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Mohamed Bin Zayed was educated at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the UK and graduated in 1979. He is a strong proponent of US leadership in the Gulf region and Asia. He is now the third president of the United Arab Emirates with which India has significant trade and economic relations with 8 million Indians living in the Gulf region. Of the approximately 10.1 million people in UAE about 1.1 million are citizens and the rest are foreign workers. Mr. Modi has thanked Mr. Zayed for the good treatment given to Indians in the Gulf region by Zayed and his administration. 

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The Adani Group's public offering of $2.5 billion was slightly oversubscribed says the WSJ after a short seller in New York City Nathan Anderson issued a report critical of the company. Adani Group is a set of companies in India that have taken  up the ambitious goals of electrifying India with its population of 1.3 billion so that no home lacks an electric bulb light for children to read. It is under criticism because this means coal mines in Australia provide the coal that provides this electricity when coal is used in China and India to provide much needed electricity. Adani Group is unique in that it is making the rapid transition into renewable energy in line with PM Modi's goal of generating 50% of electricity from renewable energy by 2030.  Adani Total Gas Limited fell by 10%, Adani Green Energy and Adani Transmission made low percentage gains.   Thirty anchor investors provided $734 million including American banks.  This includes Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Life Insurance Corporation of India. Abu Dhabi based International Holding Company said it would buy $400 million in shares in a public show of support for the Adani Group. Adani Group will use the proceeds to fund capital expenditures on green energy projects, expressway construction and airport improvements and repay some debt. The building of India's Uttar Pradesh Expressway is being done by Adani Group which is similar to what happened under US president Eisenhower in the 1950's in building the first Interstate Highway system in the US. In 1953 after Dwight Eisenhower became president he developed the plan for a national Interstate Highway system that led to the passing of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. This is happening today in India. Airport and port improvements taken up by Adani Group help build India's woefully inadequate freight logistics to make it a part of the US new supply chain after the errors of overconcentration in one country China. Green energy projects help fight climate change where investments are badly needed and governments in the US and India are giving much needed direction and support. It is in this context that the huge growth of the Adani Group can be seen. It is not similar to the Tech company valuations simply because it is like China's effort under state owned companies to match the growing demand for electricity for industrialization. During the British Empire after 1800 capital from India financed the Napoleonic wars, industrialization of Britain, and indirectly industrialization of the United States through British capital invested in the US in the period before 1860. Capital that was diverted from India, and through British trade that impoverished China. As a result the growth in China after 1990, Korea after 1980 and India after 2014 comes in a catchup mode to meet the growing aspirations of hundreds of millions of young people with some companies state or private owned picking up the pace in an unprecedented way. This is the raison d'etre of the Adani Group. China's total installed capacity of electricity has increased from about 500 GW in 2005 to 2500 GW in 2021. This is the story repeating itself in India with Adani Group and other companies such as NTPC, State Grid and Tata Power setting over five fold increase. ...

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Reducing risk buffers to 5.5%-6.5% for India's central bank as recommended by former governor Bimal Jain helps to transfer $21 billion to the government as it copes with a bad loan crisis at banks and drop in credit and lending. This has hurt the economy reducing growth in early 2019. The RBI transfer will help stimulus and recapitalizing of banks as the Modi government copes with the economic deceleration to 5% growth in the last quarter.

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GDP growth in India's economy decelerated to 5% in the last quarter after 8% growth in full year 2018. Stimulus measures, recapitalizing banks and increased infrastructure spending is supported by the Modi government as a way to cope with this crisis. Much of the problem stems from bad lending by banks from an earlier period.  Lack of credit is hurting the retail and auto sectors. Drought conditions in some rural areas hurt the rural farm based economy.

