging could save globalist ambitions!
After a decade in power, Congress had succeeded in introducing a package of generous new welfare programs for poor and rural Indians, who still make up the majority of the electorate.
Then WHY did they LOSE BIG TIME, and why is there still SO MUCH POVERTY and HUNGER in India!!??
--more--"
Meet the new man through the pri$m of my propaganda pre$$:
"India’s next PM has humble roots, capitalist focus" by Katy Daigle | Associated Press May 17, 2014
I'm sure the bankers are happy to see that.
NEW DELHI — India’s next prime minister, Narendra Modi, is the son of a poor tea seller and has long set his sights on the highest elected office in the world’s largest democracy.
The top official in Gujarat state for more than a decade, Modi often contrasted his humble roots with the posh background of his main rival, 43-year-old Rahul Gandhi, heir to India’s most powerful political dynasty.
Gandhi all but forgotten, even by me. His solutions regarding nonviolence have been proven antiquated. War is the only way now. Kill 'em before they kill you.
Never were a man and his ideas needed more, but he's passé. Nonviolence is the only way, but it doesn't work. Kill 'em. Kill 'em all. Kill 'em any way you can!
See? I'm changing, too.
As the career politician led his Bharatiya Janata Party through a dazzling, high-tech election campaign, Modi called voters’ attention to his mother’s riding a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw to cast her ballot earlier this month.
Obama give him pointers, or did he talk to Scott Brown?
‘‘I am the chief minister of a prosperous state. . . . And my 90-year-old mother goes to vote in an auto-rickshaw,’’ the white-bearded Modi boasted, punching a fist through the air as he claimed his place by India’s poor masses.
But despite playing up his folksy, common-man credentials, the 63-year-old Modi is widely seen as the darling of India’s corporate world and a decisive, 21st-century administrator expected to revive job creation and economic growth.
Oh. The more you vote for change.... SIGH!
Modi’s singular message on the economy has helped him ignore or beat back criticism of his personal life — including his strong links to a right-wing Hindu nationalist group, as well as his four-decade marriage to a retired school teacher he had never mentioned publicly until last month.
Born in 1950, Modi will be India’s first prime minister born after the country’s violent 1947 partition and independence from imperial Britain.
His rise marks a paradigm shift for the secular democracy after decades of welfare policies that have emphasized lifting the country’s impoverished.
And yet there is more wealth inequality and poverty than ever!
Modi has extolled the merits of trickle-down economics through industrialization.
Aaaaah! 1% pissing on everyone else!
He also has maintained strong links with the conservative, paramilitary Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which some describe as neofascist.
Uh-oh! Maybe he should stand for election in western Ukraine instead!
The group ‘‘will have a substantial check on Modi. He is not going to be entirely his own man,’’ said political analyst Kamal Mitra Chenoy of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
India's AIPAC?
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"Victor in India’s election vows to strengthen country; Meets top party members, accepts congratulations" by Gardiner Harris | New York Times May 18, 2014
NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi, the man expected to become India’s next prime minister, swept into the capital Saturday morning in a triumphal procession to the colonial bungalows here that still serve as India’s power center and promised that he “will try to make India self-reliant and strong.”
Modi, who engineered a historic victory over India’s long-governing Gandhi family, was surrounded at several places along the route by well-wishers who chanted paeans to him. When he stopped to greet the crowds, they showered him with rose petals.
Modi gave a brief speech at the headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which on Friday won a decisive majority in Parliament. It is the first time in India’s history that any party other than the Indian National Congress Party, led by the Gandhi family, has managed such a feat.
“I am thankful to you for the way in which you received me with so much gratitude from the airport,” Modi said.
After a meeting of top party members, Modi departed for Varanasi, the holiest city in Hinduism, where he won election to the lower house of Parliament.
He went to the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple, which is devoted to Lord Shiva, a virile, muscular, and meditative god. He then went to the banks of the Ganges, India’s holiest river and one Modi has promised to clean. In some spots, the Ganges is little more than an open sewer.
And Gandhi's ashes were dumped into it. What a perfect metaphor. Modern India has soiled his legacy in more ways than one.
