Madhav Nalapat

BUDGET 2022-23: LIGHT BRIGHTENS AT END OF LONG TUNNEL

February 2, 2022

The 2022-23 Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman follows on from her earlier budget. This is by carrying forward several of the changes that have made Modi 2.0 significantly more innovative than was the case during Modi 1.0. Almost as soon as then Chief Minister Narendra Modi spoke...

PM MODI’S CABINET: NO TIME TO LOSE

July 9, 2021

Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi has carried out a major reshuffle of the Council of Ministers, including at the Cabinet level. As is the case with any Union Cabinet, the admixture contains a selection of those chosen for both representational purposes as well as a goodly amount of individuals known...

NATIONAL PARTIES LOSE GROUND WHILE REGIONAL PARTIES GAIN ON 2 MAY 2021

May 3, 2021

The shift of majority community votes from the Congress Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party in Kerala made the collapse of the UDF in the 2 May Assembly polls easy to predict. The Sonia Gandhi formula of consolidating minority votes and retaining enough of a minority of the votes of...

India’s vaccines and therapeutics can prevail over Covid-19

November 26, 2020

Based on discussions with medical experts, in India, 9.2 million people have been so far diagnosed with Covid-19. Many may have been undiagnosed. Covid-related deaths are 135,000. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, this is easily the lowest death rate of any country that has been hit badly by the...

Lord Ram is the symbol of unity, not division

August 4, 2020

The entire recorded history of India is the patrimony of each citizen, no matter the faith or region she or he belongs to. This is the central message in the just revealed fact that the first official invite for the 5 August ceremony concerning the Ram Mandir has gone to...

Every citizen will be looked after, PM Modi assures the nation

July 1, 2020

In his latest step to ensure that economic dislocation and pain caused by the Covid-19 pandemic are lessened and then eliminated, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday assured each and every citizen of India that the government would ensure their well-being. The scheme to give free food items to nearly...

Ending lockdowns yet protecting the at-risk

June 18, 2020

Overall policy should be to protect the vulnerable (elderly, people with co-morbidities; medical and nursing staff) from mostly viral pneumonia, respiratory distress and death. The core message has to be: Don’t affect the entire population and don’t weaken the economy (that will only attract military aggression from other countries). This...

PMO must stop Indian aviation from a deathblow

June 3, 2020

The Ministry of Civil Aviation, under MoS Hardeep Puri, has worked hard to revive the aviation sector in India, and has even focussed on trying to revive Air India from the blows to its survival administered during the Manmohan Singh years. Slack oversight by the Civil Aviation ministry in the...

Suspense over Kim Jong Un may soon end

April 30, 2020

During the just-concluded parliamentary elections in one of the world’s most dynamic economies, South Korea, the opposition parties sought to characterise the idealistic President Moon Jae-Inn as a puppet of the Supreme Commander of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. Their calculation was that South Korean voters would turn away from...

May could bring India liberation from Covid-19 tyranny

April 24, 2020

In 2003, a few medical experts were of the view that SARS would not be a severe problem in India, unlike the crisis that was raging in neighbouring China. This was based on (a) their belief that those who had in the past been exposed to “Falciparum Malaria” (and hundreds...