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A sign of the growing people to people relationship of the US and India is the number of Indians in US graduate schools which went up from 68,000 to 102,000 in the 2021-2022 academic year, up 48%. There almost as many Indians taking the GRE exam for entry into US graduate schools in 2023 as Americans taking GRE in the US. Another sign of the expanding people to people relationship is the decision of the Biden administration to give 1 million visitor visas to Indians in the coming year. In India physical sciences and humanities for GRE exceed engineering by a wide margin, showing the shift in subjects. Under India's new education policy NEP the shift is to a more multidisciplinary approach and allowing students to mix science subjects, math with humanities. This approach is seen as best for India to produce a new generation that can think for itself better than the purely engineering science or medical track graduates of the past who had limited knowledge of the humanities. This overly engineering focus has prevailed in the educational approaches of Japan and China during their rapid growth period. India under the Modi administration is betting on a wider knowedge of different and contrasting subjects and disciplines for its future. ...

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The UN badge and logo for sustainable development goals is becoming highly popular in Japan. It has 17 colors for the 17 Sustainable Development goals set by the UN- ending poverty, reducing inequality, improving education, other aspirations of the people of the world. It is something India, the US, Canada, Britain ,Germany, France and other nations should adopt in the way Japan has done. India has taken up specific goals, clean India, clean water, electrification, and made it available to all 1.2 billion people, in its own version of SDG. Introduced into Japan by 2016, this badge is now so popular that there it is everywhere says this report in NYT. In children's playgrounds, in comic books, on NHK broadcaster's video with about 1 million views, on Buddhist temple websites, and used by businesses. In 2016 it was made official national policy by Mr Abe's government and a task force established on them by the government. In 2017 it was adopted to its charter by Keidanren, the business federation.  In the US very few know about S.D.G.'s but in community oriented Japan it has been taken up with zeal. It is part of the conversation and one survey shows 40% of Japanese business were working towards the goals in 2021. It has been adopted by Education Canada Network and it is a good way to bring this idea in education to schools and colleges in North America, Britain, EU, India and China, as well as Africa and Latin America, other parts of Asia. In India some of the SDG's are already the focus of campaigns by the Modi government Goal 0  Clean Nation one that has not been coined yet one that is called Clean India or Swacch Bharat Goal 1 Zero Hunger was taken up during the vaccination for covid campaign to get free foodgrains and vegetables to all 1.2 billion people. Goal 2  Clean Water and Sanitation or Har Ghar Jal getting clean tap water to all rural homes by 2024. Goal 3 Infrastructure, Industry, Exports Goal 4 Renewable Energy The sequence is different from the UN SDG's. The difference is it is a goal set for universal meaning everyone and delivery meaning by a specific date, and the priorities are set in the numbering. The Indian SDG campaigns under the Modi government and at federal and state levels are unprecedented in history for a population of this size, and now present a model for all nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America on how to go about doing the SDG's in practice. ...

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This article is a must read for everyone to know where our plastic and other paper waste is ending up. With China's ban on importing plastic waste the stuff is being shipped to India, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam. Now these countries are turning it back. Who needs sometimes contaminated waste. In the U.S. it ends up mostly on landfills. It is a health hazard as one recent story of waste shipped out to a part of Chile shows- with health problems for people in the vicinity. The WSJ has done an excellent story with diagrams and pictures in this exceptionally good story we recommend for our readers to know what is happening worldwide with plastic waste.  There is increasing education of the harmful effects of plastic and there is a government campaign in India supported by the prime minister Modi to reduce use of plastic bags and find ways to dispose off local plastic waste. In the light of this why would India or Malaysia or any other Asian or Latin American or African country want any other country's plastic waste, particularly when it is a health hazard. In fact China for so long allowing importing of plastic waste till recently so it could be processed with low cost labour and reused for plastics production is incomprehensible, considering the health risks involved. ...