Gandhi once said poverty is the worst form of violence, did you know that? I then turn and look at the policies of the U.S. government and its monetary $y$tem concentrating wealth in the 1%.
Not only committing murderous violence overseas and at home, but also committing subtle violence with its policies both at home and abroad.
And the political cla$$ and propagandists can figure out why we so sour on them?
One of the onlookers, Rajeev Bind, 26, had come from a village nearly 30 miles away from Varanasi because Modi “is the only politician who can make this country strong and powerful.”
Does he have a short mustache under the nose?
“All politicians say that they will do something but when he speaks you believe it,” Bind said. “He makes you believe.”
The electricity in much of Varanasi was disrupted Friday as the election returns made clear the size of Modi’s victory, and the power failure led many to wonder whether Modi could truly fix India’s huge problems.
(Blog editor shakes head; so who in government pulled the plug?)
While Modi was accepting congratulations in New Delhi, not far away Manmohan Singh, who has been India’s prime minister for 10 years, delivered a brief farewell address, tendered his resignation, and wished the new government well.
“I owe everything to this country, this great land of ours where I, an underprivileged child of Partition, was empowered enough to rise and occupy high office,” Singh said. “It is both a debt that I will never be able to repay and a decoration that I will always wear with pride.”
Singh will retire to a simple bungalow and a $1,000-a-month pension.
As other Indians starve to death.
He is widely acknowledged to be an honest man who presided over a government rife with corruption.
Then he was nothing more than a figurehead.
And his humble acceptance of his role as a seat-warmer for Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the country’s leading political family, was eventually seen as undercutting the institution of the prime minister’s office.
I actually don't like warm seats; it means someone else's stinky ass was just there.
It is an office that Modi has promised to restore, and in his own speech he said his victory “belongs to 1.25 billion Indians.”
Among those listening to Modi was Byas Tiwari, 68, who struggled to make his way through the throng of party supporters. Tiwari took a train Friday night from a distant village in a neighboring state so that he could see Modi with his own eyes. He said that he had not eaten or bathed for nearly 30 hours.
Modi “is an honest politician, and I had prayed to God to give him a huge mandate,” Tiwari said.
Like hundreds of millions of others, Tiwari has high hopes for Modi. For instance, Tiwari said he believed that Modi would provide pensions to old people like him.
They might trickle down, yeah.
--more--"
Here is a look at the campaign:
"In India, ‘clone’ candidates creating confusion for voters" by Rama Lakshmi | Washington Post April 24, 2014
NEWSA, India — Lakhan Sahu, a rice farmer, is running for a seat in India’s Parliament. But on a recent afternoon, just days before the election, he was napping outside his mud hut instead of campaigning.
Asked what he thinks are the big issues in the national election, he paused. Then he said: ‘‘The pond in my village has run out of water.’’
He is not the only Lakhan Sahu running for the Parliament seat from Bilaspur district in the central state of Chhattisgarh. There is also Lakhan Sahu the lawyer, Lakhan Sahu the construction contractor, Lakhan Sahu the mason, and Lakhan Sahu the day laborer. That’s right: Five of the 35 candidates in Thursday’s vote are named Lakhan Sahu.
The long roster of Sahus is part of a wacky yet disturbing trend in India this election season. People with the same name as a prominent candidate are sometimes asked to also run for the seat, in an effort to confuse citizens and split the vote.
Political observers say these ‘‘dummy’’ or ‘‘clone’’ candidates are often poor or unknown individuals who are paid to run in the election, which is being held in stages.
Since 2009, the Election Commission of India has urged its officers to monitor such candidates. But the trend has proliferated this year. One ballot has 10 candidates with the same name.
‘‘This practice is a sign of how intense the political competition is in many areas, and of how established politicians try to fool the poor voters and manipulate their voting decisions,’’ said Manisha Priyam, a scholar on Indian elections with the London School of Economics and Political Science. ‘‘The namesakes also use this to bargain for money for themselves.’’
As Sahu the rice farmer enjoyed his siesta, his rival from the national opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, was sweating it out in 112-degree heat, traveling to villages where he gave short speeches.
