Posts tagged ‘Narendra Modi’

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10/11/2014

Who’s Who in Narendra Modi’s New Cabinet in India – India Real Time – WSJ

In his first Cabinet reshuffle late Sunday, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded the number of ministers in his government from 44 to 65.

That takes him just six shy of his predecessor Manmohan Singh’s coterie before his Congress party was ousted in national elections earlier this year by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party that campaigned with a mantra for “minimum government, maximum governance.”

The enlargement nudges up the number of women ministers to eight from seven and gives key posts to members of parliament from states that are due for local elections in the coming months.

Here are the main moves, promotions, demotions and new arrivals in the modified Cabinet.

Major Cabinet Minister Moves

Suresh Prabhu becomes railway minister replacing Sadananda Gowda. Mr. Prabhu, 61, a former member of the Shiv Sena party, resigned from the regional party to join the Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday. A chartered accountant by profession and also a law graduate, Mr. Prabhu served as a cabinet minister in the previous BJP-led National Democratic Alliance for six years, handling key portfolios such as power, heavy industries and public enterprises and environment and forests among others. Mr. Prabhu has often been described by many as that “un-common whiff of much needed fresh air on the horizon of Indian public life,” according to his official website.

Manohar G. Parrikar is the new defense minister. Mr. Parrikar quit as Goa’s Chief Minister last week and takes charge of the defense ministry from Arun Jaitley.

A technocrat-turned-politician, Mr. Parrikar joined the BJP in 1988 and went on to become the chief minister of Goa for the first time in 2000. During his time as chief minister, he was credited with improving the western state’s infrastructure  overseeing the construction of major bridges, building bus stands and improving the road network across the state. “Known to be a man of action and principles, Mr. Parrikar is known as Mr. Clean in Goa,” his website said. As the new defense minister, Mr. Parrikar faces the daunting task of closing the country’s pending defense deals.

Arun Jaitley was relieved of the defense portfolio but was given an additional charge of information and broadcasting ministry previously held by Prakash Javadekar. Mr. Jaitley also continues as the head of the finance and corporate affairs ministries. A lawyer by profession, the BJP leader is known to be media-savvy.

Dr. Harsh Vardhan was deprived of his health and family welfare ministry in the shuffle and shifted to a low-key science and technology, Earth sciences ministry. Dr. Vardhan ran for the post of Delhi chief minister in elections in December but was beaten to the position by Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal who stepped down only a few weeks in to the job.

Prime Minister Modi remains in charge of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, the Department of Atomic Energy Department of Space; all important policy issues and all other portfolios not allocated to any minister, according to the press information bureau.

more on Cabinet Ministers and Ministers of State …

via Who’s Who in Narendra Modi’s New Cabinet in India – India Real Time – WSJ.

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07/11/2014

India vs. China: The Battle for Global Manufacturing – Businessweek

With its chronic blackouts, crumbling roads, and other infrastructure woes, India should have no appeal for John Ginascol. A vice president at Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Ginascol is responsible for ensuring that the company’s food-products factories run smoothly worldwide. He can’t afford surprises when it comes to electricity, water, and other essentials. “People like me,” he says, “dream of having existing, good, reliable infrastructure.”

Yet Abbott has just opened its first plant in India, and Ginascol says there haven’t been any nightmares so far. In October the company began production at a $75 million factory in an industrial park in the western state of Gujarat. The factory is producing Similac baby formula and nutritional supplement PediaSure, which Abbott plans to sell to the growing Indian middle class. The plant will employ about 400 workers by the time it’s fully up and running next year. As for India’s infrastructure, Ginascol has no complaints. The officials in charge of the park “were able to deliver very good, very reliable power, water, natural gas, and roads,” he says. “Fundamentally, the infrastructure was in place.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping other executives will be similarly impressed with the ease of manufacturing in his country. Before Modi took charge in New Delhi, he headed the state government in Gujarat, and during his 13 years in power there he made the state an industrial leader. Manufacturing accounts for 28 percent of Gujarat’s economy, compared with 13 percent for the country as a whole, and a touch less than the 30 percent figure for manufacturing titan China.

via India vs. China: The Battle for Global Manufacturing – Businessweek.

