Latest news with #NewIndianExpress
The Star
12 hours ago
- Politics
- The Star
Experts condemn India park after elephants airlifted to Japan
BENGALURU, (India): Conservationists and animal experts have raised the alarm after a wildlife park in southern India airlifted four endangered Asian elephants to Japan, saying the long-haul journey and relocation could impact the animals' health. The elephants -- three female, Gauri (9), Shruti (7), and Tulsi (5), and one male, Suresh (8) -- were put into specially designed crates and loaded onto a cargo plane last week bound for Osaka, a nearly 12-hour journey. They were transported from the Bannerughatta Biological Park (BBP) in Bengaluru to Himeji Central Park, where they will spend the rest of their lives. The Bengaluru park would receive four cheetahs, four jaguars, four pumas, three chimpanzees and eight black-capped capuchins in exchange, the New Indian Express daily said. Wildlife biologist and conservationist Ravi Chellam condemned the move, saying wildlife parks should only keep animals that are native to the region. "Elephants are not native to Japan nor are jaguars and cheetahs, which will reportedly be brought to Bengaluru, native to Karnataka," Chellam told AFP. "So, it is important to find out what the purpose of this international animal exchange is." There are fewer than 50,000 Asian elephants in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund, the majority in India. In 2022, eight cheetahs were transported 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) from Namibia to India, followed by another 12 from South Africa, as part of a project backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The project was aimed at reintroducing the big cat species to India's grasslands seven decades after they were hunted into oblivion. - 'Frightening and stressful' - However, several cheetahs died soon after, raising questions about the high-profile project. Chellam said animals are not meant merely to be "shown off" at wildlife parks. "Modern zoos should have very clear objectives and these are education, conservation, research and recreation," he said. "Zoos should plan their animal collections in a manner that will enable them to meet these objectives." The Bengaluru elephants were trained over six months for the extraordinary trip, local media reported. "Every day, they were made to enter, stay, and relax inside crates for three to four hours, making them acclimatised to the conditions," the Times of India newspaper quoted top BBP official AV Surya Sen as saying. But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said the elephants would have nevertheless found "flying in the cargo hold of planes frightening and stressful". "Instead of funds used to fly animals to different countries just to be put on display, the focus can be redirected to helping protect jungles and keeping animals in their natural homes," Sachin Bangera of PETA India told AFP. International animal exchange programmes involving Indian zoos are not common, but do happen occasionally, Bangera added. - AFP
The Wire
19 hours ago
- Politics
- The Wire
Gujarat Govt Withdraws Decision to Recruit Retired Teachers After Protests by Young Teaching Aspirants
New Delhi: Following massive criticism for its decision to recruit retired teachers in government secondary and higher secondary schools in the state as a stopgap measure, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat has rolled back the move. Earlier, TET (Teacher Eligibility Test )-TAT (Teacher Aptitude Test) passed candidates, had slammed the decision and opposed the move to hire retired teachers, reported New Indian Express. Owing to vacancies remaining even after regular teacher appointments and knowledge assistant hiring was completed, the government had proposed recruiting retired teachers. the Gujarat Education Department on July 25, 2025 issued a circular that cleared the appointment of retired teachers under an 11-month contract. The state government took the decision despite the fact that thousands of TET-TAT qualified youth were waiting for permanent jobs. But the move backfired, as unemployed teaching aspirants accused the government of sidelining deserving candidates. Amid the protests, the Opposition Congress too attacked the government terming the entire episode as a 'dirty game.' 'More than 50,000 TET-TAT passed youth are waiting for jobs, and over 30,000 posts are lying vacant, yet the government chose to hand temporary contracts to retired teachers. This is a dirty game being played proof that the government has no intention of employing the youth,' said Congress spokesperson Hiren Banker. The New Indian Express report said that as a results of the protest, the government withdrew the policy within 48 hours. "The instructions to assign work to retired teachers as an interim arrangement for posts that remained vacant after the regular recruitment of teachers and appointment of knowledge assistants in government and granted secondary and higher secondary schools are hereby cancelled with original effect, 'a new government circular stated.
