Above the Fold: Top stories of the day
1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his ambitious Digital India project aimed at building better digital infrastructure and delivering services online, while also picking up Rs 4.5 lakh crore in promised investment from India Inc.
2. Landslides in Darjeeling caused by heavy rain have killed 38 people and left another 23 missing, with some parts of the district now difficult to reach.
3. India's most-wanted gangster Dawood Ibrahim once again came close to eliminating his rival Chhota Rajan until someone alerted the latter, according to intelligence intercepts, the Times of India dramatically reports.
The Big Story: King of Good Times
In an interview to the Press Trust of India in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi explained how he could assert that Acche Din, the good times, were here: "Today, after a year, even our opponents have not accused us of bad actions. You tell me, if there is not a single scandal, is this not Achche Din?" That was then, and this is now. The government has been under fire for the last few weeks after a number of its ministers, including the external affairs minister and the chief minister of Rajasthan, have been accused of impropriety. Meanwhile, indications from the economy hardly promise anything to write home about. Have the Acche Din passed us by?
LalitGate is not going anywhere. The Congress might not be certain about how to take on the government in this case – whose resignations to ask for and what to demand – but there is no doubt that the upcoming Parliamentary session is going to circle around this subject, with minimal business being conducted.
Meanwhile, car sales looked weak again in June, with most manufacturers either registering negative growth or marginal numbers, while manufacturing growth also slowed and employment levels remained stagnant. There is some hope on the macroeconomic front, with the deficit in a better place and some positive indicators. But if the government is both being accused of scams and not yet delivering a more robust economy, what are we left with?
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest story
The Modi government has not yet realised that an economy as large as India’s needs time and space to pick up traction. And data indiciates no Acche Din for rural India under the Modi government.
To get Scroll's Daily Fix, a compendium of all you need to know for the day (and a little more) on your phone, download our Android app.
Politicking & Policying
1. LalitGate watch: A leaked email suggesting Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi had offered the husband of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj a position on the board of his company has given the Congress fresh ammunition to go after the Bharatiya Janata Party.
2. The Supreme Court has made it clear to High Courts and trial courts that there can be no concept of "compromise" in rape cases, just a few days after a Madras High Court bench recommend mediation in a rape case.
3. The internal struggle within the Punjab Congress has turned into a contest of whose-rally-is-bigger, as Captain Amarinder Singh and Partap Singh Bajwa seek to gather more supporters around each other through this month.
4. A member of the BJP's erstwhile Economic Cell is at the centre of a small-and-medium enterprises scam unearthed by India's securities market regulator, the Business Standard finds.
5. The Cabinet has okayed a Rs 50,000-crore plan to provide irrigation to every village, as well as the intial process for creating a national common agriculture market.
Punditry
1. A leader in the Business Standard insists that though there are some macroeconomic green shoots for India, infrastructure and the viability of public sector banks remain two of the biggest obstacles India must overcome before it can breathe easy.
2. Shuchi Bansal at Mint writes about the massive database that the BJP has collected and what it hopes to do with all those details.
3. Human Rights Advocate Christine Mehta writes in the Hindu of how she was deported from India, ostensibly for writing about the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Jammu and Kashmir.
4. Rollo Romig in the New York Times asks what happens when a state, in this case India's Tamil Nadu, is run by movie stars.
Don't Miss
Nayantara Narayanan points out an absolutely horrifying fact: Nearly all of our water is contaminated by sewage.
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1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his ambitious Digital India project aimed at building better digital infrastructure and delivering services online, while also picking up Rs 4.5 lakh crore in promised investment from India Inc.
2. Landslides in Darjeeling caused by heavy rain have killed 38 people and left another 23 missing, with some parts of the district now difficult to reach.
3. India's most-wanted gangster Dawood Ibrahim once again came close to eliminating his rival Chhota Rajan until someone alerted the latter, according to intelligence intercepts, the Times of India dramatically reports.
The Big Story: King of Good Times
In an interview to the Press Trust of India in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi explained how he could assert that Acche Din, the good times, were here: "Today, after a year, even our opponents have not accused us of bad actions. You tell me, if there is not a single scandal, is this not Achche Din?" That was then, and this is now. The government has been under fire for the last few weeks after a number of its ministers, including the external affairs minister and the chief minister of Rajasthan, have been accused of impropriety. Meanwhile, indications from the economy hardly promise anything to write home about. Have the Acche Din passed us by?
LalitGate is not going anywhere. The Congress might not be certain about how to take on the government in this case – whose resignations to ask for and what to demand – but there is no doubt that the upcoming Parliamentary session is going to circle around this subject, with minimal business being conducted.
Meanwhile, car sales looked weak again in June, with most manufacturers either registering negative growth or marginal numbers, while manufacturing growth also slowed and employment levels remained stagnant. There is some hope on the macroeconomic front, with the deficit in a better place and some positive indicators. But if the government is both being accused of scams and not yet delivering a more robust economy, what are we left with?
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest story
The Modi government has not yet realised that an economy as large as India’s needs time and space to pick up traction. And data indiciates no Acche Din for rural India under the Modi government.
To get Scroll's Daily Fix, a compendium of all you need to know for the day (and a little more) on your phone, download our Android app.
Politicking & Policying
1. LalitGate watch: A leaked email suggesting Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi had offered the husband of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj a position on the board of his company has given the Congress fresh ammunition to go after the Bharatiya Janata Party.
2. The Supreme Court has made it clear to High Courts and trial courts that there can be no concept of "compromise" in rape cases, just a few days after a Madras High Court bench recommend mediation in a rape case.
3. The internal struggle within the Punjab Congress has turned into a contest of whose-rally-is-bigger, as Captain Amarinder Singh and Partap Singh Bajwa seek to gather more supporters around each other through this month.
4. A member of the BJP's erstwhile Economic Cell is at the centre of a small-and-medium enterprises scam unearthed by India's securities market regulator, the Business Standard finds.
5. The Cabinet has okayed a Rs 50,000-crore plan to provide irrigation to every village, as well as the intial process for creating a national common agriculture market.
Punditry
1. A leader in the Business Standard insists that though there are some macroeconomic green shoots for India, infrastructure and the viability of public sector banks remain two of the biggest obstacles India must overcome before it can breathe easy.
2. Shuchi Bansal at Mint writes about the massive database that the BJP has collected and what it hopes to do with all those details.
3. Human Rights Advocate Christine Mehta writes in the Hindu of how she was deported from India, ostensibly for writing about the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Jammu and Kashmir.
4. Rollo Romig in the New York Times asks what happens when a state, in this case India's Tamil Nadu, is run by movie stars.
Don't Miss
Nayantara Narayanan points out an absolutely horrifying fact: Nearly all of our water is contaminated by sewage.
The effects of this contamination are immediately felt with the onset of the monsoons. No sooner had the rains begun this year than reports of water-borne diseases like diarrhea and cholera breakouts trickled in from Delhi, Pune, Varanasi and Chennai as broken water pipes and flooding allowed fecal sludge mix into potable water. The story repeats every year as broken sewage systems across the country keep leaking.