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The Third Biennial Update Report at COP26 Glasgow shows where India stands on renewable energy, solar, forest cover enhancement, and improving carbon intensity in its climate change efforts so far.  For instance a 17 times increase in solar in the last 7 years to 45 gigawatts, with target of 450 gigawatts by 2030. In carbon intensity 24% improvement between 2005-2014. Scientist Bhatt presented the report for India's Environment Ministry saying India represented 17% of the world's population and historically 4% of world carbon emissions, today 5%. Improvements of carbon intensity per unit of GDP planned under Mod's plan for 2030 require 45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2030. This suggests the trajectory of China will be avoided where highly polluting parts of industries such as steel and cement were left unregulated and lacking strict supervision leading to rampant pollution in 2000-2021. Mr. Birol, head of the Renewables Energy Agency said on BBC's "Hard Talk" program recently that if you combine all of China's steel and cement factory carbon emissions, that alone would equal the total sum of carbon emissions of the whole European Union today. A quick look at a graph of global carbon emissions trajectories shows three fold increase of China's carbon emissions from about 4 billion tons to 12 billion tons between 2000-2021, the period and the explosion of carbon that is the one activity that singlehandedly created the crisis of climate change today. By comparison US remains at about 6 billion tons of emissions, and EU, US, Britain Japan show flat trajectories. Business, globalization interests, US and European financial interests, and local governments in China that financed this explosion in steel and cement ignored the implications of so much pollution in so short a time through unregulated activities- writing a chapter of failure with most of the world's people left to bear the results of such a failure.  It is this that India plans to correct with a 45% improvement in carbon intensity per unit of GDP by 2030, and nothing could be more important in the government's plan than this. New technologies will be key for this. Modi and India realize how vulnerable India is to floods, drought stricken areas, shortages of water, and climate extremes, and see these plans as critical for healthy growth that benefits all of India's people and regions, It is a long term vision like no other today and sets a new direction for all developing regions of Asia, Latin America and Africa. As India leads the way in new technologies and ambitious programs such as one solar, one world, one grid, these technologies will also break open new paths for the regions of the world that need this most from Brazil to Indonesia.  China too suffers from the impact of so much pollution. Even as early as 2010 reports showed the higher pollution had lowered life expectancy in northern region of China compared to its southern region. Yet the most polluting factories were not removed and only recently is the activity being conducted seriously leading to the shortages of fuel from so much overexpansion in the boom years, and making adjustments done abruptly today more difficult.   ...

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Experts say solar energy costs are going down by 30-40% every time the deployment of solar energy doubles in a country. The Modi administration plans to triple solar energy production in the next 5 years. This investment in solar energy should drive down costs from the $35 per megawatt hour in 2020. Experts say that costs are going down at a rate that was never expected.  For India the courage in making these investments in solar energy since 2010 and accelerated in 2016, are path breaking. This could be a world changing event for India as cost of energy can bring up living standards throughout the country. Gone will be the days when children lacked electric bulb light to read and study in villages in India. It also shows the need to heed Vivekananda's words: "This I have seen in my life- he who is overcautious  about himself falls into dangers at every step; he who is afraid of losing honor and respect, gets only disgrace; he who is always afraid of loss always loses." The pioneers in India pushing forward these new initiatives have listened to these words. ...

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India's development of the India Middle East Corridor with rail and infrastructure links is a plan that is pursued with cooperation of Saudis, UAE, Kuwait and Gulf region. This is an economic development plan that seeks to invest in the entire South and West Asian region. Just as Europe after 2 wars has emerged from that with the French, Germans, Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe forming  the European Economic Community that later became the European Union, the Gulf states and India which faces the Gulf states across the Arabian Sea are seen as one region that can trade with the European bloc and the US on better terms. A lot of the investments that were wasted in wars are now being channelled into infrastructure development and regional development with resources of manpower from India and with assistance from the US. Le Monde should say that it is good for all- geopolitics and socialist or religious ideologies led to so many wars in the Middle East. Modi is from Gujarat where priorities are not religion- priorities are trade and the economy since the overseas trade from the 14th century. ...

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BJP under Modi returns to running the Indian capital New Delhi after a landslide win in recent elections. The new chief minister is a party worker Rekha Gupta who will take charge of Finance, Women and Child, and Vigilance departments. BJP returns after 2 decades. A win in Mumbai the commercial capital with Ahmedabad is followed by a win in the administrative capital of New Delhi, clearing the way for accelerating the modernization efforts for Vikshit Bharat, Developed India 2047.