BBC News
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Naked Gun to Freakier Friday: 12 of the best films to watch in August
From The Naked Gun to Freakier Friday – these are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month. Souleymane's Story Boris Lojkine's powerful drama was the winner of two prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, and has a 100% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes review round-up site. It's the story of Souleymane (first-time actor Abou Sangaré), an immigrant from West Africa who has come to Paris in the hope of making enough money to support his ill mother. But the title, Souleymane's Story, has another meaning: it also refers to the false life story he has to memorise and recite at a legal residency application interview in two days' time. The trouble is that memorising anything is almost impossible while Souleymane is cycling around Paris as a food delivery worker, crossing paths with the police and with people who owe him money, and trying to find somewhere safe to sleep. "Lojkine's narrative is pacy and moves like an edge-of-the-seat thriller," says Namrata Joshi in the New Indian Express. He "also documents the entire industry that gets built around immigration and asylum". Released on 1 August in the US and Canada Weapons Barbarian, Zach Cregger's twist-filled horror film about the world's worst Airbnb, was a commercial and critical hit in 2022, and now the writer-director returns with a film which, he says, is "more ambitious in almost every way". The Twilight Zone-worthy premise is that 17 children from the same class all wake up at the same moment, walk out of their houses and disappear into the night, never to be seen again. The children's parents (Josh Brolin, among others) are desperate for answers, and their teacher (Julia Garner) is under suspicion. But that, says Cregger, is just the start of the story. Even more intriguingly, he says that he was influenced by Paul Thomas Anderson's multi-stranded ensemble drama, Magnolia. "I love that movie," he told Entertainment Weekly. "I love that kind of bold scale. It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that." Released on 8 August in cinemas internationally The Bad Guys 2 The Bad Guys was a different kind of DreamWorks cartoon – a stylish heist caper in the Ocean's Eleven mould, except that the criminals just happened to be talking animals. Adapted from Aaron Blabey's graphic novels, the film featured Mr Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr Snake (Marc Maron), Ms Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr Shark (Craig Robinson) and Mr Piranha (Anthony Ramos), a gang of wisecracking criminals who got tired of being stereotyped as scary predators. In the sequel, they're still struggling to be accepted as upstanding members of the community, and things get trickier when they're blackmailed into teaming up with another gang of crooked animals: The Bad Girls. The director, Pierre Perifel, says that the sequel makes the jump from heist film to all-action blockbuster. "We're big fans of Mission: Impossible, and of big action films in particular, and we wanted to dabble and play with that genre," Perifel told Collider. "We're not doing Mission: Impossible, we're doing The Bad Guys, but it has those tropes." Released on 1 August in cinemas internationally Caught Stealing Darren Aronofsky is known for his abyss-dark dramas; no one goes to see Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler or The Whale because they fancy a fun Friday night at the cinema. But now Aronofsky has switched to Tarantino / Ritchie mode for a boisterous crime caper set in grimy 1990s New York. Adapted from Charlie Huston's novel, Caught Stealing stars Austin Butler as a baseball-loving barman who is trying to impress his new girlfriend (Zoe Kravitz) when he stumbles into a gangland feud involving a British punk-rocker (Matt Smith), a pair of Orthodox Jewish hitmen (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio), and $4m in ill-gotten gains. "The state the world's in right now... There's a lot going on," Aronofsky explained in Empire. "So, I wanted to get back to the core ingredients that make movies great – entertainment and fun. I wanted to make something filled with joy and adventure… It's a romp." Released on 29 August in cinemas internationally It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley Jeff Buckley's Grace is one of the greatest albums of the 1990s – or, as David Bowie once said, one of the greatest albums ever made. Buckley's poetic songwriting, swirling guitar arrangements and angelic multi-octave voice were stunning, but, tragically, we'll never know what else he might have accomplished: he accidentally drowned in a river in 1997 before he had completed his second album. Amy Berg's documentary examines the conflicted man behind the music, and ponders the dark ironies of his short life. The father he never knew, Tim Buckley, was also a singer who died young. "What the documentary captures is that Buckley was on his way to becoming a staggeringly huge star," says Owen Gleiberman in Variety. "I defy you to see It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley and not fall in love with Jeff Buckley's voice. By the time the film is over, you want to find a way to go back and rescue him to let him live the life he should have had." Released on 8 August in the US Highest 2 Lowest Highest 2 Lowest "fulfils every expectation you might want from a modern Spike Lee movie", says Stephanie Zacharek in Time. A loose remake of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963), this New York music-industry thriller stars Denzel Washington as a record-company boss. He's renowned for signing some of the biggest names in the business, but his company has fared so poorly in recent years that he is struggling to keep control of it. And then he hears that his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) has been kidnapped. Co-starring some real-life music stars, including A$AP Rocky and Ice Spice, Highest 2 Lowest is "smart, hugely entertaining, and profound in a way that's anything but sentimental", says Zacharek. "Lee has made a film that feels modest and grand at once, the kind of movie you can see on a Saturday night just for kicks and still be thinking about the next day." Released on 22 August in the US The Roses One of Hollywood's darkest