Karnataka Dy CM Shivakumar urges Centre's support as Maharashtra objects to Alamatti dam height increase
While addressing a press conference at Vidhana Soudha, DK Shivakumar said, 'As per the Krishna Tribunal's order, Karnataka can increase the height of the Alamatti dam to 524 meters. Maharashtra, who was quiet when the order was pronounced, suddenly wrote a letter to our CM objecting to it. I appeal to all the Union Ministers and MPs with folded hands to protect the state's interest in this.'
Shivakumar said that Fadnavis wrote a letter to Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah on May 9 stating that the Sangli and Kolhapur districts would face flooding if the dam's height is raised.
He added, 'Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis has written a letter to our CM Siddaramaiah on May 9, raising objections to increasing the height of the Alamatti dam. Stating that Sangli and Kolhapur districts would face flooding if the dam's height is raised, the letter has asked for the re-evaluation of the plan. This letter is a shock to us. Maharashtra had never objected to this project till now. They had not raised any issues when the Tribunal passed its judgement in 2010. Maharashtra had even submitted an affidavit to the Tribunal seeking to increase the height, but it is opposing it all of a sudden.'
He said that CM Siddaramaiah will reply to the Maharashtra CM's letter.
'This project is our right, as accorded by the Krishna Tribunal. Our CM will give a reply to the letter from the Maharashtra CM. Union Minister V Somanna is part of Union Jal Shakthi ministry. Alamatti project is needed for the state, we don't want friction with our neighbouring state. The cost escalation is very due to delay in this project. We would need Rs 1 lakh crore for land acquisition for this project,' he said.
Shivakumar said that Karnataka has been waiting for a Gazette notification to increase the height of Alamatti since 2013
'Flooding in Maharashtra is their internal matter, and they need to fix it. We will meet the PM and the Union Jal Shakthi Minister and put pressure regarding this. Karnataka has been waiting for a Gazette notification for increasing the height of Alamatti since 2013. How long should we wait? We will share the letter from the Maharashtra CM and our reply to that with all our MPs,' Shivakumar said. (ANI)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
8 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Posthumous Vir Chakra for 2 BSF soldiers
New Delhi: The Union government on Thursday announced Vir Chakra medals — India's third-highest wartime honour — posthumously to two Border Security Force (BSF) personnel for their heroic act during Operation Sindoor. Additionally, President Droupadi Murmu also approved 16 BSF personnel for the Medal for Gallantry (GM) for their exceptional bravery during India's direct military response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror strike. Posthumous Vir Chakra for 2 BSF soldiers The two BSF men — Sub Inspector Mohammed Imteyaz and Constable Deepak Chingakham — were on duty at border outpost Kharkola in Jammu, barely 200 metres from the International Border, which had come under intense shelling and drone attacks. 'On the intervening night of May 9 and 10, when rogue drones approached the post to drop explosives and guide fire mortar, Constable Chingkham moved along with his post commander, Imteyaz, who was organising his troops to neutralise the drone. A mortar shell exploded, causing injuries to the two personnel along with others,' their Vir Chakra citation said. Despite his critical condition, Chingkham refused evacuation, choosing to remain beside his post commander and continue to fight. 'He crawled unaided to the morcha and held his position,' it said. Imteyaz, despite the serious nature of his injuries, continued to fight the enemy, retaliated, and motivated his troops, the citation said. Vir Charka is a wartime military bravery award and third in precedence after the Param Vir Chakra and Maha Vir Chakra. The government also announced Medal for Gallantry (GM) for 16 BSF personnel for their exceptional bravery during Operation Sindoor, when they shot down enemy drones, rescued injured comrades, supplied ammunition under fire, and destroyed Pakistani posts and surveillance equipment along the border. The citation shared by the government described the acts of the personnel during Operation Sindoor — India's military action on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) in retaliation to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives. Those approved for GM awards are: Assistant Commandants Abhishek Srivastav and Alok Negi, Deputy Commandant Ravindra Rathore, Inspector Devi Lal, Sub Inspector Vyas Dev, Assistant Sub Inspectors Udai Vir Singh and Rajappa BT, Head Constables Brij Mohan Singh and Sahib Singh, and Constables Kanwaraj Singh, Suddi Rabha, Depeswar Barman, Bhupendra Bajpai, Rajan Kumar, Basavaraja Shivappa Sunkada, and Manohar Xalxo. 'This Independence Day, 16 brave Seema Praharis are being awarded Gallantry Medals for their conspicuous bravery and unmatched valour. Their resolute and steadfast actions during Operation Sindoor are a testament to the nation's faith and trust reposed in India's First Line of Defence,' BSF said in a statement.