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Inspirational talk given to Prime Minister's Office Staff on June 10, 2024, by Indian PM Narendra Modi. In this video Modi tells staff about the nature of the PM's office as a catalytic agent for creating new enthusiasm and energy for the nation's development efforts. Before 2014 prime ministers before him considered this as a power center, says Modi. He tells staff that the development effort was hard work for achieving the vision of a modern developed nation Vikshit Bharat 2047. That this was work 24 hours a day 7 days a week to accomplish goals set to meet the aspirations of 1400 million people in India. He says three points to remember was that work had to be done with concentration on the goal without getting distracted and determination to achieve it, second to have the character to do this in real life setting priorities and tasks. Third, the frame of mind that is always learning, always studying, always acquiring new knowledge about the tasks ahead.  ...

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A transformation of the scale of what De Gaulle did for France in about that same period 1954-1963, in 13 years transforming a agricultural state with 80% illiteracy under British rule in 1947- this happened in the former Madras Presidency, Madras state in post independent India. Schools and high schools spread across the state, national to the state public sector projects were brought for industry, and dams built for electricity to the towns and rural areas. That is the story of Madras in that period. It was all done with clean governance with Gandhiji's principles. The period after the 1970's led to governments with caste based politics with lower castes from a Self-Respect movement pitted against Brahmins and upper castes sort of like the Irish as a deprived caste pushing out the Boston Brahmins yet binging with it Tammany Hall style politics of New York in the turn of the century America. By the 1900's you had Theodore Roosevelt challenging this kind of Tammany Hall politics, for clean governance. In 2024 Modi is sort of like Theodore Roosevelt challenging the existing system in the Tamilnadu Madras state on the basis of seeking the Nation's development and modernization comparable to China and Japan by 2047 what is called Vikshit Bharat. This is the only way to understand it for Americans as Indian themselves don't fully understand many castes interwoven in India as different groups and nationalities are in Europe plus more stratification. ...

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Even though ambitious targets are being set by the government raising from 50 million to 80 million in 3 years the target for new LPG connections to shift rural households from firewood to natural gas use, more needs to be done. The head of the Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister Modi of India. Bibek Debroy, asks questions about the Ujjwalla program in India to shift rural homes from firewood to gas use. Is the fixed subsidy of Rs 1600 enough? Is a 5kg cylinder what the market wants instead of the 14.2 kg cylinder? Are there externalities that favor use of firewood? Will rural households replace the cylinders at this subsidy level because the costs are still high?  The PMUY, or Pradhan Mantri Ujjwalla Yojana was launched in India in 2016 in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh under the Modi administration. The target for LPG gas use for firewood using households was 15 million in the first year and 50 million for the next 3 years. The government pays Rs. 1600 subsidy for a new connection reimbursing the oil company making the connection. The refill and cost of stove, is the rural household's responsibility. Separate guidelines were made for urban households. The government website mygov.in shows 41 million households have used Ujjwalla to get LPG and stop firewood use. The new target of 80 million means the goal post is moving higher. The 2011 Census is cited showing the rural household use moved up from 6% to 12% by 2011. For All India it was from 17% to 29%. About 100 million rural households use firewood, 62.5% of all rural households in 2011. A big issue is how this affects the health of women using firewood for cooking, and who collects this firewood. Firewood is still cheaper says Debroy, and there are negative externalities associated with firewood not understood enough. Changing the face of rural India is a project in motion, with new issues to tackle, new hurdles to overcome, every bit of progress showing how much more needs to be done. ...

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Forever chemicals such as PFAS that breakdown over long periods cause serious harm with contamination of drinking water. The Biden administration has $10 billion allocated under the $1 trillion Families and Workers Plan that was approved by the US Congress to prevention of PFAS contamination. Of this the EPA is using $1 billion for water testing, water treatment plants and to train contractors for corrective action.

Har Ghar Jal, or every home clean drinking water, is a slogan used in India to ensure clean drinking water from taps for everyone of 1.3 billion people. The US faces a similar challenge to get clean drinking water to its nearly 400 million people. The two largest democracies in the world are tackling the basic necessities of life together, with the Biden administration sharing the understanding of the Modi administration of what this means for the people of India and America.

