The Modi delusion is still very much intact

Ravi Menon, gulfnews.com

No one can take away the Indian prime minister’s persistent efforts to bring capital into India

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Excerpt:

The print media in the United Kingdom covered Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit extensively, except for the BBC, for which, perhaps, the horrific Paris attacks posed programming challenges.

What is worth scrutiny, however, is Cameron’s slavish praise of Modi and his ringing endorsement of the “achhe din” (better days) slogan that has lost much of its lustre in India. ...

[T]his ...forces us to question our understanding of public diplomacy or at least the traditionalist’s view of it. When has it become de rigueur to so blatantly engineer a state visit by the host country’s ruling establishment purely to bolster its standing with its minority community interests? More than 1.2 million people of Indian origin live in the UK and the Labour Party has traditionally had a strong hold on it despite some selected senior members’ support of other Asian interests in the UK that are inimical to India, particularly immigrants from Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s Mirpur district.

Now the Tories want a piece of the action . ...