‘‘I am aware there are four others with my name. They have no conscience and are propped up by my rivals to confuse people,’’ said this Lakhan Sahu, a criminal defense lawyer turned politician. ‘‘But I am the real Lakhan Sahu, and I always remind voters to not just read the names on voting day but to also look for the lotus button, which is my party symbol.’’
Election officials say that the practice of dummy candidates is difficult to curb. They say they cannot bar citizens from running for office in the world’s most populous democracy.
That's all we get in AmeriKan elections, yeah. Bunch of dummies with a corporate or AIPAC hand up their....
Karuna Shukla, the candidate from the governing Congress party, says it is a ‘‘mere coincidence’’ that so many candidates in her race have the same name as her chief opponent from the BJP. But one Congress party worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the practice is growing and that dummy opponents can give one party an edge in closely fought elections.
Residents in the district with all the Lakhan Sahus said the phenomenon is troubling because it preys on voters who are not well-informed.
‘‘Many poor, ignorant people may get confused and vote for the wrong Lakhan Sahu if they are not wearing their spectacles, or if they are in a hurry, or if the voting booth is dimly lit,’’ said Sita Ram, a carpenter.
Yeah, they might vote for their own interest or Republican.
Ram said he is confident that he will not make any mistake when he goes to vote. He is a supporter of the BJP and will look for the lotus symbol. In India, political parties have a symbol printed by their names on the ballot to help the country’s millions of illiterate voters identify their candidates.
Not far from Newsa village, yet another Lakhan Sahu, the building contractor, grew indignant at the suggestion that he might be a ‘‘dummy’’ candidate.
‘‘Who can say I am not the real Lakhan Sahu? It is the name given by my parents. I am as real as anybody else,’’ he said. ‘‘I may get 50 votes or 5,000 votes. Who knows, maybe the doors of my destiny will open and I will hit the jackpot.’’
"Suspected insurgents kill 7 on major voting day in India" by Aijaz Hussain | Associated Press April 25, 2014
SRINAGAR, India — A major day of voting in the world’s biggest elections was marred by violence Thursday as suspected rebels killed four paramilitary soldiers and three polling officials who were traveling on buses after conducting balloting in two Indian states.
Maoist insurgents ambushed one of the buses near Shikaripada, a village in eastern Jharkhand state, and fatally shot four paramilitary soldiers and two polling officials carrying voting machines, said Anurag Gupta, a state police spokesman. Other details were not immediately available.
Suspected rebels also fatally shot an Indian poll official and wounded four other people in an attack on another bus in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir in the north.
With 814 million eligible voters, India is voting in phases over six weeks, with results expected May 16. Thursday’s violence came as millions of people turned out in 11 states for the second-biggest day of voting in the election.
Voting covered 117 parliamentary seats across 11 states, many heavily populated. These included Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Rajasthan, which are crucial for determining the winner between the governing Congress party and Hindu nationalist opposition.
In Kashmir, police said the deadly attack also wounded a poll officer, two paramilitary soldiers, and a policeman.
The district is about 40 miles south of Srinagar, the largest city in India-controlled Kashmir.
I'm shocked every time I see Kashmir in my paper.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of protesters hurled rocks at polling stations in the disputed Himalayan territory and shouted ‘‘Down with India!’’
Government forces used tear gas and wooden batons to disperse the protesters, but there was no disruption of the voting, police said.
Nine paramilitary soldiers, three policemen, and a polling officer were injured in an attack by protesters in the Anantnag constituency, police said.
More than 28 percent of the 1.3 million eligible voters cast their ballots in the troubled region, said Umang Narula, an Election Commission official.
Indian Kashmir elects only six members of the 543-member Indian Parliament, but voting there will take place over several days due to security concerns.
Rebels and separatist politicians have urged people to boycott the vote to show that they do not recognize India’s sovereignty.
More than a dozen rebel groups have been fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India or merger with Pakistan since 1989.
Why can't they have a vote like Kosovo or South Sudan?
Either way, they don't want to be part of India. What are they fighting over again?
Thursday’s protests spread to nearly two dozen towns and villages in the region.
It's a worldwide epidemic if you are the global elite rulers.
