New Delhi: Indian Americans see Kamala Harris, the US Vice President and now Democratic presidential candidate for the 2024 election, as another example of their success and influence, says The New York Times report, ‘Harris’s Indian heritage is deeply felt if little advertised’.
Citing Harris’s 2023 quotation — “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” — which since has inspired memes, NYT correspondent Anupreeta Das writes that Harris’s references to her Indian heritage have caught on with Indian Americans, even if she is seen as identifying more as Black than Indian. Harris deploys such references strategically, Das adds.
However, according to Das, Harris, as president, seems unlikely to vastly reshape India-America ties since she doesn’t share close ties with Modi, unlike the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
A report in The Independent, ‘Lammy jets off to India with trade deal back on the UK agenda despite Modi embracing Putin’, says that UK foreign secretary David Lammy will visit India to meet his counterpart, Vikram Misri, as part of his government’s efforts to finalise a major trade deal amid a controversy over the Narendra Modi-Vladimir Putin meeting in Moscow, Russia.
Muslim groups have also raised concerns about the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, writes political editor David Maddox, adding that the UK’s new business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, however, has told officials to “immediately review where the UK is with the key trade talks with the emerging economic superpower with a view to opening the talks with Modi’s government ‘ASAP’.”
A South China Morning Post report, ‘River dance: why India, Bangladesh should cooperate on water projects like Teesta’, discusses Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina giving the charge of the Teesta River management and restoration project to India and not China, signalling a strategic shift in regional dynamics.
SCMP journalist Biman Mukherji highlights that the choice makes sense since the Teesta River is crucial to the economies and ecologies of India and Bangladesh and China, despite its interest in the project, is an external party. It “is a strategic choice as this is a bilateral issue over a river that these two countries share,” says the report, quoting Sohini Bose, an associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
However, Delhi should now address Dhaka’s concerns over water sharing, Sreeradha Datta, an international affairs professor at Jindal Global University in Haryana, tells SCMP.
A podcast by the Financial Times, ‘Are Indian investors sitting on a bubble?’, discusses how millions of young Indians, egged on by online influencers, are piling into shares and options, creating a speculative bubble. FT describes this as the only “legal form of gambling” in India.
Domestic investments in stocks have been surging in India, once considered a market backwater. “Traditionally, a lot of Indian households invest in gold and that’s really changed in the last few years… on the back of this economic growth there has been wider access and update to bank accounts,” says one of the podcast producers.
Netanyahu addresses US Congress & Biden wants ‘new voices’
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress was filled with combative remarks and debatable claims about Israel’s war in Gaza. To know more about his speech, read The Guardian’s report.
US President Joe Biden, in a public address Wednesday, has said that he abandoned his re-election campaign because there is “a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices — yes, younger voices”. To know more about what he said, read The New York Times report.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also read: ‘Weakened’ Modi’s budget ‘doles out pork’ & jobless ‘get some love’ — global media