Economic Survey Says Growth in 2025-26 Between 6.3 Percent to 6.8 Percent; Hindu Mahasabha ‘Honours’ Godse on Gandhi Death Anniversary; Making Sense of Donald Trump
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable
Snapshot of the day
January 31, 2025
Sidharth Bhatia
Growth in the fiscal year beginning in April will likely range between 6.3% and 6.8%, the Economic Survey has forecast. And in order for India to become developed by 2047, the economy will need to grow by “around 8% at constant prices, on average, for about a decade or two”, it notes. In order for India to “reinforce” its medium-term potential for growth, there need to be “grassroots-level structural reforms and deregulation”. Chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran has also said that food inflation in the final quarter of the ongoing fiscal “is likely to soften … with the seasonal easing of vegetable prices and kharif harvest arrivals” but that there are still risks in the form of poor weather and increases in international commodity prices.
And the risk of poor weather is no distant one: the IMD has said that warmer-than-usual weather next month could be a bad thing for certain winter crops. Rajendra Jadhav quotes the department’s chief as saying that “below normal rainfall, along with higher temperatures over the plains of northwest India, would have a significant adverse impact on standing crops like wheat at flowering and grain filling stages”.
Prime Minister Modi today said ahead of the budget’s presentation that he “prays to mother Lakshmi that her distinguished blessings will be with every poor and middle-class community in the country”. Towards the end of his address today he also said that this session of parliament was perhaps the first in ten years where there have been no “foreign sparks” a day or two ahead of it. “There has been an overseas effort to create fires,” Modi claimed, adding that there was “no shortage here of people to fan [the flames]”.
Can the upcoming budget give India a competitive edge as Trump pushes for more tariffs and China celebrates DeepSeek’s success? Menaka Doshi writes on Budget priorities. “The US is using the deregulation carrot and tariff stick to remake its economy. China, after flexing manufacturing muscle for two decades is now also showcasing frugal AI innovation. So, what’s India’s pitch to the world? If the budget, due tomorrow doesn’t answer that question, the world’s most populous country risks being stuck with middling growth of 6.4%. It’s already behind on its own target to be a $5 trillion economy by 2025.”
That the death toll of the Kumbh stampede was released close to 15 hours after the tragedy took place seems to be an “official effort to cover up damage at an event that holds significance to the fortunes of political leaders” as per analysts, say Hari Kumar and Mujib Mashal. They quote Vikram Singh, a former Uttar Pradesh police chief, as saying that while the delay is in a way understandable because officials would have been busy helping the injured, the sheer extent of the delay just fed rumours about the number of fatalities.
Swami Avimukteshwaranand of Joshimath, the shankaracharya of the Jyotish Peeth in Uttarakhand, has faulted Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath for keeping people in the dark about the stampede. He said it is Hindu custom to fast when people die on occasions such as this but that the CM had initially implied that things were fine.
Two kilometres from the site of the stampede is a place called Jhusi, along the Ganga’s northern bank, and Abhinav Pandey reports citing official sources and eyewitnesses that here a second stampede took place hours after the first – the aforementioned officials said the death toll of 30 includes people who lost their lives at Jhusi and that this second crowd crush was not spoken about to prevent panic.
Meanwhile...
There is a huge, secretive complex being built near Beijing and some military analysts believe it is to serve as a wartime command centre, reports the Financial Times. The paper, which says the construction site is four kilometres across and ten times the size of the Pentagon, quotes a former US intelligence official as saying that “Chinese leaders may judge that the new facility will enable greater security against US ‘bunker buster’ munitions and even against nuclear weapons.” One China researcher said: “This fortress only serves one purpose, which is to act as a doomsday bunker for China’s increasingly sophisticated and capable military.” But some Taiwanese sources of FT said the site appeared unsuitable for underground bunkers.