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"India tries to get dirty cash out of politics; Teams of officers confiscate $45m in last 2 months" by Rama Lakshmi | Washington Post May 11, 2014
LUDHIANA, India — On a recent scorching afternoon, police officer Harmeet Singh was stopping every vehicle at a traffic crossing in this northern city. It was election season in India, and he was hunting for dirty cash.
Corporations can make campaign contributions in India?
In the previous two months, authorities seized $45 million in suspected illegal campaign funds. They discovered suspicious bundles of rupees in hearses and ambulances, in lunch boxes, and in bags stashed on buses.
So when a flashy red sport utility vehicle pulled up, carrying four nervous young men, Singh was ready. He looked around the dashboard, in the trunk, under the back seat.
There he spotted two duffel bags, filled with more than $33,000 in cash. The men insisted they were simply taking personal funds to the bank, but Singh was not buying it.
‘‘The car even had a sticker of a political party on its windshield,’’ he recounted.
For decades, India’s political candidates have plied voters with alcohol, cash, and gifts. But in this year’s hotly contested national election, expected to be the most expensive in the country’s history, the government is fighting back in an unprecedented effort to detect campaign-finance violations.
Indian democracy is so AmeriKan!
Teams of investigators seeking ‘‘black money’’ are making arrests on highways, in hotels, at airports, and in farmhouses. The country’s election commission says the teams have seized 31 percent more dirty cash this year than during the last election five years ago, when there was no coordinated effort.
In addition to impounding the cash, teams are trying to monitor what candidates spend, compared with what they report. The investigative teams have fanned out across India, counting the chairs, teacups, loudspeakers, and floral garlands at every campaign meeting and rally.
‘‘We want to curb the influence of money power in elections,’’ said P. K. Dash, head of the national Election Commission’s expenditure monitoring office in New Delhi. “It taints our democracy, and the use of illegal black money gives unfair advantage to some candidates over their opponents.”
Why did the Citizens United deci$ion by the Supreme Court just fla$h into my mind?
It oversees the investigative teams, composed of election officials, police officers, liquor inspectors, and tax officials.
Under Indian election law, each parliamentary candidate is allowed to spend no more than $116,000 on his or her campaign. But in one arrest, police recently seized $1.3 million in two bags carried by a young man on an overnight bus from Bangalore to Hyderabad.
The youth told police he was transporting the cash for a jeweler. The jeweler has disappeared, said C.V. Anand, a senior police official in Hyderabad.
In India, it is illegal to carry large amounts of cash during campaigns unless a person has documents showing a legitimate destination for the money, a business payroll, for example.
Indian candidates routinely underreport permitted expenses for things such as advertising and travel. In addition, many politicians blatantly violate the law by offering voters not just cash, but televisions, food processors, and saris.
They have been able to get away with such practices because election laws and monitoring have been weak, officials say. While the election commission can disqualify candidates for campaign-finance violations, few politicians have been punished.
You just return the money and everything is fine.
The special investigative teams, established in 2010 for state-level elections and this year for national elections, say they are having success.
But some candidates have simply become craftier. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, for example, political party members recently handed out pens to voters containing hidden, rolled-up 1,000-rupee notes worth about $17. In the same state, campaign workers got around the problem of carrying large amounts of cash by distributing train tickets to voters, then telling them to exchange them for refunds.
The drive against illegal campaign spending goes on as middle-class Indians are increasingly demanding greater transparency in politics. Corruption is one of the biggest issues in the election, which occurs over six weeks.
That is a BIG I$$UE EVERYWHERE and for EVERYONE!
Opinion polls indicate that the graft-tainted Congress party, which dominates the governing coalition, may suffer significant losses to the Bharatiya Janata Party, whose prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, is campaigning on his record of clean government.
Many of the candidates can easily tap into their own cash to fund lavish campaigns. One-quarter of the parliamentary candidates this year are millionaires. Nearly one-fifth of those running face criminal charges, according to a nonprofit election watchdog group called the Association for Democratic Reforms.
It looks like the U.S. Congre$$, except all our candidates already are millionaires.
--more--"
"Hindu opposition leader appears to win strong mandate in India" by Ellen Barry | New York Times May 13, 2014
NEW DELHI — Voters in India’s parliamentary election appeared to deliver a mandate for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Narendra Modi, according to exit polls.
