BORIS’S DAY OUT
🍾 WHAT: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has concluded his two-day trip to India today, having signed commercial deals worth over £1 billion in areas from software engineering to health.
🇮🇳 BORIS LEARNS: During his visit to the Gandhi ashram in Sabarmati, the British PM was amazed to learn about the Salt Satyagraha—for the very first time. He reportedly asked the accompanying British High Commissioner, “Did we impose a tax on salt?” When he received an answer in the affirmative, Johnson said, “Quite astonishing”.
☀️ SIGNED: Deals signed over the last two days will generate 11,000 jobs in the UK alone.
🇬🇧 UK will provide support for new Indian-designed-and-built fighter jets + help India with the tech to identify and respond to threats in the Indian Ocean.
🤖 A digital health partnership and a joint investment fund for Indian deep-tech and AI start-ups.
🧬 UK and India will build a virtual Hydrogen Science and Innovation hub to accelerate affordable green hydrogen.
🍱 British online food delivery company Deliveroo will set up its largest technology hub outside of the UK in Hyderabad.
🗑 British climate tech firm Carbon Masters will implement a waste management project in Bengaluru.
🏍 Chennai-based TVS Motor Company will invest £100 million in British brand Norton Motorcycle.
💰 Byju’s, Microlabs, MPhasis and TVS Supply Chain Solutions will invest a total of £34 million in the UK, individually.
😬 FYI: Johnson made only passing references to Russia talking about the “growing threats from autocratic states”. Ahead of the trip, he had said he does not plan to lecture PM Modi on India’s on-the-fence stand on Russia’s war.
‘UNACCEPTABLE IN FOUR CORNERS OF DEMOCRACY’
▪️ CONTEXT: Student activist Umar Khalid was arrested in Sep 2020 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and has been in custody since then. He has been accused of hatching a conspiracy to incite the Feb 2020 Delhi riots. The FIR against him was filed on the basis on a speech he gave at Amravati the month the riots broke out.
👂 TODAY: The Delhi HC is hearing his bail plea, which was rejected by a sessions court on March 24.
🗯 ON THE RECORD: When Khalid’s lawyer was reading out said speech, the court stopped him midway and asked: “These expressions being used, don’t you think they incite people? “You don’t think ‘jab aapke purvaj angrezo ki dalali kar rahe the [when your ancestors were acting as agents of the British]’ is offensive? This is obnoxious…Prime facie, this speech is not acceptable in four corners of democracy and free speech.”
🗓 WHAT NOW: Next hearing on April 27.
▪️ RELATED: On March 16, Khalid’s co-accused in the case, Gulfisha Fatima and Tasleem Ahmed, were also denied bail.
🔺 Two days earlier, the trial court granted the first bail in the case to former councillor Ishrat Jahan, going against UAPA rules prohibiting bail to terror accused.
📍(UN)RELATED: Yati Narsinghanand, who has twice given hateful, provocative speeches against Muslims while out on bail (in another hate speech case) remains out.
PROBLEM OF PLENTY
💉 WHAT: Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla reiterated his call for lowering the vaccination gap for booster doses to six months from the present nine months—and insisted it had nothing to do with the money he’d make from the sale of Covishield.
🗯 ON THE RECORD: “My point is that we can’t put a price tag on the life of a person be it an adult or a child. So, taking decisions on time as we did during the second wave is the need of the hour...But, unfortunately for the key people who are supposed to be taking decisions on time, the committees supposed to be meeting on time, it seems there is no urgency any longer. The momentum of the past that brought us so far here is lost…It seems for them, it’s business as usual.”
🎙 WHERE: The Indian economic conclave organised by Times Network
😬 DATA POINT: Poonawalla also said, currently, SII was sitting over 200 million unused vials of Covishield—despite a massive slash in prices—amid a global supply gut, rising vaccine fatigue, and slow policy-making.
🗑 So much so, Poonawalla shut down production on Dec 31, 2021 to avoid waste. He also said he’s offered to give free donations to whoever wanted to take it.
(FAR) RIGHT AT HOME
❗️CONTEXT: Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is neck and neck with incumbent centrist Emmanuel Macron in the race for the French Presidency. The first round of voting earlier this month showed Macron leading with a margin so slim, it’s within the margin of error. The final round of voting on April 24.
🇫🇷 ABOUT LE PEN: Euro-skeptic, anti-immigrant French leader who had earlier pledged to leave NATO.
🇷🇺 She’s pro-Putin. If she wins, she will replace Macron, who has somewhat of a privileged relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin as evidenced by direct and critical calls between the two men since Russia invaded Ukraine.
💵 FYI: Le Pen’s National Rally party borrowed $12.2 million from a Russian bank in 2014. The loan was never repaid, the bank collapsed and is now held by a company with ties to the Russian military.
📌 THERE’S MORE: Le Pen has been a strong supporter of Putin for many years, even approving of his annexation of Crimea in 2014.
HAPPY EARTH DAY!
#ARTTHERAPY
TO END THE WEEK
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