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China high speed rail- how it was done with help of Kawasaki  of Japan, Alstom/Siemens of France/Germany over 2008 to 2025, with borrowed technologies, the largest network of high speed  trains built in 17 years. India is starting the same journey with Japanese assistance and capital. The first leg is the Mumbai to Ahmedabad high speed rail. In a decade a similar rail high speed network will connect all major cities in India. India is working with the same speed as China and will have a new generation technologies high speed rail network by 2035 using Japan's latest technological advances.

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France's 2750 kms of TGV track and 300 TGV trains making 1.8 billion euros profit a month. Double decker trains such as on the Marseille to Paris 750 kms route are popular. These trains are very quiet and efficient. Doubledecker trains are also popular. Bordeaux, Lyon, Lille, Strasbourg can be reached, and Geneva, Brussels, London, Zurich. It is the best high speed network in comfort and efficiency, food, in the world, with large group of international travelers. France did this after the 1973 oil crisis.LGV-Sud-Est was completed in two phases in 1981 and 1983. By contrast Britain faile to build ahigh speed rail line and work has dragged on for years. Germany has a similar but smaller network. China's only started in 2008 built over 17 years to 2025. India's is starting now with the latest Japanese technologies and should be connected major Indian cities by 2030, with the first line Ahmedabad to Mumbai complete in 2027.

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The Mumbai Ahmedabad Bullet Train project is shown here on the Rail Minister Ashwani Vaishnav site in You Tube Video. Rapid buildup is progressing use new technological methods with Japanese help. The first undersea rail tunnel of this kind under Thane Creek for 21 kilometres on the Mumbai side. The 508 kilometer distance cuts travel time between two major commercial cities in western India from 7 to 2 hours. It will then be replicated after completion in 2027 and 2029 (final), across other Indian cities north to south east to west. PM Modi has emphasized this in vist to Surat last week talking to engineering personnel that the important aspect is what can be learnt from this section of bullet train engineering that can be replicated or improved across many Indian cities, over a land mass almost the size of European Union (3.3 million square kms India to 4.3 million EU). Technology: India uses the Japanese Shinkansen E10 Series. In comparison Kawasaki Steel technology of an earlier generation used for China's earlier bullet trains and redeveloped for the newest CR450. Germany uses ICE 3 neo of Siemens, France 5th generation TGV M Avelia Horizon of Alstom. Stations- Mumbai (Bandra-Kurla), Thane, Virar, Boisar on Maharashtra side and on Gujarat side Vapi, Bilimora, Bharuch, Surat, Vadodara, Anand, Ahmedabad and Sabarmati Cost: $17 billion through a loan from JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency. A key achievement stemming from close relationship of PM Shinzo Abe 2012-2020 and Modi of India starting when Modi was CM of Gujarat. Significance:  Just as it did for China this will dispel the notion that Indians could not borrow technologies and capital and with its own engineering capabilities build high speed rail infrastructure across a terrain the size of EU. The naysayers are both in India as they were with China in 2000 period and in US/Europe. It requires a special determination, persistence, vision and leadership as happened in Japan in 1960's, in China in 2000's, and India by 2030, to show what can be done to their people oppressed by the sense that failures of the past could not be overcome. Note that it was Japan that stepped up its help to setup the bullet train system in China by 2004. Japan's Hideo Shima and Shinji Sogo were the chief engineers for Japan's first bullet train in 1964, invented by Japan as first in the world to do this.  Next bullet trains and travel time cut to: Ahmedabad to New Delhi through Jaipur Mumbai- Pune will be a mountain tunneling exercize as much of it goes through mountainous terrain. Cut travel to 45 minutes. Pune to Hyderabad Hyderabad to Bangalore cut travel to 2 hours Bangalore to Chennai or Madras cut travel to 3 hours  (Shanghai has always remained Shanghai so has Ahmedabad, its all about what can be done not names) Chennai  to Bangalore cut travel time to 1 hour and 13 minutes Delhi to Varanasi Varanasi to Siliguri through Patna From the Alps to the North Sea in the EU, in India bullet trains can take one from Indian Ocean at Sri Lanka to the Himalayan mountains terrain and Nepal. ...

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Bev Craig, leader of Manchester City Council,  running to succeed Andy Burnham as mayor of Manchester region of two million people.  She also held the post of Economy, Business and Inclusive Growth leader for Greater Manchester Authority, and was the person who assisted Burnham in his work. Election is next Thursday July 30, 2026. Craig says the Reform UK and Greens vote has peaked. She says she has been compared to Burnham which is not a fair comparison given that this will be her first day in office and his last when she is elected, advice she got from Richard Leese, her predecessor in Manchester at the job for 25 years.  Bev Craig supports a 2% levy on assets over 10 million pounds and modified capital gains tax. Along with other mayors Bev supports investing in a revised version of HS2 train line connecting Manchester with Birmingham. This would boost growth in the region in Britain's largest northern cities outside London in the southeast. The Conservative government made a mistake in cancelling the project. This is similar to the delays on the bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad which accelerated after Modi's efforts in recent years and is now almost complete. Once this first leg is built India can look forward to bullet trains connecting all major cities, such is the potential of such investments, propelling India into a different level similar to work done in high speed rail in China. It is the lack of Tories to dream big for Britain and do this on a model of established practice Modi's in Gujarat, Burnham's in Manchester, that is the great big hope for Britain. This calls for relentless effort, hard work night and day, overcoming every obstacle on the way, and continuously keeping the goal upfront of reindustrialization of Britain. India can learn a lot from the Industrial Revolution and science and technology advances Britain created, and Britain can learn from the efforts underway in India in 2026 for Vikshit Bharat by 2047. ...