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Union Railways minister in India, Mr. Goyal, raises questions about the estimated cost of a new elevated rail train in Bombay that would cost more per kilometre than the planned bullet train between Ahmedabad and Bombay. He says this reflects corruption and lack of transparency. India has for many decades since independence been held back by corruption that has reduced much needed infrastructure development, and the goal of the new Modi government is to bring transparency and vigilance into government spending to get infrastructure development needs met in the next decade.

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900 million eligible voters in India means this is the largest election ever. The election will take place in 7 phases in April and May from April 11 to May 19. Votes will be counted on May 23. The election is for 543 seats in parliament, the Lok Sabha. Turnouts are high with 66% turning out in the last election that brought Mr. Modi and the BJP to power.  Unlike elections in Britain a lot is spent in each election, about $5 billion in the last election and double that this time. The U.S. elections in 2016 had spending of $6.5 billion as a comparison. Women vote at about the same rate as men and more women than men are expected to vote this time. Prime minister Modi won the last election with promises of development and infrastructure. He is delivering on infrastructure but building manufacturing and generating jobs in the formal sector remains a tougher task for any administration in 4 years. During the first term Mr. Modi made needed changes including introducing the GST tax to integrate India's fragmented market and get rid of a patchwork of regional state taxes. He introduced a whole range of projects and yojanas which are setting the stage for widening the middle class, and improving living conditions. Some of the problems such as the bad loans in the banking system date back to previous administrations and the government has taken steps to clean up this problem by refinancing banks and introducing a bankruptcy law. This has slowed GDP growth to about 7%. However this would have happened under any administration.  The brief war with Pakistan in February 2019 has added another dimension to this election with questions about whether this may help Mr. Modi because of his strong stand against terrorism camps in Pakistan.  In the end it all comes down to whether the public still believes the BJP party under Modi is best qualified to develop the infrastructure to modernize the country and improve services, and whether it can create enough of the manufacturing capabilities to generate jobs needed. It may not be that the BJP under Modi has  not made mistakes in the process of learning how best to tackle development, but whether a patchwork of regional parties led by the opposition Congress party is in a position to provide the strong decisive direction to make quick decisions on development. Getting the agreement of a number of regional parties such as the party in West Bengal state or the Uttar Pradesh state when it was under a previous administration of Mrs Mayawati means an even slower rate of decision making as it leads to lack of speedy decision making. Whether voters have short memories and forget the slow rate of infrastructure development under previous administrations or have a willingness to give the BJP a chance to show what it can do under Modi for development can eventually decide this election. An example of what this means is in how the Mumbai Metro is being pushed through to timely delivery- Metro Rail's head Mrs. Ashwini Bhide simply says she feels for the people of Mumbai who have suffered from delays in development of needed infrastructure for so long, with millions doing appalling rides in a creaky old rail system. In her view it should have been done yesterday. It is this attitude that can make or break the current administration, and whether it can get this message through to voters one more time. Most who have this attitude are aware that China is now laying enough concrete every two years than America did in the whole 20th century, as reported in the Guardian newspaper, and are equally passionate about delivery of services and rapid development of badly needed infrastructure.         ...

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This bridge in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir is at an height of 359 metres, the tallest bridge in the world. It is expected to open by January 2024. Vande Bharat will run across the bridge and Vande Metro trains between Jammu and Srinagar, cutting travel time between the two cities to 3.5 hours. About 28,000 tons of steel went into building the arch of the bridge. Himalayan tunnels need a horse shoe shape of curvature, an elliptical shape that prevents loose soil from causing landslides. India is only now building the kind of infrastructure the region needs as most of this region remains isolated compared to countries in Europe. This is true of Nepal and much of the Himalayan region. The level of infrastructure building is taking on a new pace and vigor as more roads, highways and bridges are being built in the Indian Himalayan states under the Modi administration. This will increase the economic activity in the region giving new life to agriculture and industry in the region, raising incomes and providing a better life for the people in these states. This comes as the region is being connected for access to tap water, electricity, mobility, banking in all villages and towns.  ...