In Haryana’s Pranpura, there is some anger surrounding the fate of fellow village native Vikash Yadav, the former intelligence officer whom the US government has accused of orchestrating a plot to kill the pro-Khalistan American citizen Gurpatwant Pannun. Ankit Raj, Shruti Sharma and Ashutosh Bhardwaj find that some villagers feel that an inquiry commission’s apparent decision to recommend legal action against Yadav constitutes an injustice against him. One villager said that if Yadav is arrested in the case, “there will be a revolt”. Another said of the lack of media coverage following news of the inquiry commission’s decision: “They claim that Modi’s name resonates all over the world … What happened now? Is he afraid of America?”
Rohit Sharma will not need to travel from the UAE to Pakistan for an opening ceremony to the Champions’ Trophy, Vijay Tagore reports. He quotes a well-placed source as saying: “An opening ceremony was never announced either by the ICC or the PCB [Pakistan Cricket Board]."
Between August and December last year there were 174 incidents where Bangladesh’s religious minorities were targeted, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council said yesterday. The group also accused the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government of using the state apparatus to discriminate against minorities. It criticised the recommendation by the country’s constitution reform commission to remove ‘secularism’ from the constitution’s fundamental principles, and called for the release of controversial Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, who is jailed on sedition charges, Julhas Alam reports. A spokesman for the interim government retorted that the Unity Council “has a history of hugely exaggerating the figures of the communal violence victims”.
Internal surveys by the AAP and the BJP indicate that in 27 of poll-bound Delhi’s 50 assembly seats, over half of voters are Purvanchalis (that is, people from eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and parts of Jharkhand). Ishita Mishra reports on how the political parties campaigning in Delhi have attempted to appeal to Purvanchali sentiments – or at times to divert attention away from them – and what Purvanchali voters themselves feel ahead of elections.
On the first day of the Jaipur Literature Festival, an official of the event “barged into” PTI’s interview with Palestinian envoy to India Abed Elzareg Abu Jazer, “pushed aside a woman journalist” and ended the interview, the news agency reports. It adds that the official said the diplomat was at the festival not as a speaker but as a ‘friend of the festival’, and that the interview had not been greenlit by the festival’s PR team. Abu Jazer was later quoted as saying:
“I am here as a guest and I have always liked this festival. The person was very rude and impolite to cut the interview. It does nothing to me as a diplomat but it raises questions about JLF's treatment of the media.”
Hindu Mahasabha honours Nathuram Godse on MK Gandhi’s death anniversary
On Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha organised a ceremony honouring Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Gandhi in 1948. Led by Pandit Ashok Sharma, a prominent Mahasabha leader at ‘Amar Martyr Nathuram Godse Nana Apte Dham’, the gathering involved traditional rituals including a havan puja and a recital of the Hanuman Chalisa. The ceremony reportedly aimed at “removing the soul of Karamchand Gandhi” and eliminating “Gandhism” from India. Sharma also called for the Indian government to revoke Gandhi’s title as the ‘Father of the Nation.’ The event concluded with an announcement to honour Godse’s family, drawing significant criticism.
As both scammers and scammees, Indians fall victim to cyber-fraud centres in SE Asia
Forty-five percent of cyber-scam complaints registered in India between January and September last year had to do with scams originating from Southeast Asia, as per official data. Indians are among those who target people back home from scam centres in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia – where there is some state involvement and which have sought English-speaking marks in recent years – to where they are trafficked under the pretext of landing comfortable jobs. In the first of a series of reports on this topic, Ayush Tiwari reports on how these scam centres came to be, how its agents take advantage of Indians and force them into working as scammers, New Delhi’s diplomatic calculations in dealing with this problem, and more.
Spectre of Sikkim lake-burst rerun: study warns of another disaster
Sikkim’s South Lhonak Lake, responsible for a catastrophic glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in October 2023, remains a ticking time bomb. A study published in Science has confirmed that the lake is still highly vulnerable, raising fears of another disaster. The previous flood unleashed 20,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of water, devastating the Teesta valley and killing 55 people. Despite this tragedy, authorities have failed to implement adequate early warning systems or mitigation measures. Scientists, led by IIT Bhubaneswar’s Ashim Sattar, highlight how intense rainfall triggered the previous landslide, dumping 14.7 million cubic meters of debris into the lake. Yet, the region remains exposed to another GLOF. Will the government act before it is too late?