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This Economic Times report provides details about the  remaining aspects of the Indian Mumbai Ahmedabad bullet train project using Japanese technology. The project is being expedited with the federal and state governments completing land acquisition and covering extra costs of the project. This was one of the projects coming out of meetings and close collaboration .between Modi and Shinzo Abe of Japan. The cost estimated at 1.1 lakh crore is financed for 81% of cost by Japan's JICA through along term loan. Some of the engineering work may be completed by Indian engineering firms to reduce the cost. Delays mean the project cost will increase and some of the cost can be adjusted by doing some of the work through Indian firms under Make in India. JICA or Japan International Cooperation Agency is a government agency that provides aid for development projects and technical cooperation with other countries. It is part of the official development assistance of Japan which was $16.1 billion in 2020, according to OECD. ...

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PM Modi inaugurates India's first Vande Bharat Express in Ahmedabad. New Metro in Ahmedabad and the Express trains increase multi-modal connectivity in Gujarat. Modi says the Vande Bharat train operates quietly with sound that is one hundredth of the sound that is heard on modern aircraft. A new rail station is planned for Ahmedabad and twin city arrangement with Gandhinagar. Modi says the transport infrastructure in Ahmedabad would be taken to the whole nation. He says Ahmedabadis have calculated the cost of travel by other transport including buses, and found the value that is in travel by Metro with ease, speed and time saved. And found that this beats transport by any other way for seamless connectivity and ease of use. Modi says he had a vision of such service when a global connectivity committee visited Ahmedabad when he was chief minister. Yet it was only in the last 8 years that he having moved to the federal government was able to get both federal and state funding to develop the new rail and Metro services in Gujarat using new technologies and experience. ...

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Indian Railways plans to modernize 199 railway stations in its first phase including new stations for Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Delhi to be completed 2-3 years.

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75 years after independence a trustee of the Sabarmati Ashram, Mr. Kartikeya Sarabhai, asks visiting British prime minister Boris Johnson for help in building the Gandhi archives. Most of the repository of documents held by the Sabarmati Ashram Trust are from Mohandas Gandhi's struggle for Swaraj in India, very little is from Britain such as documents in the British parliamentary and Foreign Office archives, and other British archives. This would help the Ashram Museum to give a more complete picture of what happened during the struggle for Swaraj or self-rule. That this request is being made only now is because of the neglect into which both Britain and India have left the state of trade, economic and cultural relations with India. The visit of Mr. Modi to the UK for the Glasgow summit and Mr. Johnson's visit to Gandhi Ashram on the Sabarmati river, comes from a realization that a lot needs to be done to catch up. The sheer enthusiasm of Mr. Johnson shows how significantly Britain, Europe and the US have changed in their understanding of the aspirations and hopes of the Indian people, as one people with aspirations for development and modernization. ...

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After 14 years carrying 1 billion passengers the Dreamliner 787 crash in Ahmedabad 2025 is the first major incident. The flaps not unfolding is a suspected cause of the incident, in addition to the engines losing thrust, with the possibility of birds in the vicinity crashing into the plane. Ahmedabad area is known for the huge number of birds.

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Jasprit Bumrah's careful bowling, Axar Patel taking great catches, and batting of Samson, Ishan and Abhishek, take India to a 96 run win over New Zealand at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Samson was super consistent in his batting hitting 89 runs twice and hitting a similar score against England, all in the last 3 crucial games India played. For this he ends up Player of the T20 World Cup and Bumrah the Player of the Final aginst New Zealand. New Zealand's batter Allen could not find his form in the Final and the duo of Siffert and Allen that beat South Africa by setting up an opening century partnership failed to find any traction on the pitch at Ahmedabad and were out early. 

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Patrick Barta's exceptional reporing on Manek Chowk, a busy industrial and commercial centre of Ahmedabad. Manek Chowk, the public market in Ahmedabad, India, where street vendors find jobs in the informal economy. The informal economy provides most of the jobs in countries like India and Brazil. They could be street vendors, rickshaw drivers, workers doing textile stitching work and being paid by the piece, and so on. Ahmedabad has 55,000 richshaw drivers, 70,000 street vendors, 70,000 construction workers, and 45,000 rovish trash collectors and recyclers. Most of the city's once prominent textile mills have vanished or are rotting. If Ahmedabad makes it through this difficult period with job losses in India, its because of a thriving local informal economy. It may not provide what a regular job provides, but it helps people feed their families and they are happy to make it through the tough times. And even in the better times the jobs just do not exist in the proportion necessary in countries like India and Brazil. Consider this. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of formal jobs in India stayed flat at about 35 million, while informal jobs grew 17% to 423 million, according to the Indian government. These are the most recent years for which information is available. Economists say the creation of formal jobs may have picked up after 2005, but not by much. The situation is like this all over much of Africa, Asia and Latin America. And as companies layoff formal workers in favor of cheaper employees part-time and without benefits, the importance of the informal economy grows. In Ahmedabad the rights of these people are protected in the case of women by the Self Employed Women's Association of India, which numbers 1 million people across India....

