Modi Government's Flagship PLI Scheme Comes a Cropper; SC Collegium Transfers Judge, Allahabad HC Bar Fumes; Trump Has Not Been Trump Enough
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 Siddharth Varadarajan for today’s Cable
Snapshot of the day
March 21, 2025
Siddharth Varadarajan
India’s much-hyped US$23 billion (S$30.7 billion) Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme – launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to boost domestic manufacturing – is quietly being abandoned just four years after its inception, Sarita Chaganti Singh and Shivangi Acharya report fpor Reuters. Despite grand promises to turn India into a global manufacturing powerhouse and lure companies away from China, the initiative has turned into yet another policy failure. The government has now decided to let the programme lapse, refusing to expand it beyond the initial 14 sectors or extend production deadlines – even as companies pleaded for more time, according to four government officials. Big-name firms, including Apple supplier Foxconn and Reliance Industries, signed up for the scheme, lured by promised cash incentives if they hit production targets. But the reality? A bureaucratic nightmare. Many companies never managed to start production, while those that did were left waiting for subsidies that never came, according to internal government documents reviewed by Reuters.
India’s Himalayan glaciers – ancient ice reservoirs formed over tens of thousands of years – are vanishing at an alarming rate. The central government has now admitted that “a majority of Himalayan glaciers are observed to be melting or retreating at various rates in different regions.” The implications are dire. As glaciers shrink, water sources for millions of Indians are at risk. The Ministry of Jal Shakti warns, “as glaciers retreat, the long-term reduction in melt-water will likely lead to decreased flow in rivers during the dry seasons.” This threatens the Ganga, Brahmaputra, and Indus – lifelines of the subcontinent. Even Gangotri, the glacier that feeds the sacred Ganga, is retreating fast – 18.8 meters per year. Yet, despite these warnings, India remains unprepared for the looming water crisis, as climate inaction accelerates an irreversible disaster.
A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration not to deport Badar Khan Suri, an Indian scholar studying at Washington’s Georgetown University whose lawyer has said the United States was seeking to remove him after it accused him of harming US foreign policy. The order is to remain in effect until lifted by the court, according to the three-paragraph order by the US District Judge Patricia Giles in Alexandria, Virginia. “Ripping someone from their home and family, stripping them of their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint is a clear attempt by President Trump to silence dissent,” Sophia Gregg, a senior immigrants’ rights attorney at the ACLU of Virginia, said in a statement. “That is patently unconstitutional.”
As the chatter grew louder over the Elon Musk-owned generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok’s responses to users’ political questions and expletive-laden prompts on X, the Union government has told the platform that it might take action against it as well as users posing such questions. Notably, the micro-blogging platform has filed a lawsuit in Karnataka high court against what it called the Indian government’s unlawful content regulation and arbitrary censorship. The Times of India reports that the government has told X that it needs to follow the law of the land on content takedown requests. Meanwhile, no formal communication or notice has been sent to the platform yet. However, The Hindustan Times reports that the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was “in touch” with X over the issue.
Indian onions are losing out the race to the global onion market due to the heavy export duty imposed by the Union government, businessline reports. The government had banned the export of onions in December 2023 fearing domestic shortages. Ahead of Lok Sabha elections, it lifted the ban but imposed a 40% export duty on onions in May 2024. Later in September, ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the government reduced it to 20%, which is where it stands today. The export duty imposed by the government has forced buyers to import onions from other countries, such as China and Pakistan. CT Munshid, Secretary of Kerala Exporters Forum, told businessline that many exporters from Kerala despatch onions to Gulf markets after procuring them from Nashik in Maharashtra. However, the long-standing export duty has made Indian onions lose their competitive edge.
Today marks two years since Irfan Mehraj, an award-winning Kashmiri journalist and researcher, was arrested and imprisoned. Detained by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on March 20, 2023, under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), his continued incarceration has sparked widespread condemnation. As Mehraj languishes in jail, the Journalist Federation Kashmir (JFK) has once again demanded his immediate release. In a statement issued on Thursday, JFK condemned his prolonged detention, stating that “the detention of an outstanding journalist remains one of the most pressing issues affecting media freedom in Kashmir.”
