India election: Modi's report card
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has secured another five-year term after winning a landslide general election victory. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks set to win about 300 of the 543 seats in parliament, in what Mr Modi hailed as "a historic mandate". Fergus Nicoll has travelled to Mr Modi’s constituency at Varanasi on the River Ganges in Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Modi promised to clean up the river after decades of pollution. Professor VN Mishra has strong words for the Prime Minister on what needs to be done to save the river and modernise an outdated sewerage system. Outside the city, we meet the farmers for whom Modi has created a model village, complete with solar-powered street lights - and the farmers who are about to lose their fields to a big truck park. There are hundreds of thousands of workers who have concluded that their best prospects lie abroad, most often in the Gulf. It is a mixed prospect, with the promise of money to send back home, but prolonged absences can bring great strain to families Stephen Ryan speaks to Professor Irudaya Rajan, Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum, the lawyer and writer Smitha Girish whose husband has lived in Dubai for the last 15 years, and VK Mathews, who set up his own business when he returned to India. (Picture: Voters lined up at a polling station in Varanasi, India. Picture credit: Madanmohan Sharma)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the BBC's Business Daily on the first day of Narendra Modi's new mandate as the nation's prime minister. |
| 0:07.2 | His Baratirjanitor party and its allies together making up the National Democratic Alliance |
| 0:12.2 | now have an even more commanding majority in the Lakh Sabha, the lower house of parliament, than they did during his first term. |
| 0:20.0 | This is Fergus Nicol and in a moment we'll hear from Mr Modi's constituency at Varanasi on the |
| 0:25.5 | River Ganges and meet the farmers in Uttapradesh for whom he's created a model village. |
| 0:31.3 | Also, India's remittance workers will hear what happens back home when a family member spends |
| 0:36.6 | as long as 15 years away in the Gulf. |
| 0:40.0 | Guelphan's wife has to do the job of a husband and that of a wife. |
| 0:45.0 | She has to attend many functions for husband. |
| 0:47.9 | She has to manage money. |
| 0:49.4 | She has to do everything maintenance work. |
| 0:52.0 | She has to bring up children. |
| 0:56.3 | And everything she has to do alone. |
| 1:05.5 | If you want to assess the moody phenomenon here in India, his own constituency isn't a bad place to start. So we travelled to the city of Varanasi on the bank of the river Ganges in the enormous and politically vital state of Uttipadesh. |
| 1:14.1 | We'll get to the key question, |
| 1:15.8 | what has Narendra Modi ever done for us in a moment? |
| 1:19.4 | But when you get to Varanasi, |
| 1:21.1 | it's impossible not to be immersed in its deep religious significance. |
| 1:41.3 | Well, the sun has just set, and here at the Dasha Shwamed Gat, a huge platform on the bank of the river, the Ganga Arti is underway. |
| 1:54.4 | Seven young priests from a local temple are going through a mesmerizing series of carefully choreographed ritual |
| 2:03.5 | offerings or pojahs of incense, marigold petals and fire. And they're making these offerings |
| 2:11.7 | to Mother Ganges. |
... |
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