FIR against MNS leader's son for abusing and misbehaving with influencer
China has responded to Donald Trump's threat of imposing an additional 10% tariff on countries with 'anti-American policies'. The Chinese minister stated that Brics is not targeting any country and promotes openness and inclusivity. Trump had accused the six Brics nations of attempting to downplay the dollar, labelling it as anti-America. China refuted this claim, emphasising that Brics is an important platform for cooperation among emerging markets and developing countries. The minister also reiterated China's position on US tariff hikes, stating that trade wars have no winners and protectionism is detrimental.
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The Hindu
10 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Why is Trump taking aim at BRICS?
The story so far: U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to impose 10% tariffs on members of the BRICS grouping that held a summit in Rio de Janeiro this week is the latest in a series of similar threats. Why is BRICS in Mr. Trump's cross-hairs? Even before he was sworn in as U.S. President for the second time, Donald Trump had made it clear that he saw the BRICS grouping as 'anti-American' and a threat to the dollar that he needed to neutralise. On November 30 last year, Mr. Trump said the U.S. would require BRICS members to commit that they would not create a new BRICS common currency, 'nor back any other currency to replace the mighty U.S. dollar', threatening 100% tariffs on them. It's a threat he has repeated several times since. Mr. Trump's irritation appears to stem from BRICS declarations in South Africa in 2023 and Russia in 2024, where members that now also include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the UAE, discussed a BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative that aims to facilitate trade and investment within BRICS countries using local currencies and other mechanisms. The initiative built momentum due to the problems Western sanctions on Russia have meant for trading partners in the Global South. What has the U.S. threatened to do? Last Sunday (July 6, 2025), just as BRICS leaders gathered in Rio for the 17th BRICS summit, Mr. Trump said in a social media post that any country aligning with BRICS would face a 10% added tariff. The penalty was 'just for that one thing' of being a member, Mr. Trump said later. It is unclear why the tariff rate was dropped to a tenth from the original threat of 100%, and even whether Mr. Trump will go through with the BRICS tariffs along with other reciprocal tariffs planned for August 1. But there seems little doubt that Mr. Trump wants BRICS de-fanged. 'You can tell the (U.S.) President is (upset) every time he looks at the BRICS de-dollarisation effort…(and) Rio didn't help,' said Steve Bannon, Trump's former White House chief strategist, according to Politico magazine. Editorial | Building resilience: On the 17th Summit of BRICS emerging economies In addition, the Trump administration has slapped 50% tariffs on Brazil after accusing President Lula da Silva of a 'witch-hunt' against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who faces charges of attempted coup. It has also imposed 30% tariffs on South Africa after accusing it of unequal trade, as well as expressing concerns over the treatment of Afrikaners (White South Africans). Republican Senators close to Mr. Trump also plan to bring a bill called the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 that seeks to place 500% tariffs on imports of oil and sanctioned Russian products, which would hurt Russia, as well as India and China, its two biggest importers. Are Mr. Trump's concerns valid? Mr. Trump's concerns about de-dollarisation have been denied by practically every BRICS member. The South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a detailed statement explaining why the BRICS attempt to use national currencies within the grouping is not the same as replacing the dollar as the global standard. While anti-U.S. rhetoric of some BRICS leaders has been harsh, the wording of the BRICS Rio declaration 2025 issued this week does not directly challenge the U.S. or the dollar. In the operative Paragraph 50, the leaders said they resolved to task ministers of finance and central bank governors 'to continue the discussion on the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative and acknowledge the progress made by the BRICS Payment Task Force (BPTF) in identifying possible pathways to support the continuation of discussions on the potential for greater interoperability of BRICS payment systems.' Paragraph 13 expressed 'serious concerns' over the rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures but didn't name the U.S. Where does India stand? The Modi government, hopeful of clinching a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., has strenuously objected to Mr. Trump's categorisation of the BRICS as 'anti-American'. Also read: India will give a 'new form' to BRICS grouping in 2026: PM Modi In a parliamentary response on December 2, 2024, the MoS (Finance) Pankaj Chaudhury made it clear that the U.S. allegations referred to a report prepared by Russia during its chairmanship of BRICS, where it had spoken of 'possible alternatives relating to cross-border payments' and 'leveraging existing technology to find an alternative currency'. He added that the report was only 'taken note of' by other BRICS members, not adopted. In March 2025, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar was more categorical, saying there is no Indian policy to replace the dollar. He conceded, however, that BRICS members had differences, and there was no unified position of the grouping on the issue.
