Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that his country is willing to address the current trade imbalance with Uganda.

“If I compare India-Uganda trade ties, I can see that we are in a win-win situation,” Modi said while addressing the Uganda-India Business Forum here.

“But we are falling short and to correct that we need to strategize,” he said.

Stating that Ugandan President is right in saying that there is trade imbalance between India and Uganda, the Prime Minister said: “India is willing to take steps to address the trade deficit between India and Uganda.”

He exhorted the business community to fully exploit the favourable conditions for doing business between India and Uganda.

“India is ready to work with Uganda in the fields of capacity building, human resource development, skill development, innovation and also in adding value to the abundant natural resources available in this country,” Modi stated.

He also stressed on innovation saying that without this the world cannot go ahead.

“Uganda can go ahead if the youth of Uganda and India work together,” he said, adding that the East African country can play an important role in the overall development of Africa.

On his part, Museveni, while exhorting the business community from both countries to tap the opportunities available for enhancing trade and investment, said: “You are in the right place in the right time.”

Modi arrived here on Tuesday from Rwanda on the second leg of his five-day, three-nation tour of Africa that will also take him to South Africa.

This is the first Prime Ministerial visit from India to Uganda in over 20 years.

For Modi, this is his second visit to this East African nation after his visit in 2007 as Gujarat Chief Minister.

Two of the three blockades, built on water diversion conduits by the Karnataka government along the Mhadei river, have been removed and water is already being diverted from the Mhadei river to the Malaprabha river basin in the Southern State, Water Resources Minister Vinod Palienkar said on Wednesday.

“The rear end of the conduit was checked and it was observed that water was flowing through two of the three conduits… The issue is being taken very seriously and an application will be presented before the Tribunal immediately,” Palienkar told the state assembly while replying to a Calling Attention Motion moved by Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo and Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Rajesh Patnekar.

The contempt petition will be filed on Friday, Palienkar said.

“We are taking up the issue. We know the seriousness and any government will try to defend its own position… We have to protect our state’s interest,” Parrikar said, adding that it was irrelevant whether the Congress or the BJP was in power in Karnataka.

Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra are currently battling a dispute over the controversial Kalsa-Bhandura dam project across the Mhadei river at a central Tribunal.

Mhadei or the Mandovi river is known as a lifeline in the northern parts of the State. It originates in Karnataka and meets the Arabian Sea in Panaji in Goa, while briefly flowing through the territory of Maharashtra.

Seventy-eight per cent of the basin of the Mhadei river lies in Goa, while 42.79 per cent of the basin is located in Karnataka, and a small portion is located in Maharashtra.

Karnataka also plans to build seven dams at various points along the river, including at Kalsa village, to divert the flow to the “water-starved” Malaprabha basin in North Karnataka.

Following heading from the former chief minister and Badami MLA Siddaramaiah, a government official has been suspended for dilapidation of duty by the state government on Tuesday, July 24.

The state government on Tuesday, July 24 ordered the suspension of Venkatesh Nayak, from his service as an assistant engineer of drinking water department.

On July 18, Siddaramaiah amid KDP meeting sought for data of execution of local authorities in the region. Amid the meeting, Siddaramaiah learned that the official was not performing his duty efficiently. Thus, he quickly called CEO Vikas Suralkar and ordered to suspend him.

It is learned that 163 water purification units out of 165 were not working. When Siddaramaiah looked for a response for the same and took the official to task.

The official requested not to suspend for his negligence. However, Siddaramaiah ordered for his suspension and furthermore cautioned of strict action against the officials for dereliction of duty.

Given the election calendar, Congress now needs to continuously ensure Rahul Gandhi stays front and center in national attention as a credible political figure. Here’s an irony: when it’s easy for Gandhi to appear credible, it’s thanks to BJP, when it’s tough for him to do so, it’s thanks to Congress. And, further irony, the impact of the second outweighs that of the first.

