Jairam Ramesh Calls for White Paper on USAID Funding in India; The ‘Model Minority’ Myth of Indians in the US is Busted; Meta Removes Accounts of BJP Legislator T Raja Singh

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

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Snapshot of the day

February 19, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

The $21 million grant by the US Agency for International Development or USAID for ‘voter turnout’ in India – which was cancelled recently by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency – prompted US President Donald Trump to guess that “they were trying to get somebody else elected”. He went on to say:

“We have got to tell the Indian Government. Because when we heard that Russia spent about two thousand dollars in our country, it was a big deal. They took some internet ads for two thousand dollars. This is a total breakthrough.”

Trump’s remarks are likely to serve as fodder to the claims made by some in the BJP that the UPA government before Prime Minister Modi took office had allowed ‘foreign influence’ in India; this even as fact-checkers have shown how deeply USAID was enmeshed in the Modi government’s activities too. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has demanded that New Delhi produce a white paper “detailing USAID’s support to both governmental and non-governmental institutions in India over the decades”.

Meanwhile, Trump has said that it is impossible for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to sell his cars in India and criticised the potential plan to build a factory in India, calling it “unfair” to the United States. Trump, in an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday, specifically called out