Modi, a Hindu nationalist, has promised to create manufacturing jobs and overhaul the country’s infrastructure. India’s stock market surged to a record high as a result of his expected showing.
Exit polls released late in the day of the last round of voting suggested that the BJP coalition could receive more than 272 of the lower house’s 545 seats, enough to allow Modi to form a government without forging a coalition with fractious regional power brokers.
However, India’s exit polls are not always reliable, having incorrectly predicted a BJP coalition victory in 2004, when the Indian National Congress won by a comfortable margin, and vastly underestimated the Congress’s winning margin in 2009. The official vote count will take place Friday.
Bush-Kerry, 2004!
Not that it would have mattered. We just had six years (with two more coming) that proved it.
Voter turnout exceeded 66 percent, according to the election commission, even before Monday’s voters were included in the polls, setting a new benchmark for Indian elections. The previous record, of around 64 percent, was set in 1984, during a wave of emotion that followed the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Oh, the people showed up, huh?
More on her assassination here.
Modi, 63, has cast himself as an outsider to the world of Delhi elites, highlighting his working-class origins and tapping into frustration with the Congress party and the Gandhi-Nehru political dynasty that has controlled the party since India’s independence in 1947.
But he is not.
In an interview published Monday, he promised he would come to power without “hangers-on or darbaris,” a Hindi word that translates as “courtiers.”
“I am the chief minister of a prosperous state in India, but my mother takes an auto-rickshaw to the polling booth on the day of voting,” he said. “Look at what is happening in the capital — Delhi is being controlled by a cabal that has vested interests in the status quo. I will break the status quo.”
As the campaign entered its final weeks, Modi appeared confident of winning, and at rallies — highly charged affairs that attract throngs of young men — he began to focus his remarks on the need for a large margin of victory, saying he needed a large mandate to bring change to India.
Obummer got one and all we got was crappy Obummercare that doesn't work.
“If a vehicle is stuck in the mud, and the mud is strong, no matter how hard you push, you cannot pull it out,” he said at a rally in Roorkee last weekend. “If the whole country is in a deep ditch, I need strength, dear brothers and sisters, I need 300 seats to get it out.”
Jai Pal Singh, a reporter following the campaign for the Voice of the Nation, said voters’ expectations of Modi were so high that they could prove dangerous if they are not met.
After Monday’s exit polls suggested that the Congress party’s share of parliamentary seats might fall below 100, party officials said that the polling results were unreliable. In a television appearance, the party spokesman Randeep Surjewala said that Modi’s campaign had stirred up tensions between Hindus and Muslims.
Investors anticipate that power will be highly centralized in a new government, largely because of Modi’s reputation in Gujarat, the prosperous state he has led for 13 years.
“I wouldn’t say that it is the BJP regime that the markets are so bullish about,” Vora said. “At this point of time it seems that they are rather bullish about Mr. Modi.”
This guy is no threat to the $y$tem or $tatu$ quo.
--more--"
Related:
"The US-India relationship has fallen on hard times over Washington’s perceived inattention, threatened US trade sanctions on Indian pharmaceutical firms, and a bitter public dispute over the insensitive treatment of an Indian diplomat arrested in New York. To make matters worse, the likely next prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been banned from visiting the United States since 2004 over allegations that he did not act to stop anti-Muslim killings in his state of Gujarat."
Just an idiosyncrasy of tyranny is all, and he's taking action on the second:
"8 suspected in India attacks are held" Associated Press May 05, 2014
Related:
"The US-India relationship has fallen on hard times over Washington’s perceived inattention, threatened US trade sanctions on Indian pharmaceutical firms, and a bitter public dispute over the insensitive treatment of an Indian diplomat arrested in New York. To make matters worse, the likely next prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been banned from visiting the United States since 2004 over allegations that he did not act to stop anti-Muslim killings in his state of Gujarat."
Just an idiosyncrasy of tyranny is all, and he's taking action on the second:
"8 suspected in India attacks are held" Associated Press May 05, 2014
GAUHATI, India — Police said Sunday that they killed three suspected rebels and arrested eight forest guards for alleged involvement in the killings of 31 Muslims in the worst ethnic violence in India’s remote northeast in two years.