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05/11/2014

How Modi Has Moved Into Kejriwal’s Space – India Real Time – WSJ

The capital of the world’s largest democracy, which has been under president’s rule for the best part of a year, is set for a fresh election.

There’s no firm date yet for the high-stakes Delhi polls, but for one man the stakes are higher than for most.

Arvind Kejriwal, former chief minister and anti-corruption activist, has what some analysts describe as one last chance to unite his fractious, young party and revive his own flagging political fortunes.

Mr. Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party, which stormed Delhi’s political scene last year with its anti-graft slogans and innovative grass-roots campaign, has struggled to remain relevant since national elections in May, in which it won just four out of 543 parliamentary seats.

In part, analysts suggest, this is because his common man calling card and campaign for a corruption-free India have been appropriated by the leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leaving the AAP headman little space to distinguish himself.

Despite their wide economic and ideological differences, Mr. Modi does appear to have encroached on Mr. Kejriwal’s political ground in recent months.

Let’s look at the evidence.

First, the broom. Mr. Kejriwal’s party made the tool of India’s army of sweepers a weapon in his political arsenal.  As AAP’s symbol, the broom was a visual metaphor of the party’s aim to clean up politics in India.

Mr. Modi has taken the metaphor and made it literal. With a broom in hand last month, he promised to literally clean up India. Everyone from Bollywood stars to opposition politicians has taken up brooms to join him in the sanitation program.

via How Modi Has Moved Into Kejriwal’s Space – India Real Time – WSJ.

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28/10/2014

Banyan: The enablers | The Economist

NOT since Indira Gandhi has a prime minister of India been as dominant as Narendra Modi. His clout comes from the big electoral victory in May of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a remarkably personalised campaign; from a hyperactive prime minister’s office that makes Mr Modi look presidential; and from an opposition Congress party in tatters. But even the mightiest cannot rule alone, and Mr Modi relies on two old allies, both crucial. One, Amit Shah, engineers the electoral victories that give Mr Modi his authority. The other, Arun Jaitley, must take that authority and out of it craft policies and decisions that will launch the economic recovery which Mr Modi has promised and by which he will be judged. These two men are Mr Modi’s enablers.

Now the BJP’s president, Mr Shah is a master of the dark political arts—indeed, his hooded eyes give him the air of a pantomime villain. He has served Mr Modi for nearly three decades. The pair collaborated in the state of Gujarat, where Mr Modi won three elections and ruled for a dozen years. Mr Shah had charge of ten state ministries, including home affairs.

Long an outsider in the urbane circles of Delhi’s national-level politics, Mr Shah is uncomfortable in English and rarely gives interviews. When he makes an exception, as he did after state-assembly elections this month in which the BJP seized control of Maharashtra and Haryana, he mostly uses the time to extol his boss. Of himself, he says merely: “Sometimes you get more credit than you deserve.” Mr Shah is too modest. He ran both state campaigns, just as he crafted the BJP general-election success in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh (UP). That victory was at the heart of Mr Modi’s national triumph in May.

Mr Modi stirs voters, but the alchemy of Mr Shah, who turned 50 this week, is to convert popularity into power. In UP the BJP’s share of the vote was 42%, compared with Congress’s 7.5%. That translated into 71 out of 80 of the national seats from the vast state, a golden return. Imbalances between vote share and seats are normal in first-past-the-post electoral systems, but achieving victory in India takes more skill and stamina than elsewhere. Mr Shah makes minute analyses of millions-strong constituencies, imposing candidates and recruiting volunteers early, often from the Hindu-nationalist RSS organisation, where he and Mr Modi were once leaders. He tailors messages according to the audience. He has, variously, presented Mr Modi as a bringer of good economic times, a Hindu strongman and a figure of humble caste. Mr Shah has turned Hindus against Muslims (notoriously, he told Hindu Jats in UP to take electoral “revenge” following communal riots in late 2013). But he has also taken advantage of Shia Muslim antipathy towards Sunnis (in Lucknow, UP’s capital). Mr Modi’s campaigning certainly helps. He led 38 rallies in the recent state elections. Congress’s Rahul Gandhi showed up for only ten.

via Banyan: The enablers | The Economist.