The weekend following Friday’s parliamentary debate saw Rahul Gandhi chairing his first Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, and yet another terrible lynching incident, this time in Alwar, Rajasthan. CWC let everyone know that in the event Congress commands the most number of seats in general elections, Gandhi will be applying for the PM’s job. You can hardly get more underwhelming than this when trying to market a potential prime ministerial figure.

The statement betrayed the well-recognized reality that Congress is in absolutely no position to (a) command anything close to a national electoral majority, and (b) ensure fealty from regional political overlords whom it seeks as allies. Congress, or Gandhi, at this point, doesn’t seem to have a story that can lift him — or, at least, appear to lift him — above this brute reality.
The Alwar tragedy, in contrast, afforded Gandhi a ready platform to critique BJP and Narendra Modi. Congress’ president appears more convincing when he takes on BJP leaders for their inability and/or unwillingness to respond in time and adequately to Alwar-like incidents.

Think back to Gandhi’s no-confidence motion speech in the Lok Sabha. He appeared more convincing when he positioned himself and his party against what he described as BJP’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to the uglier manifestations of majoritarian politics. In contrast, when he listed those jumps, supposed to be a critique of the Modi government’s performance, Gandhi’s own performance was tepid.

That tepidness comes from a fundamental weakness in Gandhi’s and his party’s politics: neither he nor Congress has anything close to an alternative policy vision that challenges Modi-led BJP’s.

Build a Better Mousetrap
In an earlier comment in these pages, we had argued that Modi needs a new narrative if he’s to lead BJP to another majority in general elections ( Read here). The PM’s speech didn’t give enough evidence that he’s started fashioning such a story. But he has the political talent and just about enough time to execute a major rewrite.
Gandhi is nowhere near as talented as a politician, and given that Congress has done little to brand-differentiate itself from BJP on policy, there may be very little time. That’s why Congress is a weak point for Gandhi when he tries to come across as a credible political challenger.

One can, of course, appreciate Congress’ difficulties. On policy, Modi-led BJP has frequently repackaged and relaunched a bunch of Congress ideas and reworked a traditional Congress political economic approach to making it appear grander.

Modi’s message is that he’s for high welfare spending for the poor and against iniquitous behavior by the rich. That used to be a default Congress message. Congress’ messaging, and indeed policy execution, was poorer than Modi’s is. But the fact remains, Modi has cleverly repackaged a largely Congress story and basically left Congress with no story.

Gandhi’s and his party’s policy critiques consist of carping about execution and results. GST could have been better implemented. More jobs should have been created. Growth should have been faster. China could have been better handled.

All of that, at some level, is true. But they don’t tell voters what Congress wants to do sharply differently. True, Congress’ performance bar for next general elections is set lower than BJP’s. Modi is seriously aiming for nothing less than another majority. Congress will be beside itself if it gets around 130 — provided anti-BJP, non-Congress parties get enough to start talking about government formation.

But even with this lower bar, Congress’ lack of an alternative policy story is a serious weakness in part because it makes the man Congress wants to project as a prime ministerial candidate appear less credible.

Aren’t their votes in Congress’ critique of BJP’s inadequate responses to Alwar-like incidents? Especially because Gandhi looks more convincing when he takes on BJP in this fashion? It’s by no means certain that there will be a counter-reaction from a sizeable section of Hindu voters to past and future Alwars.

Voters mostly dislike law and order breakdowns and punish incumbents. But awful incidents like the last weekend’s haven’t, in their cumulative impact on perception, coalesced into a popular feeling that BJP can’t be trusted to maintain order. If that remains the case, Congress will receive limited electoral dividends from BJP’s anemic responses to Alwars.

Who Moved My Cheese?
So, maybe, while BJP knows that every time it doesn’t confront an Alwar head-on, it makes Gandhi look better.

It also knows that’s not enough for Gandhi and Congress. And, perhaps, BJP reckons there are dividends to be earned from their current approach. Of course, in a volatile democracy like ours, there’s no iron-clad guarantee that future Alwars won’t change public perception about BJP and maintaining order.

But unless that happens, Rahul Gandhi will be handicapped by a double irony.