The Hindu
8 minutes ago
- The Hindu
The Sisyphean quest to bolster manufacturing in India
78 Years of Freedom The Narendra Modi government's quest to bolster the domestic manufacturing sector is not the first time a government has tried this. In fact, the manufacturing sector has been the focus of government policy — in one way or the other — ever since 1956, to relatively modest success. At the time of Independence or thereabouts, the Indian economy looked very different from its current state both in terms of size as well as composition. At the time, agriculture was the overwhelmingly dominant driver of the economy, contributing about half of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as per data with the Reserve Bank of India. The nascent manufacturing sector, on the other hand, made up about 11% of the GDP. Now, the services sector has taken over the dominant role vacated by agriculture, while manufacturing has remained largely where it was. The first Five Year Plan (1951-56) focused on the idea of increasing domestic savings, since it was presumed that higher savings would directly translate into higher investments. This policy, however, ran into a fundamental problem: investments could not materially increase as the country did not have a domestic capital goods producing sector. The second Five Year Plan (1956-61), based on the ideas of PC Mahalanobis, and successive Plans sought to address this by increasing investments in the capital goods producing sectors themselves. The idea was to increase government investment in capital goods production, while the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) would cater to the consumer goods market. As the economist and professor Aditya Bhattacharjea noted in a paper published in Springer Nature: 'With long-run growth being seen as the means for reducing widespread poverty, the model provided an intellectual justification for increasing investments in the capital goods sector of a labour-abundant country.' So, what followed was that growth rates of both investment in and output of the machinery, metals, and chemicals industries outpaced those of consumer goods industries. The Mahalanobis model did not incorporate specific industry-wise policies, but it had a few broad themes that came to characterise India's industrial policy over the country's first three decades since Independence. The first and most obvious theme was the huge role of the public sector. The feeling at the time was — not unlike what the Modi government felt in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — that private sector investment would not be picking up the load for some time, and so the public sector would have to do the heavy lifting. The 1948 Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR) reserved the production of arms and ammunition for the Union government, and new investments in sectors as diverse as iron and steel, aircraft, ships, telephone, telegraph and wireless equipment were kept as the exclusive domain of central public sector enterprises. The 1956 IPR, which came after the historic Avadi session of the Indian National Congress in 1955, expanded the reserved list to 14 sectors. The driving ideology was that the government and the public sector would assume the 'commanding heights' of the economy. The second and equally significant theme of this thought process was the use of licensing as a means to ensure that scarce resources were allocated to priority sectors. Third, the belief was that the domestic industry would need to be protected from international competition, and this protection took the form of high tariffs — something U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have a problem with even today — and import licensing. By 1980, the share of manufacturing in India's GDP had grown to about 16-17%. According to some economists like Pulapre Balakrishnan, the real growth in the manufacturing sector took off from here, and not from the 1991 liberalisation, as is often assumed. This, they said, was due to a few policy changes enacted by the government of the time: allowing up to 25% automatic expansion of licensed capacities, allowing manufacturing licences to be used to produce other items within the same broad industrial category, and significant relaxation of price controls on cement and steel. The 1991 reforms and the resultant end of the 'licence raj', the opening up of the economy to the private sector and international competition further helped things, with the manufacturing sector growing strongly and contributing a steady 15-18% of a rapidly-growing GDP till about 2015. Steep fall That year saw a marked change, however, with the share of manufacturing in GDP consistently falling for the next decade. A major reason for this change was the non-performing assets (NPA) crisis in the banking sector. Profligate lending by banks in the 2009-14 period led to a build-up of bad loans, which came to light in 2015-18 following an Asset Quality Review of the banking sector. Such was the crisis and its fallout that bank lending to large industry virtually dried up. This, coupled with the loan-fuelled over-capacity that had been created during the 2009-14 period meant that companies did not need to invest in additional capacity to meet demand, and could not find adequate credit even if they wanted to invest. Underpinning all of this was the increased reliance on imports from China, which virtually converted large parts of Indian manufacturing into assembly and repackaging units. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic also severely hampered both demand and investments in India. The Modi government's Make in India efforts, thus, could not prevent the share of manufacturing in GDP falling from 15.6% in 2015-16 to 12.6% in 2024-25 — the lowest share in 71 years. Another problem faced by the Modi government, something all previous governments also faced, was that a lot of the reforms to drive manufacturing were needed at the State level. So, while the Union government has put in place the framework for land and labour reforms that could potentially increase the scale of Indian manufacturing, they are held up as most State governments are not cooperating. The services sector, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength on the back of the IT boom. So, where services made up 37% of the GDP in 1950, this grew to 42% by 1996-97. Thereafter, the acceleration was rapid, with the sector now making up nearly 58% of the GDP. So, 78 years after Independence, the manufacturing sector remains an also-ran in India's growth story, despite fervent attempts by government after government. The services sector, on the other hand, has blossomed outside the government's focus.
