Modi’s own record of ‘Raincoat Bathing’

• Narendra Modi is truly a street-smart politician. His ‘rain coat in a shower’ metaphor for Manmohan Singh is accurate description of Manmohan Singh’s ten-year long prime ministership. He allowed scams like 2G spectrum, coal block allocations and the Commonwealth Games loot to happen right under his nose without any direct charge of personal corruption sticking to him. His staunchest critics could not call him a corrupt prime minister. 
• Congressmen failed to point out how Modi himself has been a master at the art of being seen as clean, like a lotus, while remaining immersed neck deep in muck. 
• For 14 years Modi as Gujarat chief minister held the home portfolio. While his deputy minister of state for home, Amit Shah, was arrested, jailed and then externed for a spate of extra-judicial killings, the chain of evidence never travelled beyond Shah. As Shah and his loyalist police officers did time in jail, Modi reaped a rich political harvest by polarising society using these killings. His other ministerial colleague Mayaben Kodnani was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the Naroda Patiya massacre. 
• Babu Bajrangi, who killed women and children in Patiya and later, after being released on bail, ruled the streets of Ahmedabad for several years, kidnapping girls, blocking the release of films and terrorising minorities, all along openly flaunted his proximity with the chief minister. In 2012, he was convicted and sentenced to life based on eye-witness accounts and his own confession on a spy-camera, but his statement indicting Modi was dismissed as hearsay. 
• As chief minister, Modi presided over the killings of more than 1,000 men and women, and yet used every repudiation whether from within the party or without, every judicial stricture, every effort to inquire into his culpability, to further cement his stay in power.
• When it comes to the art of enjoying a shower without getting wet, Narendra Modi is many shades better than Manmohan Singh.
• CAG reports on the 2G spectrum, coal blocks and Krishna Godavari Basin singed Singh, politically and personally. But CAG reports on the scams of the Modi government in Gujarat faded without a whimper.
• In 2012, the Modi government earned strictures from the CAG for giving away a 10% participating stake in a KG Basin gas field measuring 4,57,000 acres it had won in an expensive bid to a mysterious overseas company named GeoGlobal Resources, incorporated in Barbados, with a capital of just $64, for free. As per the Modi government’s own estimates, announced in a press conference, the gas field was worth about $20 billion. Though state government-run GSPC, the owner of the gas field, had spent in excess of Rs 20,000 crore in drilling and exploration costs, Geo Global’s share of Rs 20,000 crore towards expenditure cost was also borne by GSPC. The issue failed to get the attention of the national media as Modi was on the ascendance and the corporate media owners could see which way the wind was blowing. Arvind Kejriwal’s hour-long press conference on the issue was blacked out. Till date there has been no inquiry into this shady deal nor any investigation into the real operators behind Geo Global, which was incorporated just six days before the joint venture with the GSPC. A new CAG report last year indicted Modi’s Gujarat government for wasting Rs 20,000 crore of public money in an exploration process which has yielded one-tenth of what he had promised.
• Just weeks after Modi’s inauguration as prime minister, the CAG released five different reports for the year ending March 2013, highlighting financial irregularities by the Modi-led Gujarat government amounting to more than Rs 25,000 crore, which included Rs 1,500 crore in undue benefits to companies like including Reliance Petroleum, Essar Power and the Adani Group.
• Modi as Gujarat chief minister gave away about 16,000 acres of land to Adani SEZ for rates between Rs 1 and Rs 32 per square metre. Other companies like Bharat Hotels, Larson & Toubro, Essar Steel and real estate developer K. Raheja also got large parcels of prime land for a fraction of market price. It had all the hallmark of crony capitalism: arbitrariness, private gains at the cost of the exchequer and proximity between beneficiaries and the chief minister. 
• When the opposition’s demand for a probe into land deals reached a crescendo, in 2011, chief minister Modi appointed an inquiry commission under a retired judge, a time-tested technique of deflection and obfuscation. The report of the commission was never made public and with neither media nor courts interested in holding him accountable, the Gujarat government had little incentive to release the report. Modi’s proverbial raincoat remained intact.
• For 13 years, chief minister Modi didn’t appoint a lokayukta in Gujarat. His government spent Rs 45 crore of taxpayer’s money in litigation blocking the appointment of retired justice R.A. Mehta, widely regarded as honest and competent, as lokayukta. For the last three years, Modi has not appointed a lokpal. Yet he projects himself from every pulpit as a warrior against black money.
• Between 2004 and 2015, the BJP has shown more than three-quarters of its funds as cash received from unnamed sources. The same funds catapulted Modi to prime ministership. Yet he has been drumming about the virtues of a cashless economy.
• As Modi’s march to Delhi was gaining pace, the UPA in a rearguard attack launched a probe into the business affairs of Gautam Adani, Modi’s principal backer. A probe by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) nailed the siphoning off of hundreds of crores abroad by the Adani Group by an intricate conspiracy involving over-valuation in imports for projects subject to a low or nil rate of customs duty. The report was finalised days before the results of Lok Sabha elections were due. Seeing the body of evidence against Adani, the UPA quickly moved to hand over the case to the CBI. For two years, the CBI, which reports to the prime minister’s office, is sitting tight on the file.
• In July last year another, the DRI probe revealed that 40 of the country’s biggest energy companies, including Adani and the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, were prima facie found involved in over-invoicing of imported coal. The scam was conservatively estimated at Rs 29,000 crore, with the common power consumers bearing the brunt of the inflated power bills, a direct effect of over-invoicing. Modi goes on publicly embracing both Adani and Anil Ambani. 
• The UPA was shamed into removing Ashok Chavan after the Adarsh Scam, Suresh Kalmadi after the CWG scam, A. Raja after the spectrum scam, Pawan Kumar Bansal after a bribery scam and Ashwani Kumar after the coal scam status report scandal. No such scruples bother Modi. After more than 40 suspected killings connected with the admission and recruitment scam called ‘Vyapam’ which happened on Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s watch, Modi has not said a word about the propriety of a tainted chief minister continuing in office. 
• Public outrage after Vasundhra Raje and her family were found to be mixed up with fugitive Lalit Modi failed to evoke a response from Modi. Addressing an election gathering in March 2014 in Chandigarh, then prime minister-designate Modi blasted the Congress for giving a ticket to the tainted Bansal. 
• On his watch, Modi’s alter ego Shah appointed tainted B.S. Yeddyurappa, who presided over many scams including the infamous Bellary scam and whose corrupt image had compelled the BJP to expel him as Karnataka state president in April 2016. 
• Modi as a prime ministerial candidate talked of bringing lakhs of crores of black money deposited in offshore bank accounts back to India. On his watch as prime minister, Vijay Mallya fled the country.
• The list of Modi’s wrongdoings runs long. His omissions and commissions in the Gujarat pogrom and the subsequent subversion of criminal justice system are shocking to the conscience of a reasonable person and a “kalank” for us as a nation. His silence over episodes like the Dadri lynching is as troubling as Singh’s silence as prime minister. Though perhaps he will never to have to face an inquiry into the alleged Sahara-Birla payoffs.
• The persecution of political opponents at the hands of police agencies, the harassment of civil rights activists and the systematic chipping away of institutional integrity and autonomy have surpassed the record of Congress regimes of the past. 
• If Singh was an accidental prime minister, notebandi has shown that Modi is an arbitrary prime minister. 
• Manmohan Singh has never had to face criminal prosecution for any of his actions or omissions. Modi too so far has staved off a criminal prosecution. The prime minister who ran the most corrupt central government in independent India’s history ironically remained for ten long years in public imagination as Mr Clean. It was only towards the end of his stint that his sheen wore off and he became a figure of ridicule and revulsion. 
• The present prime minister, who is running one of the most duplicitous, insensitive and arbitrary governments since independence, is similarly projecting himself as an honest man. It remains to be seen how history will judge Modi, but so far, he has managed to reap a rich political harvest from all the wrongdoings of his government and his party, without one charge sticking to him. 
• This may be attributed to the inadequacy of our legal system that has always failed to hold the powerful to account, or to the artful device of “raincoat in the bath” as Modi himself has put it. Though their styles contrast – one professorial, the other a relentless demagogue – both Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi have made a fine art of donning the raincoat.

Read the source article

On Modi's Watch, 20,000 Crores Vanished. The Big "Gas Scam"

The above list of misdeeds of Modi is neither exhaustive nor conclusive. 

1. In his book 'Karmayogi' Modi swears by caste order ‘Scavenging a spiritual experience for Valmiks’ which stirred controversy that compelled to withdraw all 5,000 copies published by his 'manasaputri' GSPC. 
2. In Aug 2017, ONGC has completed the Rs 7,738 crore acquisition of 80% stake in debt ridden GSPC's KG basin gas block for which GSPC had spent over Rs.20,000 crores, borrowed from 15 PSU banks, in the past 10 years and failed to discover any gas. A month before, Oil ministry raised flag over danger in government nudging ONGC to make sub optimal investments in GSPC that doesn't make business sense to them. ONGC doesn't have technical capability to complete the exploratory phase of drilling, as on date. It needs to invest lot more money to complete drilling and bring the gas field into production.
3. No sooner Modi became PM, Mayaben Kodnani was granted bail on health grounds. The Naroda Patiya convict Babu Bajrangi was granted bail 14 times, so far who is said to have lost his eyesight, mostly on the ground of his own and his wife’s health.

Needless to say that LK Advani and AB Vajpayee did greatest disservice to the nation by promoting non grata Modi as Gujarat CM and protecting him in 2002 riots that enabled him to become PM a decade later. Gujarat in particular and India in general stands destroyed.

Media's servility to Modi

• Three decades ago, state broadcaster Doordarshan was ridiculed and condemned by the press for behaving like ‘Rajiv Darshan.’
  At the time, there was no other TV channel in India, the number of TV sets in the country was very limited. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was ridiculed by the opposition and the press for projecting himself so much.
• Now, nearly 80% of the population has access to TV. There are nearly a thousand TV channels. News channels alone are nearly 300 in all languages.
• On all these channels, there is incessant Modi Darshan. All his speeches are televised live and repeated 24×7. All radio channels are under a sort of obligation to air his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ every month and his speeches in Parliament or elsewhere. 
• The print media too has begun to crawl before this ubiquitous (and narcissistic) self-proclaimed messiah. This nationwide media omnipresence of the Prime Minister has not generated criticism like it did at the time of ‘Rajiv Darshan’ in the late eighties.
• Columnists in the press and commentators on the shouting panels in TV debates, ring-mastered by the equally narcissist anchors, have not questioned this obscene personality cult. 
• The same self-styled educated urban intelligentsia was so vociferously critical of Rajiv and before that of Indira Gandhi for the promotion of such a cult, which they argued, “distorted” and “destabilised” democracy. Their liberal sensibilities expressed deep revulsion and concern for India’s democratic ethos then.
• These people surrendered their sensibilities to the powers and feel absolutely comfortable in this multi-media driven glorification of the personality of the Prime Minister Modi. 
• With the exceptions like Ram Jethmalani, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, and a few others, there are hardly any resistance to this media-led authoritarianism from the political, cultural, or intellectual class. They have failed the people and democracy.
• A kind of passive resistance is building up. More and more people feel these days that there is nothing they learn from news broadcasts. They are getting fed up with the panel discussions, as they neither grasp what the debate is about, nor who is saying what. 
• Many normal viewers stopped watching news channels or debates. They get their news on their mobile phones and varied commentary on social media where they can interact on the net.
• There is also concern expressed in newspapers’ editorial that readership is becoming indifferent and unresponsive from the young and also from the old or middle-aged. There is a sharp decline in news magazine circulation. 
• It is ironic that the media-communication revolution gave rise to information illiteracy among the educated. This is a wake-up call for the traditional press and TV media as their audience has become the whistle-blower.
• If Indian media becomes more and more servile towards Modi, it will lose whatever viewership they are left with.

Sound minds of India expect miracles 

by electing educationally and morally illiterate to power.

While urban middle classes in 1980's were connected to rural India and urban poor and were socially conscious people, today's urban middle classes live in complete disconnection to rural India and urban poor and are fundamentally selfish. Therefore, they rally behind Modi as long as his decisions doesn't pinch them. Today's media's servility is characterized by its selfishness and business interests protection rather than any principles. There are no Ramnath Goenka's in media business now a days.

BJP heading for rude shock in Gujarat

• Yogendra Yadav, a leader of the political organisation Swaraj Abhiyan with nearly two decades of experience as a psephologist, had based his projections on the data collected in three surveys since August by CSDS-ABP. He said the results if the Gujarat polls could be subdivided between urban, semi-urban, and rural areas.
• The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could be in for a rude shock in the Gujarat Assembly elections, said noted political scientist Yogendra Yadav on Wednesday — a day before the last phase of voting in the state.
• In a tweet, Yadav said the BJP was “on a solid wicket” in the 39 urban seats. “It can’t lose more than 10 seats [in urban areas].” In semi-urban areas, where it now has 36 seats, it might lose half. Yadav forecast that the BJP faced a “steady downhill” in the 98 rural seats, where it had trailed the Congress in 2012 Assembly polls, and could now face a rout.
• He told this newspaper that he was no longer in the business of election forecasting. But, given the very loud silence (around election forecast and coverage), and in the larger public interest, someone needed to say it.”
• He said it seemed to him that all observers — journalists, pollsters and other analysts — were sitting with evidence that pointed in one direction. “For various reasons, they were not putting all that evidence together, which pointed to the most obvious conclusion. That is why I decided to put it in the public domain.”

Read the source article

The fact that PM Modi addressed 34 rallies, like CM of Gujarat, and 40 central ministers and innumerable number of BJP leaders from other states are also camping in Gujarat indicates nervousness of BJP. In his rallies Modi neither talked about development nor his achievements as Prime Minister. He spent most time in abusing Congress. In his abuses he spared no one in the opposition but failed to highlight what action he has taken to book these culprits, if they were so. He stooped to such a low, even BJP leaders were amused at his self character assassination. With almost all segments of societies against him due to agrarian distress, demonetisation, GST, joblessness, inflation etc there is noway BJP will win just with support urban elite & middle class who lives in disconnect with rural India and enjoyed benefits of his misrule. Rahul Gandhi with his acumenship and in company of 3 Gujarati young turks provided alternative leadership to ventilate their anti incumbency anger. Media, by becoming another 'Modi Bhakt' has done a great disservice not only to nation but also to Modi & BJP.

Artificial Intelligence, Automation & Jobs

• Cars that drive themselves, machines that read X-rays, and algorithms that respond to customer service inquiries are all manifestations of automation. These technologies increase productivity and improve our lives, their use will substitute for some work activities humans currently perform has sparked much public concern.
• Technology destroys jobs, but not work. Automation adoption could be a powerful productivity booster.
• More than 60% of occupations have at least 30% of constituent work activities that could be automated. Less than 5% of occupations can be fully automated. It will also create new occupations that do not exist today, much as technologies of the past have done.