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PM Modi asks India's youth to help bring about an end to the leakage of public funds that end up illegally in private hands when these funds are desperately needed to build roads, bridges, housing, logistics centers for exports, airports and ports on a scale similar to the United States and EU nations. Only by doing this and focussing every penny for building infrastructure and international trade under Made in India can India meet the aspirations of 1.2 billion people and set the pace for the 0.5 billion people in other parts of south and south east Asia including neighboring Indonesia- 1.7 billion people. The US and European Union would be grateful that this happens as it secures the future also of the US and the EU nations through a new manufacturing supply chain. With this effort India would integrate efforts for renewable energy and combating climate change with the US, European Union, and the nations of Latin America and Africa on a new scale that is needed. Jobs come with infrastructure and Made in India manufacturing, it is the foundations that have to be put in just as for a house being built. See the pledge and how significant it is in Lyrarc Insights (see left side front page menu) under India - The Way Forward, Bharat and Cina in Sanskrit - the heritage of Vedanta and the Buddha that the Asian people identify with. ...

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The emergence of a national party in India is the subject of this editorial in The Hindustan Times. The Indian National Congress led by Mohandas Gandhi led the way to transitional home rule in the 1930's under the British, independence in 1947, with the party running India till 1962 under Mr. Nehru, one of Gandhi's assistants. This was followed by a breakup of the party into different factions with one faction led by Nehru family forming governments under Indira Gandhi, and her son Rajiv Gandhi. This faction then lost its popularity in the Hindi speaking heartland of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and became a regional party with presence only in a few states of India and very little in the south. By 2014 a new party the Bharatiya Janata Party had emerged that had a strong presence in the Hindi speaking heartland of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and in the northeast of the country. It still lacked a strong presence in the south. This has happened in the 2020 Telengana elections, says Hindustan Times. By getting a strong performance in the Hyderabad region the BJP now has a strong presence in Telengana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka where Bangalore is located. Only Kerala and the Tamilnadu region around Madras, have their own regional parties in government. In the east the Bihar elections showed BJP as the leading party to form government to push the development agenda in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It is now well positioned to take this theme of rapid development to West Bengal state around the Kolakata (Calcutta) area, a state that has lagged far behind in development under a regional party that was an offshoot of the Indira Gandhi faction of the Congress party. As is common in India national political parties split into factional parties with infighting that split again into purely regional parties. This has further undermined the them of development through failed governance in India. The BJP under the current prime minister is now the exception to this because of its themes of health, governance and development, with Development at the top of the triangle supported by Health and Governance at the base of the triangle. The BJP which started out as a small business oriented upper caste party also changed its image under prime minister Modi. The slogan "Sab Ka Vikas, Sab Ke Saath," (Development for all, with all) has given the BJP support of the lower castes, the Scheduled class and the backward castes in India. This make it a truly national party with support across all socioeconomic and demographic groups. The prime minister's own background growing up working in his father's tea shop near a railway station in Gujarat has also given the party a new image of being with the working classes and the average man. His experience in Gujarat delivering on development projects and infrastructure, energy, has also given the word "development" new meaning for a modern India, very distant from the period when poor governance failed to deliver on development and modernization. Bold moves have cleared the way for a nationwide approach to development, yet decentralized, with rapid development based on accumulation of technologies, human skills, land and capital. A singular focus on the needs of the ordinary people is evident when the prime minister talks about the effect of firewood burning stoves used in cooking by hundreds of millions of rural women for their families. He says the smoke from burning this firewood in the home has the effect of smoking 400 cigarettes for each woman. Rarely has this happened since Mohandas Gandhi took up the situation of village women in the backcountry and lack of clothing in the period under the British.   ...

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Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, India, UK, European Union elections are taking place by June 2024 and US in November 2024. Yet it is misleading to lump them together. Much discontent is there to see as in the UK with cost of living, governance, time wasted on Brexit, India with lingering effects of the pandemic on rural voters, caste based voting. In India protest vote of lower caste Dalit voters in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, even with government support in forms of universal healthcare, food for poor households during pandemic extended, cooking gas, housing support, clean tap water, direct bank account deposit to accounts of poor and farmers. Yet in the states in the south and east in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, and generally in the south the BJP vote count increased so that losses in the north were made up leaving the percentage of vote for India for Modi's BJP party at 37 percent in 2024 instead of 38% in 2019, losing the absolute majority 240 seats of 543 yet having campaigned heavily for partners who added seats 294 of 543. In the UK Keir Starmer may see some vote preference for Labor erode yet the Conservative record is in shambles even conservative experts will say, as in India where the opposition parties offer no prospects for the future and little track record for making India the second or third largest economy in the world which the BJP has set and shown to have achieved over 10 years by taking India to No. 5 in the world economies. ...