Amid the violence that erupted in Nagpur during Hindutva groups’ protests demanding the removal of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s tomb, several right-wing social media handles shared a picture of cauliflower farms with the caption, “Nagpur violence has a solution.” The widespread posting of “cauliflower farming” as a social media meme carries disturbing implications, as it alludes to the Logain massacre, also known as the “Cauliflower Massacre,” during the 1989 Bhagalpur violence, where hundreds of Muslims were brutally murdered. While there is no explicit mention of the Bhagalpur riots in these posts, the accounts’ history of spreading anti-Muslim narratives, justifying communal violence, and mocking victims suggests a deliberate attempt to evoke the massacre. The use of a smiling emoji reflects not only insensitivity but also a subtle, indirect incitement to violence.
(Credit: X)
“The tomb of Aurangzeb, who died more than 300 years ago, has in recent years become a political flashpoint amid growing calls for its removal by hardline Hindu groups,” says eminent historian and professor at Rutgers University and author of the book titled Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King, Audrey Truschke, in an interview with The New Indian Express who has explored the life, politics and legacy of the much-loathed Indian ruler. “For starters, Emperor Aurangzeb was a real person and the most powerful king in Indian history, whereas the Hindutva-created Aurangzeb is a cartoonish fiction. India’s Hindu nationalists partly inherited their ahistorical ideas about Aurangzeb from British colonialists. They have also added to this imaginary king, over the years, in furtherance of their far-right agenda, especially their loathing of Indian Muslims. They use him as a stand-in for all Indian Muslims, alleging that Aurangzeb’s actions hundreds of years ago – real or imagined – somehow justify modern Hindutva’s anti-Muslim bigotry and violence. In other words, ignorance about the historical Aurangzeb and anti-Muslim hate undergird the Hindu nationalist iconoclastic calls to destroy his tomb.”
Speaking of Aurangzeb, the state which is known for its misplaced priorities.
(Credit: Sandeep Adhwaryu in The Times of India)
The Supreme Court on Thursday rebuked the Uttar Pradesh government for invoking offences under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021 in a case of alleged rape. While hearing a bail plea on Thursday, a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar slammed the state government for invoking the Conversion Act “for nothing”. “Leave it, in fact, I am also surprised, I don’t want to use the word, the state police is also biased…how can it be ? The facts speak for themselves, and you are invoking that Conversion Act for nothing,” said CJI Khanna, reports LiveLaw. The petitioner in the case, who is accused of alleged rape and unlawful conversion and is presently lodged in jail, had earlier submitted in the court that the case was of a consensual relationship and wrong allegations were made against him. “There is nothing in it….you are not being fair in this, the state is not being fair in this….facts speak for themselves. And invoking the conversion act? Uncalled for! absolutely uncalled for,” said CJI Khanna while hearing the bail plea of the petitioner.
The share of Kerala in inward remittances to the country increased to 19.7% in FY24, making the southern state, along with Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu collectively account for over half of India’s total inward remittances. According to data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) March bulletin, Maharashtra topped the list of states with a share of 20.5%, followed by Kerala (19.7%) and Tamil Nadu (10.4%), reports The Financial Express. More than half of the remittances in FY24 are from countries such as the US, the UK, Canada, Singapore and Australia, indicating a shift from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Meanwhile, the share from the United Arab Emirates – the second in the list after the US – has fallen from 26.9% in FY17 to 19.2% in FY24.
Despite US President Donald Trump’s efforts to court the Indian diaspora, their political affiliations have remained largely unchanged, writes The Economist. “Even so, many Indian-Americans are concerned with issues that Mr Trump is unlikely to solve. Fully 82% want stricter gun laws and 77% think climate change is important. At the end of Mr Trump’s first term only 33% approved of his handling of the India-America relationship. Another Carnegie report revealed this month that Indian-Americans rate Mr Biden’s record as better than Mr Trump’s”.
India’s biometrics-based national-identity system was designed to provide a legal identity to those who possessed no papers and to cut bureaucracy. But the consequences of its success are far from efficient, says The Economist looking at the nation’s new obsession with giving its people “unique IDs”.
In the first 10 months of 2024-25, the total amount involved in digital financial frauds reached Rs. 4,245 crore, with 2.4 million incidents of frauds being reported. According to data tabled in the Rajya Sabha by the Ministry of Finance, the figure of Rs. 4,245 crore marks a 67 per cent increase from 2022-23, when the amount was Rs. 2,537 crore in two million cases, reports The Business Standard.
After initially opposing the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab’s demolition drive against drug peddlers in the state, AAP Rajya Sabha MP and former cricketer Harbhajan Singh took a U-turn and said that he is in “complete support” of Punjab police and the government. Singh’s change in stance resulted after party leaders termed his earlier statement as something that was “absolutely uncalled for,” reports The Hindustan Times. “I am not in favour of demolishing houses. Instead, the drug suppliers and smugglers should be arrested, according to the law. They should be sensitised about the ill-effects of drug abuse. It is not right to raze any house, which provides a roof to other family members. I am not aware how these houses were built and with whose money, but there must be some other alternative. This is not the right approach,” Singh had earlier said on Tuesday, adding that instead of demolishing homes, the government should relocate residents before vacating the space.
SC collegium transfers judge, Allahabad HC bar fumes
For the record, the Supreme Court collegium says its decision to transfer Delhi high court judge Yashwant Varma to the Allahabad high court “is independent and separate from the In-house enquiry procedure” launched against him but what is the enquiry all about? For the past 24 hours, reports have swirled around about a large amount of cash having been accidentally discovered at his house when it caught fire while he was away. There is no confirmation of this from anyone on the record. The Hindustan Times reports that a video recording of the purported cash recovery exists and was shared with the Supreme Court collegium. Meanwhile, the Allahabad HC bar association has responded to Justive Verma’s transfer to Allahabad by saying that it is “not [a] trash bin”.
Former professor dismayed by demolition of UP home, but all hope not lost
It has been more than four years since it happened but the pain of having his home and the library inside it demolished by the authorities still lingers with former Urdu professor Ali Ahmed Fatmi. Speaking to Omar Rashid, he denied any wrongdoing and said the authorities served him a demolition notice one evening in March 2021 – which happened to be dated from five days prior – and swiftly tore down his house the next day, a Sunday. The notice also mentioned the serving of a previous notice in January which Fatmi said he never received. He believes the administration was keen to clear the entire plot of land on which his home lay after having deemed a portion of it, owned by gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed, an illegal encroachment. However a recent adverse observation by the Supreme Court on the demolition has given him some hope.
Female joblessness a crisis in J&K
Unemployment is a problem especially severe among Kashmir’s women. The unemployment rate among women aged 15-29 in Jammu and Kashmir has over the last seven years been almost twice the national average. Part of the problem has to do with families balking at sending women to work outside the region, and there is also apprehension among some Kashmiri women of how they will be treated in the rest of India. And with no strong industry in the region, a stagnation in job growth in the services sector is causing a ‘back-migration’ of people from it directly to “primary sectors like agro-based industries or small skill-based jobs like tailoring and handicrafts”, a scholar told Safwat Zargar.
The Long Cable
Has Trump been Trump Enough?
Gautam Bhatia
In the past couple of months since Donald Trump took office, Trump, sadly has not been his true self. He has not been Trump enough. Sure, at his inauguration there were millions of people ‘as far as the eye could see’ even though the ceremony was contained in the small space of the Capitol rotunda. Sure, his major supporters were all there – Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and other tech billionaires. And in these few weeks he has done what was expected of him. He has fired all those who turned against him during the Biden administration and kept not just his white friends and family members, but also some people of colour - the Kash Patels, the Scott Turners and Vivek Ramaswamys. Moreover as a leader of the free world he has liberated America from its responsibilities to the environment, the cold war, world health, world peace and world poverty. Free from the Paris Accord, WHO, USAID, NATO and other niggling acronyms that took up America’s precious time and money.
But, the question remains, has Trump been Trump enough? As he inches towards the 100 day mark, surely he is falling short on his unique working style, his rage and bluster, his big bully diplomacy. For this to change he must begin to act in ways that truly set him apart. Here are five major areas where he could make an immediate impact.
Conflict Resolution: First and foremost is the need for a simultaneous resolution of the Gaza and Ukraine conflict. A statesman chooses out of the box statesman-like solutions. His proposal of turning a war ravaged Gaza into a Mediterranean Riviera may be a good idea, but does it go far enough? By dividing up disputed land among the concerned parties Trump can solve the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian-Ukraine-Russian conflict in one go. Russia today occupies a narrow strip of Ukrainian land similar to the Gaza strip. This large swathe of real estate could become the new home for the displaced Palestinians - far enough away from Israel for them not to feel the constant threat from a once hostile neighbor. As compensation Russia would receive a beautiful outlook on the Mediterranean, a place where they could strategically be in sight of their NATO adversaries. President Zelensky could return to his old life as a comedian, leaving Trump himself with more quality time at Mar-a-Lago.
Immigration: Second is Trump’s exercise on deportation. The sheer cost of returning illegal immigrants back to their country is both logistically tedious, and an expensive outrage for a nation whose only fault has been to make itself attractive to the rest of the world. Should not home governments of immigrants bear the expenses of their return? In fact the whole point of deportation is to make the mother country feel entirely guilty for the missteps of a few ambitious citizens. Why spend American tax dollars on shackling and transporting immigrants on military planes when they could simply be returned to the nearest international border, either Mexico or Canada. Like rats caught at home, merely tossed outside the boundary wall. That would be the true Trump way. Then let India and Columbia and Bangladesh worry about them.
Annexation: Third, and no less critical, is Trump’s view of the annexation of foreign countries. Outside the wide arc of his favourite ‘shithole countries’, which he hasn’t even considered, adding Canada or Greenland to the territorial United States merely adds another small star or two to the American flag. Inconsequential places with a great deal of open unoccupied land, and no real habitation or human presence, Greenland is to the US what the Rann of Kutch is to India – two million square kilometers of waste. And Canada, even larger, sparsely populated with a large ethnic Indian community. Annexing Canada would merely create a bigger deportation situation. Trump’s real prize lies across the Pacific Ocean. To make mainland China the 51st state of the US would not only solve the problem of trade tariffs, but also naturally bring to America advanced technologies in AI, green energy, aerospace, transport etc. Having the largest American state on Russia’s southern border would also keep America’s biggest enemy in line.
Citizenship: Fourth, is the coveted right to American citizenship at birth for children of illegal immigrants - an odd unlawful constitutional liberty that needs immediate change. To split the American pie into such small slices that there isn’t enough to go around, Trump earlier proposed an amendment that would grant citizenship to only those who had as parents at least one white mother and one white father. But this scheme did not go far enough. His new proposal should declare unequivocally that no child born anywhere in the continental United States be granted automatic citizen status. At birth, all new-borns should be transferred to Guantanamo Bay to await interview and application approval; and only those infants that are likely to enhance the future workforce with special skills could then apply for a Green card. A process that would weed out dangerous terrorists and fake asylum seekers among the toddlers.
Travel: Finally, travel bans have been effective ways to protect America from countries that harbour grudges against the US. Trump has successfully targeted citizens of over 40 countries, including a Red list of most dangerous nations like Somalia, Bhutan, Yemen and others whose citizens are barred from even applying for an American visa. 32 other nations on the Orange and Yellow lists also face entrance restrictions. While these pose a threat, the real risks remain unaddressed - a Blue list of truly dangerous places, whose residents have – through nefarious means – already gained entry into the US. These include citizens of California, Massachusetts, Vermont and smaller principalities like Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Manhattan. Harbouring some of the worst kind of freedom loving, pro-reproductive rights, Pinko leftist liberals, travel bans and visa restrictions across state lines need to be strictly enforced, with possible arrests for those who fall in the category of radical thinkers and opinion makers.
Unfortunately in the few weeks that Trump has made his presence felt on the world stage, his attempts at peace negotiations, a few odd trade tariffs, some minor deportations have all been feeble, half-hearted, and have gone wholly unnoticed. The world now is too used to outguessing Trump. Because of his increasingly tolerant approach and liberal values he has been unable to exercise his normally extreme views. A benign and benevolent Trump can hardly be expected to bring the world into line.
Many other problems of global leadership await his decision: a large population of homeless Americans in San Francisco awaiting deportation to Mexico, work on a more natural Tiger Woods-like golf swing, a nuclear Iran with a turbaned leader, a lackluster puff of yellow hair that requires regular grooming, an unfinished Trump Tower in Mumbai, and an inscrutable but friendly despot in Russia, a friendlier one next door in North Korea. Not to mention a tall Slovenian woman who sneaks into the White House occasionally. A combined resolution of all these in one go is possible only if the real Trump begins to play his big bruising unthinking game. Till then, the world remains safe, dull and normal.
Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based architect
Reportedly
With 90,000 school students in Karnataka failing their Hindi exams, questions are finally being raised about the mandatory imposition of Hindi on pupils in the state under the controversial ‘three language formula’.