• About 15% of work activities could get automated by 2030. Advanced economies would get more effected by automation reflecting higher wage rates and thus economic incentives to automate.
• Even with automation, the demand for work and workers could increase as economies grow fueled by productivity growth. Rising incomes and consumption in developing countries, increasing health care for aging societies, investment in infrastructure and energy etc will create demand for work that could offset the displacement of workers. Additional investments in infrastructure and construction could be needed to reduce the risk of job shortages in advanced economies.
• By 2030, 75 million to 375 million workers (3 to 14% of the global workforce) will need to switch occupational categories. Displaced workers are unlikely to get jobs if idle for more than an year. If their transition to new jobs is slow, unemployment could rise and dampen wage growth.
• All workers will need to adapt increasingly capable machines which require higher educational attainment, spending more time on activities that require social and emotional skills, creativity, high-level cognitive capabilities and other skills relatively hard to automate.
• Automation will enable growth of high wage jobs in advanced economies while middle-wage jobs might decline. Automation will spur growth of middle wage jobs in emerging economies mostly in construction and service sectors which further boost the emerging middle class.
• The benefits of automation will be vast but addressing worker transitions is imperative by business and political leaders. Economies that are not expanding do not generate job growth. Mid career job training and worker redeployment will become essential. The priority is strengthening transition and income support for workers caught in the crosscurrents of automation.
• This job gained could more than offset the jobs lost to automation only if businesses and governments seize opportunities to boost job creation and for labor markets to function well.
• Technical feasibility of automation is important, other factors such as cost of developing and deploying automation solutions for specific uses in the workplace, the labor market dynamics, the benefits of automation beyond labor substitution, and regulatory and social acceptance will influence the pace and extent of automation adoption.
• In the US, the agricultural share of total employment declined from 60% in 1850 to less than 5% percent by 1970, while manufacturing fell from 26% of total US employment in 1960 to below 10% today. China’s one third workforce moved out of agriculture between 1990 and 2015. Yet overall employment grew. Such shifts can have painful consequences for some workers during the transition period that could be eased only after policy reforms.
• Robust aggregate demand and economic growth are essential for job creation. New technologies have raised productivity growth, enabling firms to lower prices for consumers or pay higher wages. This stimulates demand across the economy, boosting job creation.
• Rising productivity is usually accompanied by employment growth thus creating demand for goods and services across the economy. 
• Productivity growth enabled by technology has reduced the average hours worked per week. Across advanced economies, the length of the average work-week has fallen by nearly 50% since the early 1900's.
• Although the historical record is largely reassuring, some people worry that automation today will be more disruptive than in the past. If technological advances are adopted rapidly, the rate of worker displacement could be faster. If many sectors adopt automation simultaneously, the percentage of the workforce affected by it could be higher.
• Automation will have a lesser effect on jobs that involve managing people, applying expertise, and those involving social interactions, where machines are unable to match human performance for now.
• Jobs in unpredictable environments such as gardeners, plumbers, or providers of child and elder care will also see less automation by 2030, because they are difficult to automate technically and also command lower wages, which makes automation a less attractive business proposition.
• Automation displacing labor is clearly visible but it is difficult to envision all the new jobs that will be created as most new jobs are created indirectly and spread across different sectors and geographies.
• Global consumption grows as incomes rise and consumers spend more and their spending patterns also shift, creating more jobs in the countries where the income is generated, but also in economies that export to those countries. 
• People aged above 65 years could grow by 300 million, by 2030, and their spending will increase on health care and other personal services. This will create significant demand for doctors, nurses, health technicians, home health aides, personal care aides and nursing assistants but reduces demand for pediatricians and primary school teachers. 
• Jobs related to developing and deploying new technologies may also grow. Overall spending on technology could increase by more than 50% between 2015 and 2030. The number of people employed in these occupations is small but they are high-wage occupations.
• Rising incomes also create demand for more and higher quality buildings. Both factors could create new demand, mainly in the construction sector. These jobs include architects, engineers, carpenters and other skilled tradespeople, as well as construction workers, machinery operators and other jobs with lower skill requirements.
• Advanced economies may also see employment declines in occupations that are most susceptible to automation. These include office clerks, office assistants, finance and accounting, customer interaction jobs, cashiers, food service workers, and a wide range of jobs carried out in predictable settings, such as assembly line workers, dishwashers, food preparation workers, drivers, and agricultural and other equipment operators. Helping individuals transition from the declining occupations to growing ones will be a large scale challenge.
• The changes in occupational growth or decline imply that a very large number of people may need to shift occupational categories and learn new skills in the years ahead. The challenge in advanced economies will be to retrain mid career workers. There are few precedents in which societies have successfully retrained such large numbers of people. Frictions in the labor markets including cultural norms regarding gender stereotypes in work and geographic mismatches between workers and jobs could also impede the transition.
• Between 400 million and 800 million individuals could be displaced by automation and need to find new jobs by 2030 around the world. However people will need to find their way into these jobs. Of them, 75 to 375 million may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills. 
• China faces the largest number of workers needing to switch occupations if automation is adopted rapidly. For advanced economies the share is much higher - up to one-third of the 2030 workforce in the US and Germany, and nearly half in Japan.
• History suggests that over time, labor markets adjust to changes in demand for workers from technological disruptions, although at times with depressed real wages.
• With sufficient economic growth, innovation, and investment, there can be enough new job creation to offset the impact of automation, although in some advanced economies additional investments will be needed to reduce the risk of job shortages.
• Future jobs lost and jobs gained vary by country, with the largest disruptions expected in advanced economies.
• Higher wages make the business case for automation adoption stronger. Some economists worry about “premature deindustrialization” in developing countries due to automation.
• Economic growth is essential for job creation. Economies that are stagnant or growing slowly create few new jobs. Countries with stronger economic and productivity growth and innovation will be expected to experience more new labor demand.
• Countries with a rapidly-growing workforce, such as India, may enjoy a “demographic dividend” that boosts GDP growth, if young people are employed. Countries with a declining workforce need automation to offset their shrinking labor supply, while countries with growing work forces have greater job creation challenges.
• India, a fast-growing developing country with modest potential for automation over the next 15 years due low wage rates. Most occupational categories are projected to grow reflecting its potential for strong economic expansion. However, India’s labor force is expected to grow by 138 million people by 2030, or about 30%. Employing these new entrants in formal sector jobs will require job creation on a much larger scale than in the past. Automation will make this challenge more difficult; some fear “jobless growth.” However analysis suggests that India can create enough new jobs to offset automation and employ new entrants, if it undertakes the investments.
• China and Mexico have higher wages than India, and so are likely to see more automation. Mexico’s projected rate of future economic expansion is more modest. Like the United States and Japan, Mexico could benefit from the job creation in new occupations and activities to make full use of its workforce.