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On World Soil Day DW.com provides this reminder about how important soil is to our life. It is a reminder too of the all things that are really important during the pandemic. Few remember the words of FDR in 1937 during the Dust Bowl days in America when overplowing and displacement of prairie grasslands that anchored the topsoil reduced once-fertile plains to parched, barren wasteland that were swept by dust storms. This was brought to life in Steinbeck's novel Grapes of Wrath. American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) said in 1937 that "a nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself."   This is true for India and all parts of the world, now more than ever. The promotion of ancient grains by Mr. Modi in India helps in the way that crops can be varied so that the soil can regenerate itself, and is not drained of nutrients with one or two crops such as rice and wheat. A 2015 study by University of Sheffield in UK showed that one third of the world's arable land  was lost to pollution and erosion in the last 40 years. That study says it takes 500 years to form one inch of topsoil. Countries like India cannot afford land degradation and Modi's emphasis on improved practices in agriculture away from pesticides and careful use of chemical fertilizer, with natural substitutes in traditional agriculture taking precedence, cannot come at a better time. Healthy soils also create carbon sinks storing greenhouse gases and reducing climate change. A square meter of soil can contain 10,000 different species of worms, insects, bacteria and fungi, with a single gram home to a billion bacteria. Rich fertile earth that nourishes ecosystems is a world apart from the dust storm swept land that led to crop failures in Depression period America, leading to farmers migrating and poverty, Some of the agricultural practices that promote biodiversity are more labor intensive, and suited to India, and can actually increase agricultural production. With the added advantage of produce being organic. It can increase crop yields through better biodiversity, to yield 2.3 billion metric tons of additional crop yields per year worldwide, worth 1.24 trillion euros, (imagine that) according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, cited by DW.com. For Indian farmers this is a great opportunity in agriculture to improve agriculture and increase incomes. It is also an opportunity for farmers everywhere, in Europe, America, other parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa. ...

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The Supreme Court chastises the governor's role yet leaves the decision on qualification or disqualification of 16 MLA's who crossed over to the Opposition in Maharashtra to the Speaker of the legislative assembly of Maharashtra state in India. The speaker Mr. Rahul Navrekar is expected not to disqualify the 16 MLA's. With the support of these and other MLA's Mr. Shinde had formed a new government in Maharashtra in a 2 party coalition with pm Modi's BJP party in the state.

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Key points in the National Digital Communications Policy 2018 to be approved by the Modi cabinet are that every citizen of India will have 50 mbps access to broadband by 2022. Key development institutions will have 100 mbps speed. 

10 million public wifi spots are planned for 2022. Expand the ecosystem to 5 billion connected devices by 2022. And attract $100 billion in new investment. Under National Digital Grid the National Fibre Authority will be created to have the supporting organization to achieve these goals.

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PM Modi pays homage to Atal Bihari Vajpayee who set India on the course of modernization and technological advancement, its course for unification as a parliamentary democracy under the Indian Constitution. "Atal Ji understood Indian democracy and also the need to make it stronger. Atal Ji presided over the creation of the NDA, which redefined coalitions in Indian politics. He brought people together and made NDA a force for development, national progress and regional ambitions. His Parliamentary brilliance was seen throughout his political journey. He belonged to a party with a handful of MPs but his words were enough to rattle the might of the all-powerful Congress Party that time.” “When it comes to the social sector, an initiative like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan highlights how Atalji dreamt of building an India where modern education is accessible to people across the nation, particularly for the poor and marginalised sections. At the same time, his government presided over many economic reforms which set the stage for India’s economic surge after several decades of following an economic philosophy which encouraged cronyism and stagnation.” ...