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Modi BJP Win in West Bengal 2026- full speech on the future of Bengal, India, Indian democracy, India's modernization - May 4, 2026. For the first time most of India is now being led by state and federal governments that are aligned for rapid modernization, rapid development of infrastructure, industry and the economy. Madras, Bombay, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Vizag, Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar, Delhi, Noida, Bhopal, Dehra Dun, Srinagar,most of India's cities and urban areas, and the rural heartland of India all aligned for accelerated development under a Master Plan for the economy for the next two decades. This will close the gap with China to make India the third largest economy in the world, and a key support for the United States and the European Union. Seen through this lens many of todays reports and concerns fade into significance. The US and the European Union are not alone- they have the support of 2 billion people of India, and Indonesia and adjoining regions.

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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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Considering the 15 comments on the Penn Station Rebuild the public has lost interest in forever building project for the dinghy building that is the home of transportation in New York City. The latest is that the federal government has taken over at the urging of NY Governor Kathy Hochul who persuaded DJT to do it. This means state funds of $1.3 billion will be saved and DJT asserted federal authority over the project with Amtrak as owner of the Penn Station planning this out. Construction will begin in 18 months at a cost of $7 billion. The previous estimate was $6 billion. A similar situation is seen for the dilapidated bridge in Baltimore that took years to get the project off the ground as one plan was ditched for another 3 years after the bridge disaster. At this rate the bullet train projects between Ahmedabad and Mumbai will be repeated across many Indian cities before Penn Station is rebuilt, before Baltimore Bridge is rebuilt.

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A look at Bhupendra Patel of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation who is Modi's choice for new chief minister of Gujarat. People who have known him describe their experience in this Indian Express report of the choice. This is the first time someone from the old pols of Ahmedabad is now CM of Gujarat state, Modi's home state. Patel is from the old Dhantura Pol and is familiar with Dariapur, parts of the old walled city of Ahmedabad. Naranpura, Memnagar, different parts of Ahmedabad come up in a discussion of Patel. He has a diploma in civil engineering from Ahmedabad's Government Technical College, where his father was principal, and has worked in setting up building projects in the city for most of his life.  People who have known him describe him as calm and unruffled under pressure. He is seen as hard working and someone who values delivery on time. As head of Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority Patel was known to have his committee review projects to ensure 99% on time delivery, which is important to Modi, in addition to being people conscious and sensitive to issues facing people. This one time firecracker shop vendor in Dariapur  ran a tiffin service for covid patients during the surge in 2020.  ...

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Merz visit to India to strengthen trade defense ties Jan 2026. Oter areas of cooperation are digital technology and renewable energy. Merz attends the Kite Festival in Ahmedabad, Gujarat state, and the Sabarmati Ashram of Gandhiji.

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Merz at ease at Gandhiji's Sabarmati Ashram with Modi in Ahmedabad, India. An historic opportunity for the European Union and India, two of the world's great civilizations and with 2 billion people taking the first step to modernize the German and Indian economy by 2037 and 2047. 

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The prime ministers of Australia and India at the fourth cricket Test in Ahmedabad's cricket stadium. Modi interacts with India's cricket team.

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By 2024 Dholera Special Investment Region airport and the expressway linking Ahmedabad to Dholera will be operational, says India's Union Minister Piyush Goyal. Developed from scratch on vast stretches of land in the Gulf of Khambat 100 kilometres from Ahmedabad it is expected to be India's best manufacturing zone,  comparable or better than any manufacturing zone in China. It is part of the industrial effort to build world class manufacturing zones in India that fit in with the shift of manufacturing from China as part of the redesign of world supply chains to avoid overconcentration in any one part of the world.

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Mr. Trump's 2 day visit to India marks the beginning of a period with closer trade and defense relations. Mr. Trump visited Ahmedabad, Gujarat, including the Sabarmati Ashram of Mohandas Gandhi. He also visited the Taj Mahal in Agra. Mr. Trump is popular in India and received a rock star reception at the Sardar Vallabhbhai stadium in Ahmedabad, the largest cricket stadium in the world.

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England's batsman Alastair Cook talks about the pitch in the Third Test at Ahmedabad. He says he would have had considerable difficulty facing the spin bowlers on that pitch in Ahmedabad. With a spinner in his groove, and men all around the bat, Cook says its hard to even get off the mark, with the noise from the stadium and constant scrutiny of the batsman's technique.