In dense forest near Tejpur, four suspected insurgents hurled a grenade and fired at policemen who ambushed them, said police officer Sanjukta Prashar. Police killed two in an exchange of gunfire and two suspects escaped, she said. The town is nearly 50 miles north of the region where Muslims were attacked Thursday and Friday.
In Udalguri district, police killed a third suspect in an exchange of gunfire and recovered one revolver and one hand grenade, said regional police inspector general L.R. Bishnoi. He said police suspect two who fled were on their way to attack a village with a mostly Muslim population.
Police also recovered two bodies floating in a river in Barapeta area, Bishnoi said, raising the death toll in last week’s violence to 31.
Police said they arrested the eight forest guards following complaints by the victims’ relatives that they were involved in the brutal killings. The 22 people arrested earlier face charges they either burned homes or provided shelter to insurgents.
If you harbor a terrorists....
On Sunday, army soldiers patrolled the curfew-bound districts of Baska and Kokrajhar for a second day to defuse tension.
Authorities have said the attackers belonged to a faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which has been fighting for a separate homeland for the ethnic Bodo people for decades. The rebel group denies it.
Maoists?
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"India’s top court recognizes third gender category" by Nirmala George | Associated Press April 16, 2014
NEW DELHI — India’s top court on Tuesday issued a landmark verdict recognizing transgender rights as human rights, saying people can identify themselves as a third gender on official documents.
I don't even want to get into it today.
The Supreme Court directed the federal and state governments to include transgendered people in all welfare programs for the poor, including education, health care, and jobs to help them overcome social and economic challenges. Previously, transgendered Indians could only identify themselves as male or female in all official documents.
The court noted that it was the right of every human being to choose their gender while granting rights to those who identify themselves as neither male nor female.
What parts do you have?
‘‘All documents will now have a third category marked ‘transgender.’ This verdict has come as a great relief for all of us. Today I am proud to be an Indian,’’ said Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a transgender activist who, along with a legal agency, had petitioned the court.
The court’s decision would apply to individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.
Do they have mental health clinics in India?
--more--"
Related: India's Red Brigade
Also see: New Delhi’s air called worst in world
In Beijing, a pollution level as high as Delhi's would most likely have caused widespread concern. But in Delhi, almost no one seemed to notice. Few people here wear the filter masks that sometimes appear in Beijing.
Must have been the political campaign.
Thank you for choking down this post.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"India’s new leader faces old scars" by Priyanka Borpujari | May 16, 2014
Those who did not vote for BJP fear that the Hindu saffron cloak will choke the country’s secularism. The divisive line of this election was the one between remembering and ignoring the riots in Gujarat in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people lost their lives, most of them Muslims. Modi did little to contain the carnage; voters, however, let him off the hook for his alleged involvement in “letting the Muslims die,” as he was alleged to have said then. (The United States denied him a visa on those grounds in 2005.)
For aspirational middle-class Indians, the scars of the riots were ignored like a sneeze. And so was any news of Gujarat’s high rate of malnutrition, infant mortality, displacement of people by large dams and industries, and incarceration of indigenous peoples who were forced off their lands to make way for the special economic zones that marked Gujarat’s rapid industrialization.
I may have mentioned it above and before, but I'm not angry today.
Somebody had to pay the price for development. In Gujarat, as in rest of India, the marginalized have borne that cost. Draconian laws kept dissidents behind bars.
In the last decade and especially in the run-up to the elections, Muslims have seen Modi as a constant reminder of their minority status within India. Yet, unlike other candidates, Modi never attempted to woo the country’s roughly 176 million Muslims — he placed his bets on the surging middle class and its desperation to have him champion their dreams. As news of his win — and jokes about Congress’s pitiful defeat — circulated, people began to list names of famous Muslims who ought to be heading to Pakistan, as Modi had once proclaimed in a speech. Perhaps what lies ahead for India is to see if these jokes subside lest they validate the insecurities of India’s minorities, who are suddenly conscious of becoming the other in a Hindu-led rush to prosperity.
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