Indian Subcontinent Watch Thread

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caltrek
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The Supreme Court of India Now Directs ‘Those Seeking Justice’ to Be Put in the Dock
July 3, 2022

Introduction:
(Janata Weekly) Revenge for seeking justice. This is not coming from a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. It is the Supreme Court, which calls for revenge against those who seek to pursue the cause of justice. It describes the long battle for justice fought in the courts as a nefarious design to keep the pot boiling. For some ulterior motive. And it wants them to be punished.

So, it is the Supreme court which condemns those who have the audacity to question officials. Not only that it seeks them to be put in the dock.
The court is heard by the law abiding Gujarat police and as its first response, Teesta Setalvad and Sreekumar, former DGP of the Gujarat police, are arrested promptly. Between the outrage by the court against the trouble-makers and the arrest was an interview in which the home minister of the Union government of India names the organisation of Teesta Setalvad and indicates that some officials of the state worked to defame the then state government and the chief minister.

“The Supreme Court has said that Zakia Jafri used to work at someone else’s insistence. Many victims’ affidavits were signed by the NGO. Everyone knew Teesta Setalvad’s NGO was doing it. The UPA government helped Teesta Setalvad’s NGO a lot, the whole of Lutyens Delhi knows it. This was solely done to target Modiji, to tarnish his image,” he said.

It seems that the interview and the work on the first information report (FIR) by an officer of the Gujarat police naming Teesta, Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt were going on simultaneously. What else explains the knock on the doors of Teesta and Sreekumar within hours of the airing of the interview.
Read more here: https://janataweekly.org/the-supreme-c ... e-dock/
Last edited by caltrek on Mon Jul 11, 2022 7:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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The Story of the Rise and Fall of Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa Family
by Nirupama Subramanian
July 10, 2022

Extract:
(The Indian Express) What went wrong for Gotabaya Rajapaksa?

Since March, when anti-government protesters found a rallying cry in “Gota Go Home”, the President was determined that he would not step down. His reasoning was that he had been elected “by 6.92 million people” which translates into a majority of 52.25 percent (Sri Lanka has an executive presidential system and the office is filled through direct elections), and that he was entitled to the rest of his five year term, which began in 2019.

But he clearly did not fathom the extent of public anger at the government’s mismanagement of the economy, in which he played a directly crippling role. Gotabaya appeared to believe that his image as the “saviour” of the country from terrorism — he was Defence Secretary in his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government at the time of the LTTE’s military defeat in 2009 — would see him through.

So, is this the political end of the President?

Gotabaya Rajapaksa believed his planning of military strategies against the LTTE and later, the much praised beautification of the capital city, equipped him to run the country. But clearly it did not, and he goofed it up with his ill informed tax cuts, and his sudden edict to farmers to switch to organic farming. Along with the coronavirus pandemic, all of it added to the economic pain inflicted by the collapse of tourism in the aftermath of the Easter bombings.
Read more here: https://indianexpress.com/article/exp ... 8020933/
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Protesters break into home of Sri Lankan PM, set it on fire

Source: AP

By KRISHAN FRANCIS
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Protesters broke into the Sri Lankan prime minister’s private residence and set it on fire, hours after he said he would resign when a new government is formed, in the biggest day of angry demonstrations on Saturday that also saw crowds storming the president’s home and office.

The office of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the protesters forced their way into his Colombo home on Saturday evening. It wasn’t immediately clear if he was inside at the time of the attack.

Wickremesinghe said earlier that he will resign only when all parties have agreed on a new government.

He was responding to a call by leaders of political parties represented in Parliament that he and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa quit, after tens of thousands of people trooped to the capital to vent their fury at the leaders they hold responsible for the nation’s worst economic and political crisis.



A man throws back a tear gas canister after it was fired by police to disperse protesters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Saturday, July 9, 2022. Sri Lankan protesters demanding that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign forced their way into his official residence on Saturday, a local television report said, as thousands of people took to the streets in the capital decrying the island nation's worst economic crisis in recent memory. (AP Photo/Amitha Thennakoon)



Original post: By KRISHAN FRANCIS

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan protesters demanding President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign forced their way into his official residence and nearby office on Saturday, local television reports said, as thousands of people demonstrated in the capital against the island nation’s worst economic crisis in recent memory.