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28/10/2014

Talks gather pace on sale of Indian patrol vessels to Vietnam | Reuters

Talks are gathering pace on the sale of Indian naval patrol vessels to Vietnam, an Indian official said, the first significant military transfer to Hanoi as it improves its defences in the South China Sea where it is embroiled in a territorial dispute with China.

Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (C) shakes hands with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi (R) as Dung's wife Tran Thanh Kien looks on during Dung's ceremonial reception at the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi October 28, 2014. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

The four patrol ships will be provided to Vietnam under a $100 million defence credit line and represent a push by the nationalist government in New Delhi to counter Beijing’s influence in South Asia by deepening ties with old ally Vietnam.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung held talks with counterpart Narendra Modi on Tuesday, the first meeting since the Indian leader took office in May, promising to turn the country into an economic and military power.

An Indian government official said negotiations for the patrol craft had gathered pace since the credit line was announced last month during the visit of India’s president to Vietnam.

“We expect to see progress on this fairly early as negotiations are continuing between the Vietnamese and our defence suppliers,” the government official involved in discussions said.

Vietnam wants the craft for surveillance off its coast and around its military bases in the Spratly island chain in the South China Sea where it is building a credible naval deterrent to China with Kilo-class submarines from Russia.

Claims by an increasingly assertive China over most of the energy-rich sea have set it directly against U.S. allies Vietnam and the Philippines. Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also claim parts of the waters.

Beijing’s placement of an oil rig in disputed waters earlier this year infuriated Vietnam but the coastguard vessels it dispatched to the platform were each time chased off by larger Chinese boats.

Since then, the two sides have sought to repair ties and on Monday, top officials agreed to use an existing border dispute mechanism to find a solution to the territorial dispute.

Dung said Vietnamese defence cooperation with India was the pillar of their strategic partnership.

via Talks gather pace on sale of Indian patrol vessels to Vietnam | Reuters.

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22/10/2014

India’s Modi Ends Fuel Subsidies, Showing He Is a Reformer – Businessweek

Narendra Modi has proven once again how important it is to be lucky in politics. In the spring, he was India’s opposition leader, running for prime minister by focusing on the government’s mismanagement of the economy. He had plenty of ammunition: The coalition led by the Congress Party had presided over years of corruption scandals and stalled reforms—and also had to contend with a growing budget deficit fueled by soaring prices for oil and other imported commodities.

In India, Falling Oil Prices Make Modi's Job Much Easier

During the campaign, Modi said he wanted to cut back on the costly subsidies the government offered millions of Indians to cushion the blow of those soaring prices. Petroleum subsidies account for one-quarter of India’s 2.6 trillion rupee ($42.4 billion) subsidies bill. But after he won in a landslide, Modi’s first budget (which his finance minister announced in July), was a modest plan that left the subsidies untouched.

That left observers unsure as to whether Modi was backing away from the politically difficult task of making the cuts. “We can either trust that the government will deliver price hikes as the year progresses,” Mirza Baig, head of foreign exchange and interest rate strategy at BNP Paribas in Singapore, wrote in a report after the budget announcement in July. “Or we can be more cynical and suggest that the Modi administration intends to continue the practice of rolling forward subsidy expenditure to next year.”

via India’s Modi Ends Fuel Subsidies, Showing He Is a Reformer – Businessweek.

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22/10/2014

Diesel Deregulation Frees Up Billions for India to Spend More Wisely – India Real Time – WSJ

India’s decision to end government control of diesel fuel prices will save the government billions of dollars which can be better spent on more pressing needs such as building schools, roads and ports, analysts say.

India announced over the weekend that it would end a decades-old policy of controlling the retail price of diesel fuel. Providing diesel at below-market rates cost the government about $10 billion last year, hampering India’s ability to spend on other things.

The government had given up control over the prices of gasoline back in 2010 but had continued to regulate prices of diesel – the primary fuel used in trucks and tractors as well as for running generators used to power irrigation pumps.

“It shields the government’s finances from volatility in global oil prices, because of which the subsidy bill often went up,” said Radhika Rao, an economist at DBS Bank.

HSBC estimates that the diesel deregulation will drop fuel subsidy bill to around 0.4% of gross domestic product, half of the 0.8% of GDP it paid last year.