The Long Cable
Making sense of President Donald J Trump, the MAGA Man
Partha S Ghosh
Let me begin with my conclusion. There is little new in Donald Trump’s slogans such as ‘America First’ or ‘Make America Great Again (MAGA)’ barring their high decibel counts. Any reading of America’s history ever since the First World War (1914-19), when America for the first time transformed itself from a debtor nation to a creditor nation, would show that every American president ever since has sponsored these goals. Trump’s brashness is just indicative of the time we live in. Look at the changes in the pattern of our news gathering, news dissemination and news consumption. Everything has to be quick, direct and often loutish. Otherwise who could imagine only a few years ago that such oxymoronic concepts like ‘fake news’ or ‘post-truth’ would gain so much currency?
If political analysts find Donald Trump rather unexciting it is because he is brazenly transparent. He leaves little room for their interpretative genius to bloom. Both in his campaign speeches and later in his inaugural address, Trump laid bare his entire policy framework for the next four years including the ones most other presidents would preserve for the appropriate occasion to unfold. So much so that Trump has unabashedly presented his multi-billionaire chum Elon Reeve Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, as his campaign funder and economic adviser. The message was clear for the world leaders what Trump was up to.
However, for those who are familiar with American history, Trump represents everything that is central to America’s one-upmanship, namely, its territorial expansionism, white supremacism, and a brash assertion of power to maintain America’s sense of being the Numero Uno. Germane to all this is the capitalism of America which is rooted in America’s Westward Expansion the offshoot of which is the so-called ‘Americanism’. But Trump went a step further. With due reverence to his conservative Christian constituency he is negatively disposed against abortion, LGBTQ rights, etc. His decision to discontinue the system of citizenship by birth may be seen as a part of this package.
For the purposes of this essay it may be instructive to look at the second Presidency of Stephen Grover Cleveland (1893-97) for the simple reason that he is the only other president before Trump who had the distinction of becoming president twice with a gap of four years in-between. Like Trump who won the vote in 2016, lost it in 2020, and then again won in 2024, Cleveland had also won the 1884 vote, lost it in 1888, and then won it back in 1892. Interestingly their platforms were comparable when they finally won.
Cleveland and Trump both had huge funding from big corporates. If Cleveland had the backing of top-notch bankers and ranchers Trump had that from Musk and others. Also, to boost his mass base Cleveland had identified himself with the cause of the Cuban nationalists against their colonial master Spain (it ultimately led to the Spanish-American War of 1898 which ended the Spanish colonial rule in the Americas). Trump too tried to fan American nationalism by calling for the incorporation of Canada into the United States of America as its 51st state, by demanding the control of the Panama Canal, and by declaring he would buy the self-governing Greenland from the Kingdom of Denmark.
It is not possible in this limited space to compress the entire history of America. But by referring to some milestones in American history it is possible to show that America has shown no compunction to take any step, moral or immoral, whenever it has sensed threats to its numero uno status in the world. Therefore to protect its corporate interests America will do everything under the sun. For that even if its commitment to democracy at home or abroad has to be compromised, let it be so. The first sign of this was evidenced during the First World War about which we have mentioned earlier.
When the First World War was midway the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia in 1917. It rattled the American ruling class. Known as the Red Scare it was the first fear articulation at the political level to tell the Americans at large that their Americanism was in danger from an alien virus called Communism. The withdrawal of Bolshevik Russia from the War did not assuage the American anxiety for after all the US fear was not territorial, it was ideological. Two contingents of the US army consisting of 12,000 men were despatched to Russia as part of an Allied Intervention in Russia. They remained there even after the war ended in 1919. The State Department told the Congress: ‘All these operations were to offset effects of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.’
Later, the establishment of a Communist regime in China in 1949 scared the Americans much more because by that time the Cold War had become hot. Soon it degenerated into what is known as McCarthyism which till today is considered to be the darkest chapter of American democracy. A veritable reign of terror prevailed in which every American who even vaguely questioned this anti-Communist madness was branded as anti-American, and hence a traitor (does it make a small bell ring in your mind in today’s India?).
Long after the dust of McCarthyism had settled, Louis J. Halle, a noted author and former member of the State Department policy planning staff, wrote in the New York Times Magazine of June 6, 1971: ‘There were those among us who knew the historical, geographical and strategic circumstances that, in the long run, made for anything but conflict between Mao and Moscow. They were intimidated into silence, or if they tried to speak out their careers and reputations were ruined by accusations of treason.’ In just twenty years after McCarthyism, President Richard Nixon was found shaking hands with Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972.
American policy has shuttled from one end to another ever since though its core capitalist value has remained in place whether it was the Vietnam War, the 9/11 tragedy, the wars in West Asia, etc. Viewed from the way America handled these crises President Trump would not appear so exceptional. ‘America first’ has been writ large all through at the core of which is the bi-partisan white American thought. It mattered little whether it was a Republican or Democratic rule or whether it was a non-white president like Barack Obama.
Trump made it a huge talking point that the uncontrolled influx of Latinos and Indians were not only poaching America’s blue collar job markets but they were also challenging the nation’s traditional elite supremacy epitomized by its WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) domination. Without saying so explicitly the message was sent across large sections of White Americans that they must not ignore the recent trends when a half-Black-half Muslim had become the president while another half-Black-half-Indian female had even dared to grab the presidency just within the span of a decade.
It is in order that we say a word on the question of Trump’s threats to discontinue the system of born-on-American-soil citizenship and to restrict the growing number of unauthorised migrants from some South American countries and India. Without sounding parochial one must note that two pre-eminent Indian leaders, Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, who otherwise are most vocal against unauthorised Bangladeshis in India (no data available on their numbers), have never expressed their concern over the well organised rackets that flourish in their home state Gujarat to smuggle out Indians (mostly Gujaratis) to America through fraudulent routes. Earlier these rackets were mostly Punjab based. A country which can produce a popular Shahrukh Khan Starrer Dunki (2023) cannot feign ignorance about this thriving illegal business.
With regard to the H-1B Visa controversy which is seemingly most disturbing to many Indians studying and working in America it is imaginable that the dust will settle in due course because the type of jobs these Indians do, particularly in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) fields, are not the ones who threaten the American job seekers which Trump knows well. The solution to the issue is cool bilateral diplomacy, not personalised and over publicised summit diplomacy. It holds no water which is argued at the popular levels that America is a nation of immigrants and hence it has no business to close its doors to new entrants.
In conclusion it may be confessed that while writing this essay my thoughts were often distracted by Narendra Modi. His ‘Abki baar Trump sarkar’ and ‘Howdy Modi’ apart, which should never have happened as per international norms, there are many uncanny similarities between the two leaders. Trump’s MAGA and Modi’s amrit kaal are quite identical. Also, just like the rise of Modi resulted in the social and political polarisation in India so also Trump’s rise led to similar divisions in American society which the attack on the Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 quite clearly indicated. It is not surprising, therefore, that Trump would become a darling of the Indian right. Some Indians even did havans (a Hindu fire ritual) to pray for a Trump win.
Mercifully, to say in a lighter vein, Modi was not invited for the inaugural ceremony of Trump. Had it happened, the Indian media would have gone crazy to over-report on the Modi-Trump bonhomie. But what is really needed is a mutually beneficial India-US relationship devoid of theatrics.
(Partha S. Ghosh is a retired professor of South Asian studies at JNU.)