Deccan Herald
31 minutes ago
- Deccan Herald
When an opaque Election Commission demands voter transparency
In 1766, Sweden enacted the world's first law recognising a people's right to access information from their government. Interestingly, its advocates employed a tailored image of governance mechanisms in Imperial China to support their campaign for a law that guaranteed the freedom of the press to report on governmental actions and curbed State censorship of public debate. Citing the Peking Gazette, whose origins can be traced to the Tang Dynasty's regime, they argued that it was the vehicle for communicating information about governmental action to the people and conveying their feedback to the Emperor – characteristic features of transparent and accountable academics have exposed this propagandist, though noble-intentioned, portrayal of pre-Communist China's administrative practices. Information flows from the capital to the populace were strictly controlled by a conservative bureaucracy, and commenting on the Peking Gazette's contents invited corporal punishment or even the death penalty. While eulogising the Chinese model in support of their democratising aspirations, Sweden's transparency champions had turned a blind eye towards the highly centralised and control-obsessed administration's efforts to gather more information about subjects of the recent order of our own Election Commission of India (ECI) requiring every voter in Bihar to prove one's place and date of birth as a bona fide Indian citizen by furnishing documentary evidence, or risk disenfranchisement, smacks of similar imperiousness. Yet, after 20 years of implementing the RTI Act, which emphasises records maintenance, the ECI has shockingly claimed that it is unable to produce a copy of a similar order for the intensive revision of voter lists in Bihar issued in 2003. While the ballot has been digitised, old paper-based files containing a record of the ECI's work seem to have escaped that destiny. Two years ago, its staff told me, a lot of information sent from the states and the districts about recent elections, simply cannot be traced in the multi-storeyed Nirvachan readers dismiss my words as hearsay, here is a sample of election-related records which the ECI claimed, in RTI replies, it does not hold or never received from the states relating to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. When asked for the complete list of Returning Officers (ROs) of the constituencies (as they are not displayed on the website), the ECI replied nonchalantly that no such list is available with it and refused to transfer the request to the states and the UTs!.In response to my RTI application seeking a list of expenditure-sensitive Lok Sabha constituencies that must be monitored more closely for campaign spending, the ECI replied that it does not have a readily available list and compiling it would disproportionately divert its resources. It also rejected a proactive disclosure of the expenditure observers' quizzed about the suspicious transaction reports (STRs) received from banks that are required to monitor large-sized monetary transactions during the campaign, the ECI claimed that no such information is available with it. Refusing to disclose even the number of STRs it received, ECI instructed me to approach the district election officers asked for a copy of the reports ROs send after scrutinising all documents created during polling, the ECI replied that the records sought do not even fall within the definition of 'information' under the RTI Act! In the wake of the controversy about voter turnout figures in Maharashtra last year, the ECI told me, in writing, that it does not have information about the number of voters who were issued pre-numbered tokens to cast their vote after 5 pm even though its election manual requires ROs to submit such reports through their Chief Electoral asked to publish reports sent by the states after mapping Lok Sabha constituencies, or pockets within them, where voters are vulnerable to intimidation and illegal inducement, the ECI claimed that it does not have such information in its records. This lie stands exposed. An RTI activist successfully obtained these vulnerability mapping reports from Maharashtra's Chief Electoral Officer. They were dispatched to the ECI on March 27, 2024!.Much like the no-data-available governments holding fort across the country, the ECI is turning crucial election-related information into sarkari secrets, especially that which is required to establish its accountability. The citizen-State relationship envisioned by the Constitution to guarantee the dignity of every individual is in danger of becoming a master-servant fetter. Bihar seems to be the laboratory for an iniquitous experiment that might soon be repeated across the country.
Deccan Herald
31 minutes ago
- Deccan Herald
Rising South: An order rebalanced
US President Donald Trump has, in his inimitable style, once again taken to social media to issue a threat to the BRICS countries huddled together to devise strategies against the US tariff attacks. 'Any country aligning with the anti-American policies of BRICS will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10 per cent tariff,' he said, hours after the BRICS finance ministers issued a statement that criticised the tariffs, calling them a threat to the global virtually to the BRICS gathering, Russian President Putin reiterated his suggestion of greater financial independence from the US dollar in international trade settlements. Trump is understandably annoyed at the revival of this narrative of criticising Trump's use of tariffs as a coercive policy to force countries to enter bilateral trade deals that favour the US, the BRICS summit proposed a series of reforms in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its currency valuation methods. According to the BRICS economic advocacy group, in the current economic uncertainty, the IMF needs to embrace urgent reforms in the quota system to increase the representation and voting power of developing countries, as the present system promotes dominance of advanced economies. The BRICS nations are also calling for an end to the 'gentlemen's agreement' which has historically favoured European countries in the IMF's leadership financial institutions, especially the two Bretton Woods institutions – the IMF and the World Bank (WB) – did play a significant role in the international financial architecture for some years. But they could not prevent the financial crisis nor bail the developed economies out of the crisis, much of which was their own creation. It has also been noted that their working and decision-making process continued to be greatly influenced by the developed 'North' and less relevant to the developing or underdeveloped 'South'. The last two or three decades have seen the global growth engine shift from the North to the South, which now houses three of the world's largest economies. Meanwhile, groupings such as BIMSTEC, BRICS, ASEAN, and SCO have added tremendous muscle to the emerging South-South countries add up to represent about 49% of the world's population, 39% of the global GDP, and 23% of international trade. In a changing geopolitical and geo-economic setting, when the US under Trump's administration is looking to withdraw from global institutions and looking more inwards in its quest for Making America Great Again (MAGA), the post-World War II economic institutions cannot expect to be relevant and succeed in their original objectives by remaining within a seven decades-old organisational structure. They must either reinvent themselves or face the possibility of paling into BRICS financial institutions and efforts under the South-South Cooperation (SSC) are assured signs of a collective leadership that is aligned with a multilateral world order – these are realities of the present era. The rise of the South, the emerging economies, and India's leadership role in SSC promise an alternative to archaic perceptions that are far removed from ground realities, and to the North and its tired leadership. Blocking the progress of BRICS will serve no real purpose for America or the attempts to create roadblocks for BRICS are born out of apprehensions of a challenge to the America-led world order, which is creaking under its own weight of contradictions. The independent non-dollar trade settlement system, which the BRICS is considering, may not be a reality soon, but it is born out of necessity, from the dollar's failure to meet the challenges and needs of the present era. The bilateral and multilateral economic, security, and strategic arrangements under the BRICS agenda need not necessarily hurt the interests of the US or any other grouping unless there is an established clash of interests, which in a highly globalised world would be detrimental for everyone play an important role in understanding the geopolitical and geo-economic dynamics of any given time. The decisions, economic or otherwise, the interpretations of meetings and events, and policy formulations made on flawed perceptions will lead to detrimental results. America and the rest of the Western world have to learn from past errors of judgement and look at the emerging institutions of the South, such as BRICS, from a new perspective. The shift is real – looking away cannot alter that reality.