“Our estimate is that over the next few years, fuel subsidies should remain contained,” said Prithviraj Srinivas, an economist at HSBC.

Diesel subsidies cost India close to $50 billion over the last five years, economists say. If India sticks to its guns and lets fuel prices meander with global markets, it will no longer have to foot that kind of unproductive expense. Instead, it can now choose to lower its fiscal deficit or spend more on infrastructure development or social development programs.

Analysts say the government’s fiscal deficit target of 4.1% of GDP this fiscal year – a level that many analysts had thought optimistic – now looks within reach.

via Diesel Deregulation Frees Up Billions for India to Spend More Wisely – India Real Time – WSJ.

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21/10/2014

India Steps Closer to Ending 40-Year-Old Monopoly on Coal – Businessweek

India stepped closer to ending a four-decade-old government monopoly on mining and selling coal as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to tackle fuel shortages.

India Coal Mine

The government approved a decree enabling it to permit commercial mining in future, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at a briefing in New Delhi yesterday, without giving a timeline. The ordinance also allows auctions of coal mines to private companies for their own use, he said.

Modi made curbing blackouts a priority after sweeping to office in May on a pledge to revive growth in Asia’s third-largest economy from near the slowest pace in a decade. State-owned Coal India Ltd. (COAL) has missed output targets in at least the past four years, and easing its grip may allow companies such as Sesa Sterlite Ltd. (SSTL) and NMDC Ltd. (NMDC) to profit from the world’s fifth-biggest reserves.

Enabling private companies to mine and sell coal would be “one of the key game-changing reforms,” said Sonal Varma, an economist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Mumbai. “Fuel availability has been a big concern for the economy.”

Opening up the coal industry risks stoking protests by some of Coal India’s about 325,000 workers and executives, at the same time as the government prepares to sell a 10 percent stake in the company that would fetch about 228 billion rupees ($3.7 billion).

Coal India accounts for more than 80 percent of the country’s production. The government wants to spur competition in the industry, Jaitley told the NDTV 24×7 television channel today.

via India Steps Closer to Ending 40-Year-Old Monopoly on Coal – Businessweek.

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21/10/2014

India’s Narendra Modi to Star at Sydney’s Allphones Arena – India Real Time – WSJ

Since becoming prime minister, Narendra Modi has performed in New York’s storied Madison Square Garden  and played drums on stage in Japan.

His next big-ticket venue: Sydney’s Allphones Arena this November.

Mr. Modi will address what is expected to be a sell-out crowd at the 21,000-seat venue in Australia’s financial and commercial capital on Nov. 17 during his four-day trip to the country for the G20 summit in Brisbane.

Organizers say it will eclipse the prime minister’s biggest gig so far, when he spoke to a crowd of 18,000 people, mostly Indian-Americans, at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 28.

“This will be bigger and better,” said Balesh Singh Dhankhar one of the organizers of the reception for Mr. Modi. The Allphones Arena, built for the 2000 Olympics,  “has more grandeur” than Madison Square Garden, he added.

The stadium in Manhattan is famous for hosting some of the biggest names in entertainment, like the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and “The Fight of the Century” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

The Allphone Arena also hosts musical acts and boxing matches. In the same month as Mr. Modi’s visit, The Rolling Stones and Katy Perry will play the arena and an Ultimate Fighting Championship event will take place there.

Australia is home to around 350,000 people who were born in India, according to the latest census data from 2011. That was a 90% increase on the number recorded in the census in 2006, but a tenth the size of the Indian-American community in the United States.

After Mr. Modi’s speech in New York, people in Australia began asking when he would come here, said Mr. Dhankhar, a spokesman for the Indian Australian Community Foundation that is helping put on the event that was conceived only three weeks ago.

Some 14,000 people have registered in the first two and a half days of registration, according to the organizers. It will be broadcast live on Indian television channels.

“We invited Mr. Modi and said the Indian diaspora in Australia is very eager to see him,” Mr. Dhankhar added.

Tickets for the Sydney event are free and the show will start around 5.30p.m., but further details of the spectacle are under wraps right now, Mr. Dhankhar said. “There are a number of cultural and exciting events before the speech that would be a surprise for the audience in India and Australia. These will be wider and more surprising that at Madison Square Gardens.”

via India’s Narendra Modi to Star at Sydney’s Allphones Arena – India Real Time – WSJ.