ever anti-romantic comedies, The War of the Roses (1989) starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a couple going through a blisteringly bitter divorce. Thirty-six years on, it has been remade – or reimagined – with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as the unhappy couple. Cumberbatch is Theo Rose, a famous architect, and Colman is Ivy Rose, a small-time cook. But when his career crashes while hers goes into orbit, the Roses' relationship gets thorny. Co-starring Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, the film is directed by Jay Roach (Meet the Parents, Austin Powers), and written by Tony McNamara (The Favourite, Cruella), who says that his screenplay is even more outrageous than the 1980s one, but not, perhaps, as cynical. "We were like, 'Let's do a movie about people who want to stay married rather than two people trying to destroy each other,'" McNamara said on Streaming Movie Night. "A sophisticated adult screwball comedy didn't seem like it had been done for a while in a proper commercial way, and so it seemed like an opportunity." Released on 29 August in cinemas internationally Splitsville Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have already made one acclaimed indie comedy together, The Climb (2019), which Covino directed, and both men wrote and acted in. Now they've reunited for a higher profile project opposite higher profile co-stars, Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona. Marvin plays Carey, who has been married to Ashley (Arjona) for a year when she announces that she has been unfaithful to him and wants a divorce. When he tells the sorry tale to his wealthy friends Paul (Covino) and Julie (Johnson), they reveal that their marriage works so well because they are free to sleep with other people. Could this work for Carey and Ashley, too? And is Paul and Julie's relationship really as healthy as they make it sound? This "reliably funny romcom about the notion of open relationships makes for a delightful time", says Esther Zuckerman in IndieWire. "The film-makers have created an utterly endearing tale of four people trying to negotiate their own desires in the silliest ways possible with unexpected chaos around every turn." Released on 22 August in the US Freakier Friday Lindsay Lohan spent years in the Hollywood wilderness after she starred alongside Jamie Lee Curtis in 2003's Freaky Friday, so it's heartening to see her back on the big screen in the perfectly named sequel, Freakier Friday. In the first film (itself a remake of a Disney comedy from 1976), Lohan and Curtis played a teenage girl and her mother, Anna and Tess, who swapped bodies for a day. In Freakier Friday, Anna and Tess swap bodies with Anna's daughter and step-daughter – so both Lohan and Curtis get to pretend that they're teenagers. "[Freakier Friday] is a feelgood movie, which is what I want to give people," Lohan said in Elle. "And it's fun. When I saw the second cut, I wanted to get up and dance at the end." Released on 8 Aug in cinemas internationally The Naked Gun How can you make a Naked Gun film without the franchise's beloved star, the late Leslie Nielsen? The answer, it seems, is to cast Liam Neeson – not just because his name is so similar to Nielsen's, but because he knows how to be gruff and deadpan while surrounded by silliness. "Liam Neeson is probably the only actor alive in the 21st Century who could do what Leslie Nielsen did," the film's producer, Seth MacFarlane, said in Entertainment Weekly. The casting of Pamela Anderson as the love interest / femme fatale was an inspired move, too, especially as Anderson was so acclaimed for her previous film, The Last Showgirl. MacFarlane is hoping that his spoof cop thriller will be that rarest of things, a Hollywood comedy that is a cinema hit. "It's been a long time since a really high-profile hard comedy has been put out there. This is a true comedy, with a whole bunch of laughs. And hopefully, if the movie does well, it brings a few more of those kinds of movies back into our shared landscape." Released on 1 August in cinemas internationally The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club has been a publishing sensation since it came out in 2020. Not only was it a bestseller, but it helped established the genre of "cosy crime" detective novels – although Osman might not use that term himself. "When I started writing The Thursday Murder Club, the successful crime books of the time were mainly dark psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators," he told the BBC in 2023. "I just wanted to write an Agatha Christie-style thriller but with some humour and with a modern twist. A book I'd love to read, but couldn't find. I'd never heard the term 'cosy crime'." The inevitable screen adaptation is produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Chris Columbus, the maker of Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter films. Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie play four pensioners in the same retirement community who hit upon an unusual hobby: solving mysteries. Released on 28 August on Netflix Nobody 2 Bob Odenkirk, the star of Better Call Saul, doesn't look like a typical Hollywood action hero – but that's one reason why Nobody (2021) was so entertaining. The idea was that Odenkirk's character, Hutch, was a mild-mannered, middle-aged suburban dad. But it turned out that he had a secret past as a government assassin, so when he got tangled up with Russian mobsters, we had the cathartic pleasure of seeing this average-looking fellow participating in some of modern cinema's most gloriously brutal fight scenes. In the sequel, Hutch is on a summer holiday with his wife (Connie Nielsen) and children when a crime boss (Sharon Stone) interrupts their family time. "For me, what mattered in the second movie was: what's something that a couple could relate to as a tension in their life," Odenkirk said in Discussing Film. "One of the big ones in America is the inability to take a break and not work constantly or worry about our jobs… Hutch just can't do it. Most people can't do it. I've struggled to do it myself." Released on 15 August in cinemas internationally -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
India.com
19-07-2025
- Business
- India.com
China's arch enemy to buy India's BrahMos missile, it is..., more than 12 other countries want it, they are...
