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Economic Times thinks Raghuram Rajan’s note on bad loans is not a page 1 story

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Raghuram Rajan’s NPA note was missing from Wednesday’s edition of India’s largest business daily. The Economic Times, one of the largest business newspapers in the world, carried no reports on the former RBI governor’s note to the parliamentary committee on bad loans wherein he traced the roots of the current NPA crisis to the UPA’s tenure.

Considering this is one of the most hotly debated stories of the day — nay, the four years of the Modi government — should we wonder why? Search the entire paper, from front page to sports on Page 23 (the last page, 24, is all advertisements), and the two words, Raghuram Rajan, simply don’t appear.

Oh wait. They do. On Page 14, under the headline ‘Finance & Commodities’, in a column by well-known editorial writer T.K. Arun. There is one tiny paragraph devoted to …”Subba Rao’s successor Raghuram Rajan, who has told a parliamentary committee…” buried in the middle of much else. That’s it.

ET‘s lead story, instead, is about the SC staying RBI’s 12 February circular on bad loans, with a small box story headlined ‘Loan recovery may get delayed’. Lots of stories about the RBI, no word on the former RBI governor. 

Its sister paper, The Times of India, does only a little better. The story exists, but is buried well inside on Page 10, along with ‘Billionaire’s kid goes to UK, with 12 servants’. Nothing on Page 1 (which is, in good faith, dominated by a Supreme Court order on razing illegal buildings in the Aravallis, a diplomatic reshuffle, and old coins found in an old mosque).

In the rest of the media, however, the two-day-old story continues to dominate the landscape. According to The Indian Express, Rajan warned the Prime Minister’s Office that there were some major defaulters who should be made an example of. But he doesn’t know what happened to that list. The Telegraph ran the story with the headline, ”Rajan reveals alert to PMO on dud loans”, while Hindustan Times wroteBoth BJP, Congress claim victory over Raghuram Rajan’s note”.

Amit Shah’s inflammatory speech also made headlines. Speaking to party workers in Jaipur, he said, “When Akhlaq happened, we won. We won when award wapsi happened. If they do something else now, too, we will win.” 

Akhlaq, a dairy farmer, was lynched by cow vigilantes who reportedly suspected him to be a smuggler.

The Telegraph noted, “This is the first time Shah has directly referred to the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq”. “Asked about the atrocity in the past,” the report added, “Shah had termed the killing wrong and called for punishment to the culprits but on his own had not condemned it.” It seems now like he never will.

According to a report by Indiaspend, “As many as 97 per cent of (cow vigilante) attacks (since 2010 and till 2017) were reported after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power in May 2014.” Perhaps The Telegraph headline is appropriate: The BJP is now ‘immune to Akhlaq’.

Neither The Times of India nor Hindustan Times reported the speech on their front page.

The Indian Express led with Shah’s crude comment on the National Register of Citizens, which recently identified 40 lakh “illegal immigrants” in Assam, where an allegedly unchecked influx from Bangladesh is a deeply emotive issue. Shah said each one of the illegal immigrants will be identified and expelled — “chun chun kar nikalenge”.

His speech came exactly 125 years after Swami Vivekananda’s historic address dated 11 September 1893 in Chicago, where he said, “I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the Earth.” This is what The Telegraph’s first page looks like:

But Shah is still convinced that the BJP will remain in power for the next 50 years, and reiterated this in his speech at Jaipur.

Prime Time

CNN News 18 discussed how 77 days had passed since an FIR was filed against Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar for allegedly raping a nun, but no arrest made. 

The priest said the charges against him were “wild allegations”, adding that he was ready for the death sentence if proved guilty.

On his show Aaj Ki Baat on India TV, Rajat Sharma discussed Raghuram Rajan’s note tracing the bad loan problem to the UPA era. Sharma said “the real NPA data was suppressed during UPAs tenure”.

News it’s just kinda cool to know

Rice farming across the world could be responsible for up to twice the level of climate impact relative to what was previously estimated, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Business Class

After opening world’s largest mobile manufacturing unit in Noida, Samsung has launched a first-of-its-kind showroom in Bengaluru where potential customers can get a unique experience of interacting with the brand, reports Business Standard.  

Point of View

It took Independent India 71 years to do away with Section 377 and decriminalise homosexuality. Columnist Gurcharan Das writes in The Times of India, “Although the judges quoted great Western writers in support of their historic judgment, they could also have cited classical Indian texts, which show remarkable tolerance for gender ambiguity. The epics are full of stories about men turning into women and vice versa, and they are told matter of factly without guilt or shame.”

Not its success or failure, it’s time to debate whether the Bharat Bandh on rising fuel prices was needed at all, columnist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar writes in a column in The Economic Times. “The Bharat Bandh called by Congress and sundry opposition parties, to protest against rising fuel prices and a falling rupee, represents the sad populism common before a general election,” he adds.

Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal has called for extending the National Register of Citizens to other states. The Indian Express criticises the statement in its editorial, “There is no logical basis for broadening its scope, since the demographic change and social and political effects of large-scale migration across a porous border are not as keenly felt elsewhere.”

With inputs from Ratnadeep Choudhary

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1 COMMENT

  1. To prove that Raghu Ram Rajan is right what he placed before the Parliamentary committee on Bad need not be head line particularly the media in India that is monitored by Modi and Amit Shah. Fact remains that UPA did squander its power in extending Bank Loans irrespective of the fact whether the money was used for the purpose it was given. Where as Modi when came to power followed on the footsteps of Manmohan Singh Govt. and it has in the mean time doubled the NPA of Bank so much so that Modi Govt. is contemplating to not to pay customers of the bank their due on maturity but pay in installments. That When Amit Shah says something it is meant to encourage his party leaders and cadres who are at their wits end for the response that people are giving in various elections and both Modi and Amit Shah are one in dividing the community without weighing the consequences. That the Chief Minister of Assam demands NRC in all other states shows that RSS agenda of making India a Hindu Rastra is on.

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