It was not clear if Rajapaksa was inside the residence in Colombo but footage shot on mobile phones showed a large number of people inside the well-fortified house and on the grounds outside.

A government spokesman, Mohana Samaranayake, said he had no information about whether Rajapaksa had left the residence.

Hundreds of protesters, some carrying national flags, also entered the president’s office in another nearby building, television footage showed. Protesters blame Rajapaksa for the economic woes and had occupied the entrance to his office building for the past three months calling on him to step down.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/asia-economy ... 88a01df1c2
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Protesters Abandon Seized Buildings With Sri Lanka in Limbo
July 14, 2022

Introduction:
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP via Courthouse News) — Sri Lankan protesters retreated from government buildings they seized and military troops reinforced security at the Parliament on Thursday, establishing a tenuous calm in a country in both economic meltdown and political limbo.
Conclusion:
The political impasse threatens to worsen the bankrupt nation’s economic collapse since the absence of an alternative government could delay a hoped-for bailout from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country is relying on aid from India and China.

The shortages of basic necessities have sown despair among Sri Lanka’s 22 million people. The country’s rapid decline was all the more shocking because, before the recent crisis, the economy had been expanding, with a growing, comfortable middle class.

It was not immediately clear if Singapore would be Rajapaksa’s final destination, but he has previously sought medical care there, including undergoing heart surgery.

Sri Lankan lawmakers have agreed to elect a new president from their ranks on July 20 who will serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024. That person could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/protes ... n-limbo/
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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Sadhguru, the Spiritual Leader with Ties to Will Smith and Modi, Explained
by Sonia Paul
July 18, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) In October 2020, the Indian spiritual leader who calls himself Sadhguru posted a video to his Instagram account that seemed to cement his celebrity status in the West.

In it, Will Smith reveals that he’s been following Sadhguru for a while and praises his New York Times bestselling self-help book, Inner Engineering. The actor is now welcoming one of India’s most powerful gurus into his home so that his family can also be inspired by his spirituality. The video then turns to Sadhguru, who has pulled up on the driveway on a motorcycle. He’s dressed in a long tan-colored kurta, black salwar trousers, and white high-top shoes, his white beard fluffed out like Santa Claus. Like other celebrity gurus before him, he seems both foreign and familiar as he translates what often sounds like timeless teachings for our modern era. As Jagadish “Jaggi” Vasudev — the man popularly known as Sadhguru — asserts that the most successful people are the most miserable people and that we perpetuate our own suffering, Smith and his daughter, Willow, hang on his every word. “You’re a bad director of your own drama!” Sadhguru jokes with Smith over the dinner table discussion.

So it was no wonder that when Smith was spotted in Mumbai in late April, in his first public outing since he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, rumor had it that he intended to meet with Sadhguru. That was not true, however, because Vasudev has been preoccupied with his own affairs.

The self-proclaimed mystic is the founder of the Isha Foundation, a nonprofit spiritual center that houses a yoga center and claims over 300 offshoots around the world. He also has a radio show and a popular YouTube channel, and, earlier this year, stopped by Trevor Noah’s show and Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss his latest environmental crusade, “Save Soil.” On June 21, he finished a 100-day motorcycle journey intended to continue to rally support for his environmental cause, which took him across Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/23206916/sadhguru ... oil-modi
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How Can Sri Lanka Move Forward?
by Ellen Ioanes
July 16, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned Thursday by email, after a herculean people-power movement fueled by anger over corruption and massive inflation toppled his government. Although it’s a major victory for Sri Lankan activists, Rajapaksa’s resignation raises existential questions about how the country’s political structure, economy, and the protest movement that brought him down will forge ahead.
Gotabaya fled the country earlier this week, reportedly heading first to the Maldives, then on Thursday boarding a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Singapore, flight tracking data shows. His resignation has been a key demand of protesters, but it’s far from the political overhaul many see as critical to getting the country functional again.

The Rajapaksa administration’s rampant corruption and disastrous economic policies culminated in months of sustained, nonviolent action by hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans from all over the country, of a wide variety of ethnicities and backgrounds — a testament to the severity of the economic and political catastrophes, including unsustainable debt, staggering inflation, and general, overwhelming scarcity that Gotabaya, his brothers, and his cronies brought on the nation.