New Delhi: After the Indian strikes on Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, the demand for India's BrahMos missile has increased. On one hand, there is a competition to buy it among 15 countries of the world while on the other hand, the missile is being praised a lot in the Chinese media. China's South China Morning Post has called it a 'very dangerous missile'. What does China say about BrahMos missile? According to the South China Morning Post, this missile played a big role in the operation on Pakistan. After this, many enemy countries of America and China have expressed their desire to buy it. India's Defense Minister Rajnath Singh recently said that 14-15 countries want to buy BrahMos. The New Indian Express has revealed the names of these countries quoting defense sources. Which countries want to buy BrahMos? The countries that want to buy BrahMos missile include Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Venezuela. Among these, Philippines is the first country to express its desire to buy BrahMos. Philippines had signed a deal of US $ 375 million with India in the year 2022 itself. Vietnam and Indonesia are reportedly negotiating contracts worth US $ 700 million and US $ 450 million respectively. Philippines has enmity with China. At the same time, countries like Brazil and Venezuela have directly opened a front against America. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Oman are engaged in increasing their influence in the Middle East. In the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and Israel are far ahead in terms of weapons. Why is BrahMos special? BrahMos missile is jointly manufactured by Russia and India. It is named after India's Brahmaputra and Russia's Moskva river. The speed of this missile is Mach 3 (3704 km/h). This missile can carry a 3-ton warhead and can be launched from air, land and sea. This missile can fly at low altitudes without being detected by radars. The range of its new version is 450 to 800 km. The cost of this missile is Rs 34 crore. During Operation Sindoor, India destroyed nine terrorist hideouts in Pakistan using this missile with amazing accuracy.
New Indian Express
15-07-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
'I don't see Indians coming back saying we want to build a new India now'
A record 23000 millionaires left India in the past one decade. That's roughly over 2000 a year. This is over and above the millions of students and professionals migrating overseas every year. But despite the rise in the drain of knowledge and now wealth, there's hardly any attempt to quantify the impact of it. A new book, Secession of the Successful, extensively chronicles the reasons behind it. The New Indian Express spoke to its author, Sanjaya Baru, who's also a political commentator and policy analyst, for further insights. Excerpts: Migration has been there, as you mentioned in your book, since the reign of the Cholas. What triggered you to write the book right now? Is it really a matter of policy concern now? Was it not earlier? Well, first of all, you are right that migration is a natural phenomenon for centuries, right from the beginning, and people have moved all over the world. So that's not what I'm looking at. I'm looking at a phenomenon of fairly large-scale migration, which is something we see happening right now, with literally thousands and thousands of people migrating. And in the case of India, this kind of large-scale migration happened in three phases. The first phase was during the British rule, when, from around the middle of the 19th century till the first quarter of the 20th century, large numbers of Indians were taken as indentured labour to various colonies of the British empire. In fact, millions of Indians went to places ranging from Fiji in the Pacific and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean to Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname and they constitute what we call the persons of Indian origin. This is about 20 million people around the world. But in the middle of the 70s after the oil crisis, when the Gulf boom and huge construction work started across the Gulf, large numbers of Indians went in search of work. Of course, Hyderabad (where this interview happened) was one of the places from which they went. Kerala and Karnataka also saw large numbers of people going and literally again millions and now we have about 8 million Indians living in the Gulf region. So, this is the second wave of essentially skilled or unskilled workers migrating. Around the same time in the 70s, we saw a process by which middle-class professionals, doctors and engineers started migrating. That was facilitated initially by the decision of the United States to liberalise their immigration policy because they needed these doctors and engineers and they looked at India as a source. But that process skyrocketed after 1999, when you had the Y2K problem with the computer systems around the world having to switch from 1999 to 2000 and India had lots of trained computer software guys and engineers. So, companies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, they all came up responding to this demand. That was another wave and now we have literally again millions of Indians working in this space across the English-speaking world. Mostly the US, but also other countries. What I now record in this book particularly, is what we have seen happening essentially over the last 10 years with