Deep dive
Allocated Rs 73.68 crore in the revised budget estimates for 2024-25, the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj in Hyderabad was given just Rs 1 lakh in the latest Union budget last month. The move, although not without warning signs, has left the fate of this institution – which has helped shape many a rural entrepreneur – uncertain, reports Ravi Reddy.
Prime number(s): 70 MLAs
What communities do Delhi’s MLAs and ministers hail from? The bulk of the capital’s 70 legislators (43.8%) belong to general castes; they are followed by OBC (24.8%) and Dalit MLAs (18.2%), finds Nishant Ranjan. On a more granular level, he finds that Brahmins dominate both in terms of the proportion of Delhi’s legislators (15.2%) as well as the number of its ministers (12).
Opeds you don’t want to miss
Why didn’t Aurangzeb’s immediately set out to destroy the ancient Buddhist and Hindu shrines at Ellora when he knew the area so well he left instructions for his own burial near there at Khuldabad? This is a question Anirudh Kanisetti asks and addresses in his analysis of the Mughal emperor’s complex relationship to the region and to religion:
'“Surprisingly… amid his general religious inflexibility, a letter from Aurangzeb has this to say about the Kailasanatha temple at Ellora, from the Kalimat-i-Taiyibat: “[It is] one of the wonders of the work of the true transcendent Artisan [God]”. Aurangzeb visited the Sufis there often… Evidently, the site’s sanctified aura could calm the most grim and relentless of warlords: as the Mughal empire began to implode, Aurangzeb’s will requested that “this sinner drenched in sins” should be buried near the tomb of Zayn al-din Shirazi, one of the early Sufis who migrated to Ellora. The Maratha ruler Shahuji, grandson of Shivaji and son of Sambhaji — visited this tomb soon after his release from Mughal captivity around 1708.”
Now that’s something WhatsApp University and Modified Bollywood will never tell you!
Rajat Kathuria sees an opening for India in Trump’s destabilisation of the world economic order, provided it is willing to “explore new export markets and agreements and launch much-needed domestic reform”.
If Devas was a scam, why is Starlink kosher, asks Bharat Bhushan. “The greatest difference between the Antrix-Devas deal and the Starlink deal is the political context. The then UPA government was in a pullback mode in the face of public criticism. The Narendra Modi government faces no such challenges.”
Speaking truth to power, which was the principle followed by editors and journalists alike in Jawaharlal Nehru’s time, is no longer the norm, writes Julio Ribeiro. “What is even more worrying is that newspapers and TV channels are being bought over by business magnates whose commercial interests lie in toeing the government’s line.”
Almost all of the assumptions upon which the government decided its sovereign gold bonds scheme would be a good idea have since ‘come a cropper’, notes Andy Mukherjee; he cautions: “If the current frenzy in market prices proves durable, large losses [for the government] are almost guaranteed.”
An increasingly controlling executive is impeding the Election Commission’s ability to do its job, Zoya Hasan writes.
Sahana Ghosh’s A Thousand Tiny Cuts __ a book on mobility, security, and everyday life at the India-Bangladesh border – shows how cross-border kinship ties can redraw geographies, writes Debdatta Chaudhari.
Listen up
Hosts of the India Briefing podcast Mukulika Banerjee and Pragya Tiwari in this episode “take a step back from the news cycle to reflect on the broader question of democracy and how we can ‘cultivate’ it”. Listen here.
Watch out
Alina Gufran’s maiden novel No Place to Call My Own follows a young woman named Sophia who, the “daughter of a Hindu Arya Samaji mother and Muslim father”, as she “navigates her life as a struggling young writer in Mumbai” at a time when “being from a religious minority in India is becoming more and more stifling”. Gufran speaks to Jahnavi Sen about how stories are a way to ‘remember things we may forget’.
Over and out
If you browse The Hindu’s website you may have seen that there is an option to read its editorials in various Indian languages. Jitendra Kumar, who has translated the newspaper’s editorials to Hindi, writes about how he came to become a translator and what it has been like to translate a genre that varies so widely in topic every day.
Cleo Roberts-Komireddi speaks to the legendary artist Arpita Singh on her life and work. Her first show at the Serpentine Gallery in London has just opened.
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.
Mr. Gautam Bhatia has likened immigrants to rats?!!!