While Mumbai’s super-rich show off their wealth, a chastened Narendra Modi moves to shore up support among the poor.
It was also a monsoon wedding, but unlike the financially stretched paterfamilias in Mira Nair’s movie, Mukesh Ambani didn’t need to borrow from pals for the marriage celebrations of his youngest son that has just culminated in a flooded Mumbai.
The finale of the months-long pre-nuptials and Hindu marriage of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant came a month after national election results that showed a groundswell of resentment at inequality and high unemployment. Nowhere was the loss of seats harder felt than in the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP had installed a fanatical Hindu monk as chief minister and where, in January, Modi himself had taken on a priestly role to inaugurate the contentious new temple at Ayodhya, legendary birthplace of the deity Ram. The BJP saw its seats in the state halved, taken mostly by the Samajwadi Party, dominated by farmer-caste Hindus and led by Sydney-educated Akhilesh Yadav.
Narendra Modi on Tuesday after his finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, delivered the first budget of his new government’s term.So nervous was he about rumbling in the ranks, Modi eschewed the normal step of getting formally elected as party leader following the election. He went straight to consulting the two coalition partners, then proceeded to the Rashtriya Bhavan, the Raj-era presidential palace in New Delhi, to state his ability to form a government.
While Modi set off a contract gravy-train for new high-speed lines and airport terminals, ordinary unreserved train services used by migrant workers and peddlers saw a string of derailments, fires, delays and collisions pointing to neglect of maintenance and signalling. Their exasperated passengers invaded first-class carriages, blocking the aisles.The better-off saw little of these stirrings.
The Electoral Commission, which has long ranked with the Supreme Court and the central bank as unbendable, was stacked with government appointees last year. It reacted timidly to Modi’s campaign-targeting of Muslims as “infiltrators” intent on out-breeding Hindus and waiting for Congress to hand them family gold jewellery confiscated from Hindus.
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