Narendra Modi
Narendra Damodardas Modi (Gujarati pronunciation: [; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament for Varanasi. Modi is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister outside of the Indian National Congress to win two consecutive terms with a full majority and the second to complete five years in office after Atal Bihari Vajpayee.[2]
Born to a Gujarati family in Vadnagar, Modi helped his father sell tea as a child and has said he later ran his own stall. He was introduced to the RSS at the age of eight, beginning a long association with the organisation. Modi left home after finishing high-school in part due to an arranged arriage to Jashodaben Chimanlal, which he abandoned and publicly acknowledged only many decades later. Modi travelled around India for two years and visited a number of religious centres before returning to Gujarat. In 1971 he became a full-time worker for the RSS. During the state of emergency imposed across the country in 1975, Modi was forced to go into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots[a] or otherwise criticised for its handling of it. A Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally.[b] His policies as chief minister, credited with encouraging economic growth, have received praise.[10] His administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.[c]
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws. He initiated a controversial demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes.
Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. His administration also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi (c. 1915–1989) and Hiraben Modi (born c. 1920).[19] Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community,[20][21][22] which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.[23][24]
As a child, Modi helped his father sell tea at the Vadnagar railway station, and said that he later ran a tea stall with his brother near a bus terminus.[25] Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where a teacher described him as an average student and a keen debater, with interest in theatre.[26] Modi had an early gift for rhetoric in debates, and his teachers and students noted this.[27] Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.[28][29]
When eight years old, Modi discovered the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor.[30] While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.[31]
Also in Narendra Modi's childhood, in a custom traditional to his caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when they were teenagers.[32][33] Sometime thereafter, he abandoned the further marital obligations implicit in the custom,[34] and left home, the couple going on to lead separate lives, neither marrying again, and the marriage itself remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades.[35] In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.[36]
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged.[37] In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education.[38][39][40] Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.[41]
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati.[42] Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69.[43] Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad.[44] There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.[45][46]
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city.[47][48][49] After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS,[46] working under Inamdar.[50] Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested; this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him.[50] Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001.[51]
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from School of Open Learning[52] at University of Delhi,[53][54] graduating with a third class.[55] Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class[56][57] as an external distance learning student.[58]
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned.[59][60] Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned.[61] Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations.[62][63] Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists.[64] During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency.[65][66] Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures.[67] In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.[64]
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency.[68] He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985.[31] In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers.[69] After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.[70]
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity).[26][71][72] However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersingh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision.[72] Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections.[72][31][73][74] In November of that year Modi was elected BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.[73][75] The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections.[26] Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections,[73][76] and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.[77]
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001.[73][78][79] The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement.[26] Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections.[80] Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001,[81] and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.[82]
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people.[e] The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid.[85][86] In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims.[5][85][87] The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state.[88][89] Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat.[85][88][89] The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence.[85][90] The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed.[91] Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000.[85][92] Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps.[93] Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.[4][94]
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots,[3][4][5] and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation.[95] Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism.[96][97][98] Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law."[4] The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating.[88][89] The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time.[5] State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there.[99] Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court.[100] During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.[4][87][101] In 2012 Maya Kodnani, a minister in Modi's government from 2007 to 2009, was convicted by a lower court for participation in the Naroda Patiya massacre during the 2002 riots.[102][103] