Taiwan to assist India in accessing global business chains

With the new BJP-led dispensation in New Delhi looking to revive growth sentiment and boost investor confidence, partnering with countries that can help jump-start the reform process has become a priority. Taiwan with its dynamic manufacturing sector is one such country.

In a candid conversation with Reema Sharma of Zee Media Corp, Representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, Ambassador Chung Kwang Tien, shares his views on India’s growth potential and its bilateral relationship with Taiwan

Govt criticises Goldman Sachs for forecasting Narendra Modi’s victory in 2014 elections

 
Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: American multinational investment banking firm Goldman Sachs’ recent note on optimism over political change in India has irked Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma.

The Commerce Minister in an interview to a business daily said that the investment banking firm should concentrate upon “doing what they claim to specialise in”.

Goldman is parading its ignorance about the basic facts of Indian economy; and it also exposes its eagerness to mess around with India's domestic politics,” said Sharma.

Goldman Sachs had noted expectations that the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, led by prime minister candidate Narendra Modi, could prevail in parliamentary elections due by May 2014.

The firm had also upgraded its view on India to "marketweight", with a target for the Nifty of 6,900 points.

Goldman noted that external capital account pressures have moderated for now, and cites signs of a cyclical pick-up and structural improvements in the economy.

How to make Narendra Modi PM, Web masters at work

The Congress polled about 11 crore votes to win the 2009 general election decisively. In 2014, when the country votes again, it will have more than 14 crore mobile Internet users alone.
That’s a thought for pause. And that’s the thought that Narendra Modi seized upon at a BJP office-bearers’ meeting in Delhi on April 7 to underline how the 2014 polls could be won — on the Internet. Two months later, after being named the BJP’s campaign committee chief, he told a Maharashtra core group meeting that there were 165 Lok Sabha seats where social media could be used to enhance the campaign pitch.
That thought has since then fructified into an Information and Communication sub-committee headed by Rajya Sabha MP Piyush Goyal, as part of the panels set up by the BJP on July 19 to look after various aspects of its poll campaign. The sub-committee in turn is helped by the party’s IT cell, with an alumnus of IIT-BHU, Arvind Gupta, as convenor, and a Communication (or Samvad) Cell, headed by an MBA degree holder from IIFT (Indian Institute of Foreign Trade), Anupam Trivedi.
The BJP’s IT drive includes a third arm outside the party fold: Rajesh Jain. An IIT-Bombay alumnus and one of the original IT entrepreneurs turned venture capitalists and serial entrepreneurs, he is working as a volunteer for the party.
“Rajesh, Arvind and Anupam are the three pillars of my Information and Communication sub-committee,” says Piyush Goyal.
While Gupta and his team look after digital and social media platforms, Trivedi’s men work on content development. Jain and his self-initiated team handle IT-enabled election management down to the booth level.
If anyone had doubts about how thorough this work was, Jain effectively removed these at a meeting in the Capital on August 18, according to those present. Asked to make a presentation before a gathering of BJP central office-bearers, state unit chiefs and state organisation secretaries, Jain took up former deputy chief minister of Bihar Sushil Modi as an example, used a software tool that crawls through the Election Commission’s database of electoral rolls, identified the BJP leader’s polling booth, then

Modi, Advani share dais at Bhopal rally

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tried to put up a show of togetherness at a massive rally in Bhopal, where Narendra Modi was the star. The rally was the first to have party patriarch L K Advani share the dais with Modi, who seemed to do all the right things by referring to Advani as the BJP’s guiding light and publicly touching his feet (although almost as an afterthought, after seeing Shivraj Singh Chouhan doing so). Elsewhere, squabbles within the BJP broke out over the question of its allies, suggesting the road to forming a government at the Centre was not easy.