Reportedly
On eve of every budget one or two most pressing issues of the day get universal attention and also figure in the budget speech prominently. What is that one issue on which there is unanimity that the Modi government will have to address one way or another. It is the most hotly discussed issue of putting some more disposable income in the hands of the middle class which has got no relief under the Modi regime. Buzz is that those with income ranging between Rs 8 lakh to Rs 18 lakh a year will get to pay lower income tax. There is also talk that the Centre may decide to forego Rs 3 to Rs 5 of excise duty cum cess per litre which could also put over Rs 50,000 crore in the hands of the people.
Without boosting consumption of the bottom 80% population no economic recovery is possible. This reality has fully dawned.
Deep dive
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS), one of the world’s largest household surveys, was launched in 1992 and serves as a key source for tracking demographic and health indicators across India’s states and districts. In this piece, Nandlal Mishra and Pramit Bhattacharya explore the history of the NFHS, including its evolving scope and structure, methodology, applications, and debates surrounding its data quality.
Prime number: <10%
India’s pollution control boards are in shambles, with less than 10% of positions filled. With deadlines looming, authorities remain indifferent, leaving understaffed agencies powerless against industrial violators.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
What Zia did to the Pakistan Army should be a salutary lesson for the Indian military about a path it should not traverse on, unless the wish is to wreck itself. However the signs from the top brass in New India are worrying, writes Sushant Singh. “Spewing etymology, infusing religiosity in the name of tradition, studying mythological battles as military strategy and defending ideological frontiers — where have we seen this before? After witnessing how the journey went in Pakistan, the only words that come to mind are what Zia told Lieutenant-General Faiz Ali Chishti, who pulled off the coup d’etat in 1977: “Murshid, marwa na dena.””
Of what happened at the Kumbh Mela on Wednesday, Harish Khare writes that faith “in all its elaborateness is being deployed to distract the gullible Hindu from asking inconvenient questions about the emergence of an entrenched oligarchy, on the one hand, and the persistence of mass deprivations, on the other.”
India has a choice between two global governance models, one represented by the US and the other by China and Russia, says Pravin Sawhney. New Delhi could “integrate wholeheartedly with the Global South institutions” and cooperate with China and Russia, or it could “continue riding the bumpy US bandwagon in the hope that the world recognises India as a major power, and its visionless foreign policy as strategic autonomy”.
“If the Congress uses the radio, etc., like this for its own propaganda, it is bound to bring about dictatorship in the end.” These prophetic words were said by M K Gandhi and these apprehensions have materialised in Modi’s India, writes SN Sahu.
The Congress does not seem to appreciate the significance of large religious gatherings like the Kumbh Mela, writes Bharat Bhushan. Politics was built into the event right from the beginning. It will be continued to be used for political ends.
Listen up
Last month China approved another project of an unfathomable scale: the world’s largest hydropower dam in Tibet, which will generate three times more power than the Three Gorges Dam, enough to meet the annual needs of over 300 million people, the equivalent of the entire US population. BBC Sounds has this podcast examining “how important hydropower is for China’s economy, whether it will meet its climate goals and whether this new dam is a “safe project that prioritises ecological protection” as China claims.” Importantly, it looks at “why some in neighbouring countries have concerns”, including India.
Watch out
For years, India’s thriving economy sparked optimism that the nation had entered a new phase of rapid growth. However, a deepening slowdown is now raising concerns that the past three years of expansion were merely a temporary surge rather than the beginning of a lasting trend. Bloomberg’s Haslinda Amin reports on India’s economic slowdown. Watch here.
Over and out
A travelling exhibition shows that the Irish soldiers and administrators who came to India to serve the British Raj were ostracised in Ireland when they returned for taking the ‘King’s shilling’. Many were not accepted by either side, that is even the British, though one, Arthur Wellesley, became the prime minister who fought Tipu Sultan and in the Napoleanic wars.
A book on Mumbai’s Art Deco structures shows how the period of the 1930s and ‘40s, when many residential and commercial and cinemas were built, also brought with them a modern lifestyle of restaurants, jazz and much more.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.