With inputs from:

Transitions in a time of Automation

In coming years 'Automation' in many predictable activities is inevitable in India, its immediate impact on our 4 million IT work force is tremendous. 65% of existing IT employees are not re-trainable and will end up losing their jobs sooner or later. To over come impact of automation it is necessary to retrain our workforce but also create new jobs. But our track record in new job creation is dismally low. Today our economy is facing 'jobless growth' which is neither sustainable nor desirable. Due to Automation, job losses would be local where as new job creation would be any where in the world. New investments, infrastructure spending and construction requires higher budgets otherwise widespread unemployment is imminent. Unless agriculture is made remunerative and vibrant, migration of rural labour to urban localities in search of livelihoods will continue unabated and is destructive for our economic progress. Vibrant economies will easily adjust and derive benefits of 'Automation' but struggling economies like India will see painful disruption and deindustrialisation.

Modi's bizarreness unlimited

• Modi should explain to nation why BJP's winning Gujarat elections is that important that made him sacrifice all decencies of a gentleman and PM in particular?
• What material he has with him to charge former PM, former Vice President and many others as traitors and conspirators against the nation?
• Having leveled the charge why legal action is not initiated against them for prosecution as per laws of the land?
• India's image stands diminished in the world with Prime Minister Modi's behavior during this election campaign.
• Indians definitely deserve a better Prime Minister.
• Finally, Modi's nonsensical utterances is reflection of BJP losing election even before polling to Congress after 22 years of rule or misrule, of which 14 years by Modi himself.
• No one should be allowed to talk nonsense and get away with out facing consequences no matter how much big one might be.
• Gujaratis will teach Modi a bitter lesson of his life to behave and stop fooling people all the times.

Modi's vitriolic in Gujarat campaign

Manmohan Singh's statement

• In Gujarat electoral campaign, while Modi seems to be sweating a lot to avoid any possibility of a humiliating defeat, Rahul Gandhi was at ease in engaging people, delivering speeches and taking decisions indicating his confidence of sure victory. 
• While there is no mention of  much publicized "Gujarat Vikas" in Modi's speeches, Rahul was at ease raising several people's issues like demonetization, GST, unemployment and so on.  
• In order to leave no stone upturned to win, Modi forgot that he is PM of he nation and began to resort to unconnected issues and bombarding with low level allegations incompatible to his status. He stooped to unimaginable lows that even ardent BJP & Modi fans were amused with contempt at his vitriolic.
• Whether Congress win or lose, this tough fight is sure to change BJP's future course of policy decisions in the light of several state elections in 2018 and general election in 2019.
• The arrogant and dictatorial attitudes of Modi are likely to soften and and also make him face internal dissent and desertions arising out of distress in economy, agriculture, unemployment, etc.
• In any case Gujarat elections and Rahul Gandhi were able to ground Modi and make see him the realities on the ground and to go forward with caution at least here after.

Having lost almost every election since 2014, Rahul Gandhi has very little to lose but resurgent and winning Congress will destroy Modi's evil grip on BJP. This coupled with financial distress will change the direction of financial reforms especially with several state elections in 2018 and general election in 2019. India has lost enough with evil Modi and it is time to dump him out. Time and again non Congress parties have squandered opportunity and proved that Congress is superior to them. Modi has so far proved to be worst of all PM's bettering only VP Singh. Rahul Gandhi with is back ground and good mannerisms proved to be a gentlemen while Modi is best at his street language. Young Rahul Gandhi is better for the nation rather than old & spiteful Modi.

Modi government spends Rs. 3,755 crores on publicity

• The Modi government spent a whopping Rs.3,755 crore on its publicity in three-and-a-half years till October this year, reply to an RTI query revealed on Friday. The expenditure on advertisements from April 2014 to October 2017 on electronic and print media and outdoor publicity is Rs.3,754 crores according to the reply given by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. The application was filed by Greater Noida-based social activist Ramveer Tanwar.
• Together with all states, the sum total advertising expenditure could easily exceed Rs.10,000 crores mark, which India can't really afford.
• In 2016, an RTI query filed by Tanwar had revealed that the Centre spent over ₹1,100 crore between June 1, 2014 and August 31, 2016, on advertisements featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  The expenditure was only for television, internet and other electronic media only. The expenditure on outdoor and print advertisements was extra.
• The Central government, the reply says, spent over Rs.1,656 crore on electronic media advertisements, including community radio, digital cinema, Internet, SMS and television. In the print media, the government spent more than Rs.1,698 crore. Outdoor advertisements, which include hoardings, posters, booklets and calendars, accounted for over Rs.399 crore, the reply reveals.
• UPA government had announced austerity measures, but it spent about Rs 2,048 crore in advertising and publicity of its schemes over a period of three years, averaging about Rs 55 crore every month. In the run-up to the 2014 general elections, the Congress-led government spent Rs 380 crore in just one month i.e. March 2014. Information accessed through RTI by Mumbai-based Anil Galgali reveals that the UPA spent Rs 2,048 crore in 37 months. In 37 months, Rs 1,318 crore was spent on print media whereas Rs 729 crore was spent on TV, social media, radio, digital cinema and other communication. With Lok Sabha polls nearing, the UPA government spent over Rs 379.53 crore in March 2014, of which Rs 250 crore was spent on print media and Rs 128 crore on electronic media, internet and social media. A significant, but not entire, amount of government publicity funds are spent by DAVP. Sources said it was safe to assume that far more had been spent by the earlier government on publicity than revealed.
• The magnitude of the expense can be gauged from the fact that it takes Rs 1,750 crore to set up an IIT and about Rs 1,000 crore to establish an IIM in the country.
• The government’s allocation for “pollution abatement” in the last three years was only Rs. 56.8 crore.
• Needless to say that about 40-50% of the advertising amounts is either corruption or wastage of money.

While government advertising for its functioning and for communicating government schemes benefiting targeted lower classes is OK, political advertising is sheer wastage. This wastage must stop and advertising budget must be restricted to 20% of the present levels i.e. not more than Rs.20 crores per month. Any other spending indirectly not reflecting from budget - from PSU funds, contractor funding, pooling donations etc must be expressly prohibited and is nothing but corruption with quid pro arrangements and consequential losses to nation are immense. No one need to spend their money for government advertising, under any circumstances.