In his speech, Advani referred to the power sector reforms pioneered by Modi that ensured 24-hour power supply, a model then followed by other BJP-ruled states including Madhya Pradesh. He said on all indices of governance, the BJP-ruled states had stolen a march over others. Recalling the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee formed the government at the Centre in coalition with many parties and that BJP came to power in many states under a similar arrangement, Advani said no other party can challenge BJP’s performance and track record.
“In the coming assembly and Lok Sabha elections, we will win on the basis of the record of the BJP and NDA. No other party can compare with BJP or NDA... It is our achievements, which will fetch a victory for us. We will not win elections merely on the basis of speeches but on the basis of the performance, leadership, achievements and the work done by us,” he said.

Party president Rajnath Singh said BJP workers and sympathisers had been booked under the specious charge of Hindu terrorism and harassed. Singh, who spoke after Advani, said: “Modi can become the Prime Minister of the country and Chouhan the chief minister in Madhya Pradesh only if the worker of the BJP at booth level works hard.”

Party leader Uma Bharti also sought the blessings of the people to make Chouhan the chief minister and Modi “the destiny-maker of the nation”.

The rally was largely a congregation of party workers, called Karyakarta Mahakumbh.

Modi also shared his concerns about the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). He said the Centre would not hesitate to use the CBI against political rivals, so the BJP needed to be conscious of this. Modi’s remarks were in the context of the case against former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah for his role in fake encounters after former DIG D G Vanzara turned against Modi and Shah.

Asking workers to make India ‘Congress-free’, Modi said: “I throw a challenge to Congress leaders: that they may choose any tactics in the coming polls but India’s voters will pay them back for each of their misdeeds during the last 10 years.”

In his typical style, he said during the United Progressive Alliance’s regime, there was a scam for every letter of the alphabet. If one were to count the money that the UPA-led government had siphoned off from the average Indian, the counting would start from Bhopal and end at Jan Path in Delhi (residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi), he added.

“Mahatma Gandhi wanted to dismantle Congress after Independence, but the party did not honour his wish. We will have to work to make his dream come true and rid the country of the Congress party”, he said amid wild applause.

While ‘togetherness’ was the theme of the Bhopal rally, in Andhra Pradesh, the party unit sounded the bugle of rebellion when it rejected the overtures being made to Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu.

BJP’s Andhra unit president Kishan Reddy said the TDP was a ‘sinking ship’ and the BJP would make sure there would be no alliance with it. “If necessary, I will go to Delhi and explain why the alliance will hurt the BJP,” Reddy said in Hyderabad.

Modi said: “Congress harps on inclusive growth but one must know that the term had come out of BJP-ruled states like Madhya Pradesh where leaders like Chouhan have done tremendous work for the poorest of the poor. Those state governments that are working in the interest of the poor in country either belong to BJP or are part of the NDA. It doesn't suit them (UPA) to talk about inclusive growth.”

 

But while togetherness was the theme of this rally, in Andhra Pradesh the BJP unit sounded the bugle of rebellion when it rejected the overtures being made to Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu.

 

BJP AP unit President Kishan Reddy said the TDP was a sinking ship and the BJP would make sure there would be no alliance with it. “If necessary, I will go to delhi and explain why the alliance will hurt the BJP” reddy said in Hyderabad, putting the TDP leaders’ back up immediately.