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19/10/2014

India’s big manufacturing push: Time to make in India? | The Economist

NO ONE doubts that Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister (pictured), is a capable speaker. On September 25th he called together hundreds of diplomats, business leaders, journalists, ministers and others to a swanky hall in Delhi to launch his latest marketing push. The event was broadcast live across India and to diplomatic missions abroad. A remarkable cast of industrial heavyweights were called on to show support, including Cyrus Mistry of Tata Sons, Reliance’s nervy-sounding boss, Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Wipro, Azim Premji, the chairman of Aditya Birla Group, Kumar Mangalam Birla, and the chairman of ITC Limited, Yogesh Chander Deveshwar.

Over the course of two hours these business cheerleaders, along with ministers and then Mr Modi himself, took turns to explain why it would be a great thing if industrial production, in particular labour-intensive manufacturing, could blossom in India. They are absolutely right. India needs to create lots of jobs—perhaps 1m additional ones a month—if it is to employ its booming population. One speaker suggested 90m manufacturing jobs could be created in India over the next decade. Mr Premji set out how Wipro—better known for IT—has five manufacturing units in India (they make hydraulic cylinders) and overall relied on a broad network of 1,200 Indian suppliers, meaning lots  of jobs created indirectly.

Mr Birla spoke of a new high-end aluminium manufacturing site in Odisha (formerly Orissa) which now does quality work for the firm that used to be done in a British factory. A representative from Lockheed Martin, an American defence firm, explained how its factory near to Hyderabad makes component parts for its global production of the massive C130-J Hercules plane. A stronger manufacturing sector could help in a host of other ways, suggested speakers, linking India into global supply chains, boosting exports, helping to reduce the current-account deficit and so on. Mr Ambani concluded that India’s economy could boom in the long run, at a sustained rate of 8-10%, growing quicker than China, if only the right conditions were created.

All this looks and sounds attractive. So, too, do a flash new website that Mr Modi inaugurated, a new symbol—a lion made up of cog-wheels—and some new brochures that set out how India is a bit more welcoming to manufacturers. But was the exercise anything more than a PR event? As one cynical member of the audience grumbled, it seemed to be a big palaver for the launch of a few marketing tools.

What has actually changed in India as Mr Modi pushes manufacturing? First, discount the worst gush from business leaders. The likes of Mr Ambani and Mr Deveshwar may be embarrassed to be reminded of how sycophantic they were in Mr Modi’s presence. Mr Ambani waffled on about being “blessed with a leader”, the “unique leadership quality of a prime minister, a man who dreams and he does”, who has apparently motivated a billion Indians to “dream and do”. Mr Deveshwar was even more craven, thanking “the Almighty” for the leadership “given to us” in Mr Modi, for “your astuteness, your wisdom…Sir, I’m profoundly inspired by the boldness of your vision and the simplicity with which you have communicated.” Mr Modi sat stony-faced as they fawned. But he probably agrees with the implied message: that most of what it takes to boost manufacturing in India is strong leadership from him, as he showed when he was chief minister of Gujarat. Indeed, when he spoke, he referred back to his success in Gujarat, saying that with the same civil servants and resources as the rest of the country, he had produced striking industrial successes. He expects more of the same in the country as a whole.

Sadly, leadership alone will not do it. Matters are more complicated than that. Mr Modi, endearingly, admitted in his speech “I am not a big economist” while urging investors not to think of India only as a big emerging market, but also as a place for production. As he suggests, achieving that requires progress in a host of areas. He spoke of an urgent need for skills development as far too many of India’s youngsters are poorly prepared for globally competitive work (though that is a huge mission, since it means fixing a rotten school and university system) and identifying 21 clusters for industrial development. He spelt out how infrastructure would improve (but not where massive capital to fund that will come from). Laudably, he emphasised the need to make India a far easier place to do business by scrapping red-tape and oppressive rules, mentioning a recent meeting he had with the World Bank to discuss India’s awful ranking—134th—on its annual “ease of doing business” assessment. Mr Modi thinks India should aim to be ranked much higher, quickly, in the top 50 countries.

via India’s big manufacturing push: Time to make in India? | The Economist.

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