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Indian prime minister Modi says India "will go above and beyond" the 2015 Paris climate change accord. He said at a news conference with French president Macron that it was "our duty to protect Mother Earth." He said after the meeting that the Paris accord was "the common heritage of the world," and "a gift that this generation can give." India has set ambitious goals for solar and wind energy as costs of solar become competitive with coal. Because India desperately needs energy for over 200 million people who lack electricity, India's shift away from reliance on coal may be a lesson learned from the damage to air and water in China's two decade industrial expansion based on coal.

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The first 100 days of the NDA government in India setting the pace for reaching a five trillion dollar economy in the second term. Infrastructure projects worth 20,000 crores open in Mumbai with the new Metro line. The government plans to spend 100 lakh crores over the next 5 years on infrastructure, smart cities, and development projects for the 21st century.

The Jal Jeevan Mission for 100% access to clean drinking water is launched.

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China's new prime minister Li Keqiang makes his first foreign trip with a trade delegation for talks with Indian representatives and business leaders, showing the importance he places on India. India offers China's companies access to large opportunties in infrastructure development, and China can benefit from India in the area of information technology and pharmaceuticals. Trade is envisioned as expanding from $70 billion in 2012 to $100 billion by 2015, and expanding rapidly as the two economies grow. Economic contacts also would provide an anchor for future relations as China faces difficulties in its relations with Japan, and S. E. Asian countries, and a U.S. wary of China's capabilities. This was pointed out in the joint statement. Li Keqiang also emphasized this in an editorial page article in India's daily newspaper, the Hindu, saying India and China have "to work hand in hand," to promote Asia as "an anchor for world peace." A peaceful India-China trade and economic relationship opens the way for investment and participation in development by China alongside Japan, Germany, France, UK and the U.S. in India, as the next major source for global economic growth. This also serves to defuse Asian tensions as both economies grow, and increased contacts between cities in India and China with the twining of cities program launched in the meetings. India can use China's capabilities in infrastructure development, the two countries share the need for information sharing on lowcost solutions in healthcare, in managing urbanization, and solutions for clean water in rural areas, and use of IT solutions in development, where much remains to be accomplished through cooperation. Some of these themes are the focus of Li Keqiang in his efforts for urbanization in China. ...

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Drought conditions prevail in the avocado growing region of Spain. The La Vinuela Reservoir in this region in Malaga province is only 12% full.  It has been reduced to a mere puddle says this report in DW.com. Across the world from the dam reservoirs in Nevada, US, to Uttar Pradesh in India the water levels are extremely low because of a lack of rain. Drought conditions are more frequent and last longer with the effects of climate change say experts. This means sunflower oil output a major export for Spain will drop by a third this year for use in Europe.

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This Guardian report provides a timeline for lunar exploration. The last Apollo Moon missions date back to 1972 with Apollo 17. It lasted 12 days with the first crewed space flight to the moon taking Schmitt and Cernan to moon's surface while Evans orbited above. Since then it has been quiet for lunar exploration till Chang'e 3 lander and rover from China in 2011 put China on the moon, followed by Chang'e 5 in 2020. Today August 23, 2023 India puts its own moon lander and rover on the South Pole of the moon which is expected to have water.

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Since the last landing of a man on the moon in 1972, not much has happened. China recently made 3 lunar landings and Israel failed in its recent Beersheba module effort. India is trying a second time with Chandrayan 2 to make the soft landing in the last critical 15 minutes on the lunar surface without any problems.    The Indian space program has the potential to build up the global research and knowledge about our planet.  Factors unique to India's space program are its development of its own rockets, similar to China's. The multipurpose satellite system services a number of users- telecommunications, TV broadcasting, meteorology, disaster warning, land and water management, ocean studies, drought and flood forecasting. The fleet of satellites IRS (Indian Remote Sensing Satllite Systems) will be used for teleducation, telemedicine, and other new uses. The NAViC navigation Constellation System acts as India's own GPS reducing the need to rely on U.S. based GPS. Other aspects of India' space program are the effort to explore new planets with the Mars Orbiter Mission MARS , with a module reaching Martian orbit in 2014. ...

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After Mohandas Gandhi one of the main leaders of modern India is one who came from the untouchable castes, the lowest caste in India's caste system which had declined over centuries. Babasaheb Ambedkar comes from Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra from a family that had gained its way out of the caste constraints by working for the British East India Company. He later studied at Elphinstone College in Bombay, and went to Columbia University on a scholarship. He finished Masters degrees at Columbia University and later at the London School of Economics, in economics and political science.  Returning to India he wrote "Annhilation of Caste" in 1936. Mohandas Gandhi was at this time working on his own movement to get rid of the untouchability that over centuries made its way into the original caste system and weakened the foundations of Indian society. To understand this one has to know that in many upper castes it was seen as becoming an outcaste even to travel overseas, which by itself may have led to the decline that India experienced in the period 1500-1950, and which Gandhi personally experienced and fought his way out of. By 1942 even the British recognized Ambedkar's efforts and he was Minister of Law and Justice in the war cabinet. In 1947 Ambedkar was chosen to lead the team that would write India's Constitution. In his latter years Ambedkar became a Buddhist and has written several books on Buddhism. By 2015 Ambedkar day was recognized as a public holiday by the new government and his memory is enshrined in the efforts now underway in India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh to bring modern ideas, and modernization through next generation infrastructure, and opportunity for Dalits of which caste Ambedkar was one, and the same for all of the 250 million people of Uttar Pradesh, almost the size of America. ...

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A riverside project on the banks of the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad gives the city of 10 million a new look. The project is similar to ones on the Thames in London and Seine in Paris bringing new park space and areas for of public space for a rapidly growing city. Guardian Cities is looking at 15 new cities with population growing to exceed 10 million by 2035- from Tehran, Iran, to Luanda, Mozambique, Hyderabad, India, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Surat, India, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Chengdu, China, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The way this was done was to develop a self financing model. This was the work of architect Bimal Patel who proposed selling 14% of riverfront land of 200 hectares to recover costs. The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation spent 161 million dollars to build new housing for 11,000 displaced families who worked in squatter type housing on the riverbanks as domestic workers, clothes washers. The riverbed had become for decades a dumping ground for city waste. The goals were to provide access for public to the river front and clean up the water with water treatment plants. Bimal Patel calls the project one of three generations as  will take another three years for new water treatment plants. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation bears the cost of about $220 million. The famous Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi lies along this riverfront and it gives this sacred space in India's history, the home of Mahatma Gandhi for many years in the struggle for independence, a healthier, brightened space along the river. ...

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Without hydropower and the clean energy from dams estimates are for 10% more use of burning fossil fuels. China and Brazil have added 12.5 gigawatts of power from hydropower, 50% of this in the world for 2017. Africa added 1.9 gigawatts in this period and 6 countries depend on hydro for 90% of electricity production.  The entry of private capital and the financing from the government in the case of China and India is replacing the role of the World Bank. 

The effect of lack of electricity in India and Africa is underestimated in how it affects people's lives in these regions with lack of water supplies, and lack of electricity severely hurting people in large numbers who are marginalized or forgotten because they never had access to lighting at night before.

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Sabine Kinkartz of the DW.com looks at the way in which Olaf Scholz achieved what was seen as impossible through patience, grit, and hard work in the face of adversity. SPD was seeing poll numbers of as low as 15% in the spring of 2021, just months before the election. Scholz believed in his party's ideas for the renewal of Germany, remained undeterred even after losing an election to lead the SPD to Esken and Walter-Borjans in 2019, when Esken and Walter-Borjans reinforced the idea that the SPD should stand for workers and families, what it always stood for. Scholz was put forward as candidate by Esken and Walter-Borjans in 2021 with conviction. By Spring 2021 it was clear that Scholz had achieved the impossible, getting the conservative Merkel and the CDU, with instincts against borrowing in all situations, to agree to a huge aid package for Germany to fight the pandemic, and a huge aid package for the European Union to fight the pandemic.  That Scholz remained undeterred in his campaign by low poll numbers and went on campaigning on the basis of convictions about what is right for Germans and Germany, comes from deeper convictions from his days growing up in the Hamburg youth wing of Social Democrats in the years following SPD's Wily Brandt and the post war recovery. Germany's most remembered leader after Adenauer, Willy Brandt was leader of the SPD Social Democrats from 1964 to 1987, and chancellor 1969-74. Both Adenauer and Brandt are respected some 50 years later in the world and in Germany. That Germany is going back to this tradition of leadership after the period of the Merkel years when Germany was held back, brings new hope to Europe and the world. In allying with the Greens under a younger generation leaders Scholz saw the promise of an opportunity to tackle problems of climate change and investment in infrastructure together. Both parties see borrowing as essential to invest big in the future. Scholz message to Germans, Europeans and the world is - "Big jobs, but our country is capable of doing them." A message sent out from the US by president Biden, and from Asia by the Indian prime minister. ...

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President Murmu addresses the first session at the new parliament building in New Delhi, India. In the tradition of British parliamentary democracy followed by India the opening speech of parliament is done by the president outlining the government's plans for the coming years. Murmu describes the achievements in providing basic infrastructure, water, cooking gas, rail and transport, food, healthcare to over 1 billion people in the last ten years, and controlling the cost of living. Making new investments in digital and other technologies, in infrastructure development to build an advanced economy under Vikshit Bharat by 2047, the 100th anniversary of independence from British rule. It also reflects women's empowerment and diversity in a democracy in Asia as Murmu was a schoolteacher in Orissa in the northeast and the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is a woman from the Chennai area in the south.

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Caste discrimination laws passed in the California legislature with little opposition. Opponents lobbied the governor to veto the legislation as state law already prohibits discrimination in California. Bharat (India) perspective on caste is for integration of the country and looking back at the lessons of colonization by the British. Caste divided the country and made it easier to colonize for Europeans who extracted capital for the East India Company and later Britain and creating backwardness and poverty. Bharat (India) goal was to create opportunities for integration of tribal communities lower castes Dalits and tribal Santhals into education economic mainstream. A Santhal from Jharkhand/Orissa was made president of India by PM Modi.

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Sir Edwin Lutyens and Baker- design of Central Delhi North and South Block Secreteriat in New Delhi opened in 1931 under the British Empire and were the offices of the prime minister and ministries till 2025. Independent India emerged only 18 years after Lutyens designed the new capital with broad avenues and huge brick structures in symmetrical lines east to west. The shift to Kartavya Enclave, new parliament buildings takes place in 2025 94 years later. North and South Block buildings will be converted into museums, for years they had become hard to operate as government offices with designs from another age.

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Prime minister Modi of India says India has take a step forward for bringing in the people of the Global South into G20 discussions. India, he says, has set a path for getting development to the last mile, the last person in the public who in previous years was left out. This was done through digital infrastructure for bank accounts for hundreds of millions of people, cooking gas stoves for women in rural areas, housing, tap water for every one of India's households, sanitation including toilets, road infrastructure. Much of this was done at low cost with technologies that can be transferred to  a billion people in Africa and 700 million in other parts of Asia such as the Philippines and Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. This is the lasting achievement of the G20 first in Jakarta, Indonesia, and now in New Delhi, 24 months of leadership of Modi and Widodo of Indonesia as partners. It is also why Mr. Modi was in Jakarta just one day before the G20 Summit for ASEAN meeting that brings India into close relations with ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations).  ...

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Surat in India's state of Gujarat is the 14th of 15 cities in Guardian's Megacities series. Other cities from India are Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. This city is at the point where the Tapi river meets the Arabian sea and is prone to flooding. The city is spending about $400 million on projects including live tracking of buses, new water treatment plants, solar and biogas generation, automated LED street lights. Some of the funding comes from India's Smart City Initiative launched in 2015 for 100 cities.

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PM Modi tells parliament in a reply to the president's address yesterday laying out the government's program, that if India operated at the speed of previous governments before 2014 it would take three decades to get to No.3 in the world's economies. Instead India plans to move from the 5th largest economy in the world to No.3 by 2030. He pointed to the investments that the government had made in providing housing, income support, water, on a scale uparalleled in history to bring 250 million people out of poverty. The four pillars of the programs are Nari Shakti women's progress, Yuva Shakti youth progress, Anna Data farmers progress, and strengthening the industrial infrastructure of the country. The prime minister pointed to previous prime ministers having doubts about what India could achieve in the community of nations and compared it to the convictions, the hard work and the single minded determination of the people driving progress today who have no such doubts. ...

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The sinking of two oil tankers in the waters off Mexico led to Mexico joining the war against Japan in 1942. Mexican president Avila Camacho sent the 201st Fighter Squadron as part of the Mexican Expeditionary Force to train in the U.S. By 1945 this force was taking part in the war in the Philippines. Mexico is the only nation from Latin America after Brazil that fought on the Allied side in the war. Brazil sent forces to Italy. 

India made an amazing contribution of 2.5 million soldiers in the war effort as part of the British effort in the second world war.The largest contribution in the war effort came from Indian troops against Japan in the northeastern part of India with Indian Air Force pilots based in Imphal, Manipur. The Indian Army mostly from Indians with British officers played a key role in repelling a 80,000 large Japanese Army in the northeast and Assam. The Indian Army was also active throughout North Africa and in Italy. 

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This report in FR24 provides information on the history of Nagasaki Shipping and Mitsui OSK Lines which owns the ship that is leaking oil near Mauritius and the previous spills in Indian Ocean waters by ships from this company.

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Sheikh Hasina, prime minister of Bangladesh, concluded a visit to India with an agreement for cross border electricity and rail lines. Bangladesh borders the Indian state of West Bengal, and 53 rivers flow into Bangladesh from India making sharing of river waters a major issue, which remain unresolved especially for the Teesta river. Bangladesh signed agreements for $5 billion in loans, including $1 billion for a Russian built nuclear plant and $500 million for arms imports.

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M.r Modi recalls the blessings of Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav given to him with his advice in 2014 when he became prime minister and met Opposition leaders in India. Mulayam Singh was mentored by Ram Manohar Lohia, a socialist educated at Humboldt University in Germany in the 1930's and an early activist in India's Independence struggle under Mohandas Gandhi. PM Modi who has translated many of the ideals of Mr. Lohia into practice with development work for water, sanitation, electricity, gas stoves, housing, for tens of millions, says Mr. Mulayam Singh's advice has stayed with him even today. Without the stability given by leaders such as Lohia and Mulayam Singh India could not have navigated carefully the difficult period of the first 50 years after independence in 1947. For democracy to prevail leadership of this kind is essential. America turned from time to time to leaders such as Lincoln, FDR during its history, India is in a formative period for its democracy as it goes through modernization for a country with 1.2 billion people and many languages.  ...

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Tata's new water filtration device called "Swach," for pure, sells for 999 rupees ($22.50), and is expected to sell 1 million units a year. The head of Tata Chemical's water-purifier business, Sabeel Nandy, says the demand in India is huge, about 250 million households. The goal is to put a purifier in these households to save them from water-borne diseases. The device has similiar potential in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

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This article in The Guardian looks at the role of British authorites in the Empire in the 19th and 20th century that led to famines. Under Lord Lytton in the 1870's and in 1943-44 in Bengal there were famines that were worsened by British policy. Throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th century India's energies were sapped and its poverty deepened by the British effort to extract wealth from India through commercial policy and taxation. During the Napoleonic Wars Britain used its Empire in India to finance the war in a way Napoleon lacked.  .As can be seen in the British Residency park in Lucknow  British authorites focused their efforts on the Treasury of the collapsing Empires in India whom they replaced. The people seeing tax territories shifted from one foreign authority to another stretching over four hundred years with little difference in development needs being met. After a period of self-rule which struggled with development after Independence in 1947, India's largest state Uttar Pradesh with a population of about 300 million, is finally bringing sanitation, water, roads, housing and medicine to all parts of the state. ...

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The Jal Jeevan Mission (tap water for all), Swacch Bharat Mission (Clean India), cooking gas for rural women, digital bank accounts for all, and other projects pushed forward by Mr. Modi are changing life for India's 1.3 billion people. Gati Shakti is a master plan for integrated development of infrastructure by bringing in all ministries of federal and local governments together to work together in an overall plan. Because of the new digital capabilities in 2021, and large technical capabilities India is witnessing development in a way that is unprecedented. Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state in the north with a population of 230 million, is the focus of a major development transformation through infrastructure building with determined effort at the state and federal levels. For the first time Mr. Modi is ensuring projects are part of a master plan for transforming the country making certain projects get done on time, efficiently and without leakage of funds. The best evidence of this delivery of services is the vaccination drive with nearly 1.4 billion people vaccinated. And projects to complete new vaccine development including mRNA vaccine that does not require cold storage, and is easier to provide. ...

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Indian prime minister Modi is the guest of honor on France's national holiday, the Bastille Day July 14, 2023. On this day French revolutionaries freed prisoners of King Louis XVI at the Bastille in Paris. By October this led to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen the first formal document of rights of the people before the American document on these same rights a few years later.

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India agrees to an immediate ceasefire after a call from Pakistan's head of military operations for a ceasefire. The conflict started with attack on tourism that was reviving the Kashmir economy after three decades through a terrorist attack killing 26 tourists in Phalgam, Kashmir on  April 22, 2025 in the mountains near the Pir Panjal range. 24 million tourists visited Kashmir in 2024. Indian response was swift on May 7 early morning hours attacking 18 terrorist camps inside Pakistan occupied Kashmir and inside Pakistan. India called it a act of self-defense to Pakistan sponsored state terrorism going back to 1947. What is different in this brief 4 day war is that India made it economic with efforts at IMF to make terrorism an issue for loans to Pakistan, and ending the Indus Waters Treaty on water sharing. Pakistan economy is struggling with no debt relief from China, making it turn to the IMF, a politically split population with Opposition leader Imran Khan in jail, and continued domination by the military over civilian govenrment. On May 9 drone attacks were launched from Pakistan using Turkish made drones in large numbers on cities and towns in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab. Blackouts were placed in India by May 8 in all cities in the north and in Pakistan. India responded with its own drones and missile attacks on three military airbases as the war broadened to military targets on May 10. US mediated a ceasefire through Saudis and Turkey. Earlier Saudis and Iran were in New Delhi with whom India has good relations to get a ceasefire. Mr. Trump's efforts behind the scenes secured an agreement. VP Vance had cut short an Indian trip in Jaipur on April 22. India and the US are allies in the Indo-Pacific, and India and Russia have decades of friendly relations. China now uses Pakistan as a proxy state, but does not provide the economic aid it needs, for which it has turned to the IMF.    ...