New Delhi: Like their other foreign counterparts, the Chinese media came up with its own assessment of PM Narendra Modi’s whirlwind trip to Ukraine, which is caught in a war with Russia.
The Western media, on the other hand, appears unable to move past “the weakening of Modi as a leader of a coalition government”, as it focuses on the Centre’s lateral entry U-turn, protests at the ports, and a documentary based on farmer’s protests in India.
Questioning the possibility of India acting as a “peacemaker” between Russia and Ukraine, Su Lun in the Global Times brings together different opinions to uncover the reasons for PM Modi’s visit to Ukraine.
The visit welcomed by the Western world was aimed to “placate the West” while also strategically positioning India as the voice of the developing countries, according to the opinion titled, ‘Can India act as a ‘peacemaker’ in Russia-Ukraine conflict?’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s mention of the probability of India holding a peace summit was again questioned by Su as he writes that in the event of such a summit, “it would not be able to help the West isolate Russia.”
Moscow occupies a unique position for both New Delhi and Beijing. While India shares close ties with Russia that dates right back from the era the country gained Independence, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been increasingly leaning towards his Chinese counterpart Xi Jingping ever since the war broke out in February 2022.
Adding the Centre’s decision to roll back the lateral entry advertisement by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) over reservation policies to the list of rollbacks by the Modi government, John Reed of Financial Times calls PM Modi an “expert” in rolling back decisions.
The “scrapping” of an overhaul of the long-term capital gains tax in the Union Budget, the decision to revise the broadcasting bill alongside the not-spoken about 100-day campaign he devised in the run-up to elections are examples Reed gives to make his point.
In light of the BJP not gaining a majority in the general elections, the opinion piece, titled ‘Narendra Modi is becoming an expert in policy U-turns’, has political observers noting that a weaker Modi “simply makes him a more typical Indian leader”.
Reed goes on to quote analysts who state that the Modi government’s forward momentum will depend in large part on the outcome of state elections, especially Maharashtra.
As for Bloomberg, the American financial media outlet focuses on workers going on an indefinite strike at 12 government-run major ports over their demand for better wages and pensions.
Government officials are supposed to meet the port workers to find a way out of the impending strike. The demand set and negotiations since 2021, having not culminated into anything concrete, Bloomberg’s Weilun Soon and Rajesh Kumar Singh report in the article titled, ‘Indian Port Unions, Officials to Meet in Attempt to Avert Strike’.
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Away from the hustle bustle of politics and economy, Ayush Majumdar of BBC profiles the rise of 17-year-old archer Sheetal Devi, who is under the spotlight for the upcoming
“Within just two years, Devi went from learning to simply shoot an arrow at small distances to hitting six 10s in a row in the final of the women’s individual compound event at the Asian Para Games in 2023 to win the gold medal,” he writes in the article titled, ‘The Indian archer without arms shooting for a gold.’
“Sheetal [Devi] did not choose archery, archery chose Sheetal,” Abhilasha Chaudhary, one of the archer’s national coaches, writes.
“I believe that no one has any limitations, it’s just about wanting something enough and working as hard as you can,” the world’s number one in the compound open women’s category says. “If I can do it, anyone else can.”
Guardian’s Leslie Felperin reviews a 2024 documentary based on farmer’s protests in India and calls it a “low-key, observational look”.
Felperin appreciates the angle where the short movie focuses on how protests that began as demonstrations turned into a year-long camp as well as providing details of the logistics of feeding the crowd.
She, however, calls the documentary’s topic a “niche” subject. “If you watch very closely you may pick up some tips for making rotis on a mass scale,” she writes. The author notes that “neither India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, nor the mainstream Indian press come out of the story well.”
Australia caps foreign student intake & Sudan dam collapse
The Australian government has decided to cap the number of international students to 2,70,000 in the coming year. Steps have been taken to curb migration into the island nation. To know more, read Bloomberg’s report.
Heavy rainfall led to disastrous floods in northeast Sudan. Local news outlets have reported that over 60 people have been killed as a dam collapsed in the region—the Arabat Dam was an important source of water supply in the region as the country is marred with conflict and civil disturbances. To know more, read Al Jazeera’s report.
(Edited by Tony Rai)