Indians beginning to migrate. According to one study, 23,000 millionaires have migrated in the last 10 years and more and more countries are selling their citizenship. They are offering golden visas, they are offering permanent residence and Indians are taking advantage of that. So, I call this the fourth phase and it is this that I've recorded, what I would like to call the changing class composition of emigration from India. Twenty-three thousand is a huge number and this you say was in the last decade alone. What about earlier, I mean prior to 10 years ago, were the numbers negligible? Well, there wasn't much movement of the super rich. So what you see in the second phase from the 80s, 90s up to the 2000s, and its first decade is essentially middle-class professionals working in a range of professions migrating, mainly doctors and engineers but also those in the field of finance, in sciences, so across different professions. The emigration of the wealthy is a recent phenomenon. So are we also to understand that the number of millionaires has grown proportionally? Yes, I mean all the data shows that the early 2000s were what we call the boom years, when the Indian economy recorded the highest rates of growth from 2003 to 2012. During those nine years, we saw eight percent growth—during the last year of Prime Minister Vajpayee's tenure and the first term of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. You had eight to nine percent growth for almost a decade—those were the boom years. That process generated a lot of wealth and that wealth generation went on for some more time, even till the Covid-19 pandemic. A large number of Indians made substantial amount of money and that is how the top five percent of the population has become richer and we talk about inequality, the widening gap between the bottom 50 percent and the top five percent, that is a recent phenomenon. There have been concerns that growth has been pretty subdued in the past one decade. If more and more number of millionaires are moving out, the number of the rich should also reduce. But the number of rich is only rising... Well, that's an interesting question. Economists talk of post-Covid K-shaped growth. So, K-shaped growth essentially means that the growth process is divergent, that in fact the rich are becoming richer. The poor may not be getting poorer but they're certainly not getting any richer. So this gap is widening and economists refer to this as the K-shaped recovery. So, the growth rates have come down. I mean from eight percent to an average of now around six in the immediate post-Covid period, even lower at four percent or so. At the higher income levels, people have still been able to retain their shares, so it's not as if it has affected the super rich. You see it for example in the auto market and particularly in a city like Hyderabad, it stares you in your face. The number of BMWs, Mercedes and Audis on the road is increasing but when it comes to entry-level cars, we find companies saying they are not able to sell them. So, it tells you that this is the gap that is emerging. Millionaires moving out, is this a phenomenon seen in India alone? We also see that in other countries and millionaires everywhere do explore moving to other destinations either because of tax benefits or other societal reasons. This phenomenon is not limited to India, is it? It's a phenomenon we see in many countries. We saw it particularly for a long time in China where literally thousands of millionaires emerged because of the high rates of economic growth and many of them moved out to Singapore, they moved out to the US, they moved out to Europe. So, there was a movement of the Chinese millionaires. We saw that in Russia too. But when millionaires from China and Russia were moving out, the western media would say these are not free societies. So, once you have money, people want to leave. Now we are supposed to be a free society and yet once people make a lot of money, they want to leave. So, I draw attention to the fact but what we also see is, even in developed countries, people are leaving. I mean England for example is finding a lot of very wealthy British, English people moving out to other countries because they find tax rates are too high in England. So, it's true, it's not a phenomenon confined to India but certainly it's a new phenomenon in India and is worth understanding, which is why I wrote about it. You have mentioned a variety of reasons for millionaires moving out. Can you list out them briefly and what do you think we need to do to stem the tide? Well, you know frankly the most important reason is quite simple. It is what we call ease of living. If you can afford to live in a place where the ease of living is more, then why would you continue to live in a place where the ease of living is less. In some ways it's similar to the migration that happens within a country. When people move from say rural area to urban area or from a city like let's say Patna to a city like Delhi, you see even within a country people moving in search of ease of living, better opportunities. So that's happening at the global level and that is why you need to address the whole question of how do you improve the ease of living in order to be able to retain not just your wealthy... I mean wealthy is only one part of the secession I talk about but I am more concerned about the migration of the brainy people, or the talented. It's the brain drain and I'm looking at both the challenge of brain drain and wealth drain. Wealth drain is a problem, but I don't think we should only worry about wealth, we should also worry about the number of talented people leaving the country in search of better opportunities. But does India not have enough opportunities to accommodate these professionals? Could the lack of options also be one reason why professionals are leaving? So, isn't the onus on the government or the private sector to create opportunities? Absolutely, I mean the onus is certainly on us at home, on governments, state governments, central government, private sector, institutions, universities, and research laboratories. The onus is on us to improve conditions here that make it attractive for talented people to remain in India. So, I make two points on this. One, the challenge for the government is in fact to retain talented people. On the other hand, we find governments are now actually encouraging the export of talented people. I mentioned the fact that recently the foreign minister launched a private-sector initiative called Gati -- Global access for talented Indians. Why should the government be assisting a private company that's exporting talented Indians? Let's also look at Global Capability Centres (GCCs). Hyderabad has become a very important centre along with Bangalore and Gurgaon. GCCs right now are essentially catering to multinationals. They're working for American multinationals and I make the point, there is a chapter called Indians in MAGA (Make America Great Again). So, actually Indians are contributing either directly living in the United States or indirectly working for American companies for making America great again. So, how do we make India great again using this talent and what should we do at home in order to be able to attract talent? That's the question I guess. The migration of professionals has been happening for the last many decades, as you mentioned. It started in the 70s, 80s. So many decades have passed. Why do you think we are unable to stop that brain drain? I think, first of all, the fact is that in the 70s and 80s, we were at least worrying about the problem. I record the fact that very distinguished economists like Jagdish Bhagwati and others were writing about brain drain, were worrying about it. They were proposing ideas for restricting brain drain. After the 80s, we simply gave up and I quote one economist called Dina Khatkate, who used to work in the International Monetary Fund and he wrote an article around that time in the Economic and Political Weekly saying that it's better for India to get rid of these people otherwise they'll be here and they'll be frustrated and frustrated people create problems. So, he suggested that the best way to manage these frustrations is to allow them to leave. I think that kind of thinking took over and when people were leaving, we said okay, you want to go, go. We were encouraging. There was no attempt to ask why they were leaving? What is it we can do to prevent them from leaving? There was no attempt to figure that out. Even today, there is very little attempt. We celebrate the Indian diaspora. The Prime Minister goes abroad all the time, meeting Indians abroad and praising them for doing so well. Why doesn't he tell them come back to India? Because he knows if he says that, they will all turn and walk away from him. It means the government is actually not interested in retaining this talent and also there are not many opportunities as such to hold this talent. I think it's all partly to do with the fact that the government is not able to inspire the talent that is leaving. In fact, I quote Devesh Kapoor, who's a very distinguished economist in the US, who talks about why would the elite prevent elite migration. After all, what is happening? These are the Indian elite. Professionals come from the top 5%. That's the elite that's running the country. If you look at the entire leadership of various sectors, business, government, politics, academia, and you ask people, where are your children? An increasing number would tell you they are overseas. So, it's the elite that is actually migrating. So, how would you expect a government run by this elite to prevent the migration when their own children are leaving? I think the other issue is a more serious one which is that there was a sense of nationalism. A real nationalism, not the pseudo-nationalism that we now see with all this Bharat Mata ki Jai stuff. In the 50s, after independence, when very distinguished Indians came back to India, I mean Homi Bhabha came and built the nuclear programme. People like Vikram Sarabhai came and built your space programme. Meghnad Saha, Jnan Chandra Ghosh, all these very eminent scientists, mathematicians, physicists, etc came back to India in the 50s because they were inspired by this whole idea of India being independent, having thrown the British out, and wanting to build a new India. I don't see that sentiment today. I don't see Indians coming back and saying we want to build a new India. They are all sitting outside and saying India is going to be the fourth largest economy in the world, right? But we will be outside. As you mentioned in the book, Jagdish Bhagwati had proposed an idea to tax migrants. Do you think we should revive it at least in some form? I don't think it will work now. You see, first of all, when countries are giving you citizenship at a price, you will pay the tax and