Social media not a game changer in 2014 elections

 
By Aditya Kalra and David Lalmalsawma
Political parties in India are relying more on social media ahead of the 2014 election as a way of increasing voter support, even though politicians in general do not expect such efforts to significantly influence election results.
Parties are trying to ride the digital wave by conducting workshops to teach leaders and foot soldiers how to improve engagement on websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The country of 1.2 billion people had around 165 million Internet users as of March, the third-largest in the world, according to data from India’s telecommunications regulator. But the number of social media users is likely to grow to about 80 million by mid-2014, a report released in February said.
For the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s main opposition party, social media is helping as an “accelerator” in conveying their messages to the public.
“I don’t call it a game changer, but an accelerator in this election … it’s definitely setting a narrative, it is influencing a lot of people,” Arvind Gupta, head of the BJP’s IT division, said in an interview.
by research group IRIS Knowledge Foundation and the Internet and Mobile Association of India said social media could have a “high impact” on 160 of the 543 constituencies in the next election, and no contestant could afford to ignore this medium. The study said 316 constituencies will have “low” or “no impact”.
Congress minister Shashi Tharoor, who has more than 1.9 million Twitter followers, cautions against overstating the effect of social media.
“I think it can be a game influencer, but I wouldn’t go beyond that at this stage … social media happens to offer an additional way, not a substitute for any of the traditional means of campaigning,” Tharoor, one of the earliest adopters of Twitter in Indian politics, said in an interview.
(Also read: An interview with Tharoor on social media plans of Congress and the digital presence of the Gandhis)
For years, election campaigns in India have been designed around public rallies, popular welfare schemes and print, television or radio advertising. Digital efforts have only recently made it to the list.
Costly personal computers and a largely rural population meant lower Internet penetration in India, but the user base has been growing at a rapid pace as markets are now flooded with cheaper smartphones and tablets.
Politicians are learning the potential of the online medium, which already plays a big role in election campaigns in countries such as the United States.
Other than Twitter and Facebook, leaders in recent months have used platforms such as Google Hangout to connect with the public, with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram among the early adopters.
Modi, who is also the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for 2014, is among India’s famous social media celebrities with 4.4 million Facebook ‘likes’ and 2.3 million Twitter followers.
While BJP leaders such as Modi and president Rajnath Singh are on Twitter, top Congress leaders such as Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, seen as the PM-choice-in-waiting, are not.
In recent years, Tharoor says he has encouraged Rahul Gandhi to try Twitter, but the 43-year-old Congress vice-president hasn’t shown interest.
“There’s no doubt to my mind that both the Gandhis tend to be fairly reticent when it comes to projecting themselves individually; they prefer to let their work talk for them,” Tharoor said.

5 reasons why stock markets think Modi is good for them

 
Shishir Asthana in Mumbai

Narendra Modi's elevation as BJP’s candidate for prime minister’s post was officially announced post market hours on Friday. However, by noon it was already clear that his name would be announced by evening.
Some expected the market to react to the event but it did not. And it is unlikely that it will, for the simple reason that he is not the prime minister, yet. Having said that, many in the markets and Corporate India world prefer to see him over anyone else as the next prime minister of the country.
We look at some of the reasons quoted by the market and why it senses a bullish undertone in Modi’s candidature announcement.
A survey carried out by ET CEOs Confidence before Modi’s candidature was announced suggested that an overwhelming three-fourths of the 100 CEO’s surveyed prefer Modi as the next prime minister.
Rahul Gandhi bagged to get votes of only seven CEOs.
Corporate India has been at the receiving end of ‘policy paralysis’. The report says CEOs have voted for a strong leadership, intent, decision and action, which Modi has demonstrated in Gujarat. Rahul Gandhi has no such claims to his name.

Survey shows India Inc firmly in Modi camp

 
Subhadip Sircar and Suvashree Dey Choudhury in Mumbai

Nearly three-quarters of Indian business leaders believe the government has mismanaged the economy and want opposition leader Narendra Modi to lead the country after an election due by May next year, according to an opinion poll published on Friday.
With India's 80-year-old Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expected to step aside, only 7 per cent of 100 chief executive officers surveyed for the Economic Times/Nielsen poll backed the ruling Congress party's Rahul Gandhi for the premiership.
Rahul represents the fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has led Congress, and India, for much of the time since independence from Britain in 1947. His late father, grandmother and great-grandfather were all prime ministers.
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Image: Gujarat's chief minister Narendra Modi (L) and Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Group, embrace as Ratan Tata, chairman Emeritus of Tata group, looks on during the inauguration ceremony of the Vibrant Gujarat global investor summit at Gandhinagar in the western Indian state of Gujarat.