The BJP on Monday attacked Congress President Rahul Gandhi for his remarks on the ‘secrecy pact’ in the Rafale deal, calling him irresponsible for “misleading Parliament” and for dragging French President Emmanuel Macron into the matter.

It also advised Rahul Gandhi to “do homework and improve understanding” of India’s foreign policy and security issues.

“Rahul Gandhi is irresponsible; he makes false statements in Parliament. He was irresponsible on two fronts: First, by saying there was no confidential agreement (between India and France on the Rafale fighter jet deal); and second, by dragging French President into an internal political debate,” Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.

“This is unfortunate. I have often said that Rahul Gandhi needs to improve his homework. Now I have to add that his understanding of (Indian) foreign policy and national security and strategic concerns also need to be upgraded,” Prasad said.

During the no-confidence debate in Parliament on July 20, Gandhi had said that there was no secrecy pact on the Rafale deal, alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had “lied” to the nation” about it.

“I met the French President and asked him if there was a secrecy pact with India. He told me that no such pact was signed between the two countries. He said that he had no hesitation in saying this and that I can tell this to my country,” Gandhi had said.

Prasad said that the Congress was worried over the “transparent and honest” functioning of the BJP-led government and was hence making allegations about the Rafale deal.

“We can say with complete responsibility that Rahul Gandhi clearly misled the house when he said that there was no confidentiality agreement. His reference to the French President’s conversation was formally denied the same day by the French government,” the Minister said.

He added that sensitive armed forces operations can’t be made public, a fact which was acknowledged in Parliament by A.K. Antony and Pranab Mukherjee, both Ministers in the then UPA government.

A Goa BJP spokesperson on Monday called Congress President Rahul Gandhi a “loafer” for winking in Parliament, a day after the state Congress chief called Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar a “kathputli” (puppet) for bowing to unreasonable demands of ruling coalition allies in the coastal state.

“Rahul Gandhi, who does not have substance or the understanding of issues related to the people of India, had to resort to hugging the Prime Minister in the temple of democracy and then winking like a loafer,” said state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Dattaprasad Naik in a press statement.

“We have only heard of loafers winking at girls in colleges in the past and never such a shameful act has ever happened in the temple of democracy,” Naik said, adding that the Congress party had become a “kathputli” in the hands of Gandhi family.

Naik said state Congress president Girish Chodankar had forgotten that even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a puppet in the hands of then Congress president Sonia Gandhi and that all Goa Congress presidents in the past were “kathputlis” in the hands of the Congress high command.

On Sunday, the state’s top Congress leader, Chodankar in a press conference had said: “The Chief Minister has been reduced to string puppet by alliance partners like Goa Forward, whose leader Vijai Sardesai has tried to save those behind the fish mafia, after formalin was found in fish imported into Goa from other states by rogue fish traders. Hundreds of thousands of Goans love their fish thali. The government has put the fish thali in peril”.

US-based Altair Engineering plans to open a design innovation center in Karnataka’s Hubballi town with a private university to benefit locals in using software tools and become industry ready, said a top company official on Monday.

“Industry-academia tie-up to benefit students from technologies and tools making them industry ready,” Altair India Managing Director Pavan Kumar told reporters here.

The center will be housed in the sprawling KLE Technological University campus, run by BJP’s Rajya Sabha member Prabhakar Kore.

“The objective of the center is to develop competency on commercial finite element analysis (FEA) software of Altair called Hyper-Works,” said Kumar.

The center, which will help in providing skilled power to Altair customers worldwide, will also provide the university’s undergraduate and post-graduate students license to work on Altair technology.

“The Altair-KLE partnership will produce future ready engineers for the industry across the country,” said Kumar.

Varsity Vice-Chancellor Ashok Shettar said collaboration with Altair would expose the students to technologies and tools and make them industry-ready.

“Collaboration with Altair will help us to expose our students to industry relevant technologies and tools making them industry-ready,” he said.

The Troy-based Altair in Michigan state transforms design and decision making by applying simulation, machine learning and optimization through product life cycles.

“Our portfolio of simulation technology and patented units-based software licensing model enable simulation-driven innovation for our customers,” added Kumar.