India.com
8 minutes ago
- India.com
Tariffs, Tantrums And Ego: Ex-Diplomat Explains Why Trump Is Fuming At India
New Delhi: Former diplomat Vikas Swarup says punitive U.S. tariffs on India have a political trigger. He claims President Donald Trump is angry that New Delhi has not acknowledged his self-declared role in defusing tensions with Pakistan after May's military flare-up. A former High Commissioner to Canada and noted author, Swarup spoke to ANI about what he sees as the real reasons for the trade pressure. He says US-India ties remain strategic, while Washington's current relationship with Pakistan is a short-term and tactical deal driven by money. Trump's Reasons Swarup lists two main factors. One is India's presence in BRICS, which Trump views as an anti-American grouping. 'We have to understand why these tariffs have been imposed... One, Trump is not happy with India because we are a member of BRICS... he has got this notion that BRICS is an anti-American alliance which is hell-bent on creating an alternative currency to the dollar... he feels that India should not be a member of the BRICS,' he said. The second is India's refusal to give Trump credit for a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after Operation Sindoor in May. New Delhi has always maintained that the truce was arranged directly between the militaries of both countries at Pakistan's request. Trump has said 'almost 30 times' that he prevented a nuclear disaster in South Asia. 'He is miffed that India has not acknowledged his role; whereas, Pakistan has not only acknowledged his role but has even nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize,' Swarup said. Operation Sindoor Context Operation Sindoor was India's answer to the April Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 civilians. Indian forces struck nine terror hubs in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Over 100 terrorists were killed. Pakistani military and civilian areas were avoided. Swarup says the United States is using tariffs as leverage to push its demands on agriculture, dairy and GM crops. 'This is part of his pressure tactics to get India to sign on the dotted line on the maximalist demands that the United States is making... We have not caved in,' he said. Trump and the Nobel Ambition Swarup describes Trump as a dealmaker who sees himself as a peacemaker. 'Look at the number of conflict situations that he has mediated in... He feels that the biggest one of these was the India and Pakistan one because these two are nuclear powers,' he said. Trump wants to match and surpass Barack Obama, the only U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize while in office. 'He has made no secret of his longing for that Nobel Peace Prize. He is hoping that if he could not get it for these, if he is able to bring about a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, then that might be his ticket,' Swarup said. Pakistan's US Access Swarup says India is not responsible for Washington's recent lean toward Islamabad. He credits Pakistani lobbying and strategic messaging. 'Pakistan, through some intermediaries, has gotten the ear of the U.S. president,' he said. He points to two visits by Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir to Washington and a deal over Pakistan's 'oil reserves'. He also highlights Pakistan's push to become a regional crypto hub. In April, a Trump-backed cryptocurrency venture signed a letter of intent with Pakistan's crypto council. 'All these things have led to Trump having a softer approach towards Pakistan,' Swarup said. Short-Term Tilt Swarup calls the U.S.-Pakistan relationship temporary and transactional. He says the U.S.-India partnership is deeper. 'I call it a storm, not a rupture. You just have to wait out the storms. All storms eventually pass,' he said. He warns that U.S. alignment with Pakistan also means closer alignment with China, Washington's key competitor. Tariff Politics Trump has called India a 'Tariff King', but Swarup says the United States now holds that title. 'Our average tariff is about 15.98 percent. The U.S. tariff today is 18.4 percent... tariffs are bringing in money... But the issue is that eventually, who will pay for these tariffs? American consumers,' he said. He warns higher costs will fuel U.S. inflation. He defends India's refusal to give in. 'India is too large, too proud a country to become a camp follower of any other country. Our strategic autonomy has been the bedrock of our foreign policy right from the 1950s,' he says. Indus Waters Tensions Swarup also highlights Pakistan's reaction to India's suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. He says Islamabad is heavily dependent on those rivers and uses nuclear threats to attract global attention. 'They are deliberately provoking nuclear blackmail,' he tells ANI.