“All the countries of South Asia used to look at Sri Lanka as the place with the highest development indices — definitely highest literacy,” Tamanna Salikuddin, director of South Asia programs at the US Institute of Peace, told Vox in an interview Saturday. “It’s obviously a much smaller population than any of its neighbors — India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh — but it’s always had a high GDP per capita, high standard of living, Colombo was this sort of modern, fancy city with the nice restaurants and all of that.”

Now, people wait in line for days just to buy fuel; inflation was at 54.6 percent as of June according to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka; and the government owes its various creditors $51 billion after having defaulted on its repayments for the first time in May.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/explainers/2022/7/ ... -future
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Sri Lankan Troops Forcefully Clear Protesters; New PM Named
July 22, 2022

Introduction:
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP via Courthouse News) — Sri Lankan forces violently cleared the main protest camp of demonstrators outraged by the country’s economic meltdown as the newly elected and deeply unpopular president put army troops in the streets of the capital Friday to maintain order.

Security forces were seen beating at least two journalists during the overnight raid, and the bar association said two lawyers were also assaulted — heavy-handed tactics denounced by the opposition, the U.N., and the U.S. The troops moved in even though protesters had announced they would vacate the site on Friday voluntarily.

Unbowed, the protesters vowed to continue their efforts to change their leadership. A crowd rallied for a few hours outside the main rail station, while some people also gathered as close as they could to the former demonstration site outside the presidential office.

Adding to signs that President Ranil Wickremesinghe would not address the concerns of protesters, he chose a prime minister on Friday with close ties to the political establishment that the demonstrators blame for the country’s collapse.

Wickremesinghe, who had been prime minister, was elevated to president by lawmakers this week — apparently seen as a safe pair of hands to lead Sri Lanka out of the crisis, even though he, too, was a target of the demonstrations. On Friday, he appointed as prime minister a Rajapaksa ally, Dinesh Gunawardena, who is 73 and from a prominent political family.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/sri-lan ... -named/
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India’s Auction of 5G Airwaves tops $19 Billion
by Manish Singh
August 1, 2022

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Telecom operators in India bid slightly over $19 billion in the government auction for the 5G airwaves, New Delhi said Monday, the highest from them in any spectrum sale, as the world’s second-largest wireless market readies the rollout of improved and faster voice and data speeds.

Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea competed with one another for seven days and made majority of the bids to acquire 71% of all offered spectrum, which the government said exceeded its expectations. Tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s Jio, which counts Google and Meta among its backers, was the most aggressive participant with bids of worth $11.13 billion, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Monday in a press briefing.

Google-backed Airtel made bids of worth $5.44 billion, whereas Vodafone Idea, the Indian unit of British giant Vodafone Group and billionaire Kumar Mangalam’s Idea Cellular, made bids of worth $2.37 billion.

India’s richest man Gautam Adani’s firm also made its debut in the auction, but kept its interest largely limited with bidding of just $26.8 million. The company said last month that it was participating in the spectrum auction to provide private network solutions with enhanced cyber security in “the airport, ports & logistics, power generation, transmission, distribution, and various manufacturing operations.”

Even as India is the second largest wireless market, it has been slow in comparison to several markets in setting up the networks for the rollout of 5G technology, which carriers across the globe say offers significantly faster data speeds and could play an instrumental role in applications around innovations in autonomous mobility and telemedicines and robotics among other industries.
Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/01/indi ... one-idea/
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Sri Lanka to end state of emergency
Source: Dhaka Tribune
Sri Lanka will not extend a state of emergency imposed to control anti-government protests as the situation in the impoverished nation has "stabilized", the president's office said Tuesday.

Ranil Wickremesinghe invoked the tough laws four days after his predecessor fled the country and resigned on July 14 after months of protests over acute shortages of food, fuel and medicines.

The emergency imposed by Wickremesinghe is due to lapse on Thursday and he has the power to renew it every month thereafter.

"The situation in the country has stabilized, there is no need to reimpose the state of emergency when it lapses this week," Wickremesinghe's office quoted him as saying.
Read more: https://www.dhakatribune.com/south-asia ... -emergency
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