buy the citizenship because there is now that money. In fact, Bhagwati himself came to the conclusion that this is not going to work. There could be certain sensitives introduced in certain lines of activity where you make it not easy to go. So, people have to think twice. But I don't think today you can actually prevent immigration by any governmental measurements. I think you will need a change of attitude and most importantly you need to improve the ease of living here. You need to make people feel that life is good for me in India. Why should I go? That feeling has to come into people. Do you think as a reverse psychology, should India also consider selling golden visas to expats? There was a time around 2000s when the IT industry was booming and companies like Satyam and TCS, brought in a lot of expats who moved to India lock, stock and barrel. Even smaller countries like Antigua are offering citizenship for a price... Well, you don't have to sell visas. If you actually make it attractive for people to work in Indian institutions, a lot of people would come. Recently, the Nobel laureate Venkatesh Ramakrishnan gave an interview in which he has mentioned that a lot of scientists are leaving the United States because of Donald Trump's cost cutting. He's firing lots of people. So, they're looking for jobs outside the US and they're looking for opportunities in Europe and other parts of the world and he said that I wish India could attract some of those scientists but that will require making Indian science institutions more attractive places to work in and they've all become very bureaucratic. Joint secretaries and deputy secretaries sitting in Delhi are lording over academic institutions, universities, research institutions. So, there's a feeling among scientists that it's not easy to do research in India. There are too many constraints. So, if you ease these constraints and make it attractive for people to work in India, they will come and this idea is actually quite an old one. I mentioned recently somewhere that it was being talked about as far back as in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1992, K Subrahmanyam who was a foreign policy strategy analyst in those days and the father of foreign minister Jaishankar wrote an article suggesting India should attract the Russian talent that was leaving Russia because of the end of the Soviet Union and arrival of Yeltsin. The reasons were the same. Cutting down salaries, cutting down government spending. A lot of Russian scientists were leaving and where did they go? They all went to the United States and Subrahmanyam was saying why don't you bring some of them here to work in India but it didn't happen then. It will not happen now. Yeah, there's plenty of opportunity even now in India. Absolutely. So, what exactly should we do then? There's a spurt of HNIs (High net worth individuals) and that is happening thanks to growth whether they are working outside or in India. How do we address this problem? Well, both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister put out two ideas last year. The Prime Minister in his Independence Day speech spoke about launching a mission for the ease of living in India. The Finance Minister in her budget speech talked about setting up a commission for deregulation or reducing the regulatory raj. These are things to do. They know what has to be done. They just have to do it. The simple things need to be fixed. My friend Sucheta Dalal, who is a financial journalist, has been writing for a long time about the KYC norms of banks. It's such a nuisance. Nowhere in the world are people harassed having to fill forms. To get your own money, you have to fill forms. So, reduce all that nonsense. Make it easier for people to live, to do business. You have been talking about the ease of business for 10 years. People have been talking about ease of business. Now, they're talking about ease of living or ending regulation raj. I think people in government know what has to be done. It's not as if there's no knowledge in the government. The question is somebody has to take the initiative and do it. This is what Narasimha Rao did in 1991. Go back to 1991. What did Narasimha Rao do? He just implemented all the ideas that were already known. Every single policy that Narasimha Rao took up was already written about in the 80s. Economists were already writing. IG Patel, Montek, a whole lot of economists were already writing about what should be done. All of them were saying we need to do A, B, C, D. Except nobody did it. Indira Gandhi didn't do it. Rajiv Gandhi didn't do it. Chandrashekhar didn't do it. VP Singh didn't do it. Narasimha Rao came and did it. So, you need a Prime Minister who will do it. So, there's no shortage of ideas right now. Execution is where we are actually lacking? Absolutely. Any message for the policy makers from your side, because the book stops short of giving suggestions... No, no, there are the suggestions I've mentioned already. I've mentioned what needs to be done, and the message here is from Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, who has written on the back of my book, saying it's a must read for every Indian policy maker. So, let them read the book. Last question, on a lighter note, given this book is all about the Indian diaspora, will there be a soft launch overseas? No, I don't think. It's been a long time since I've travelled outside India. So, I don't see myself doing that.
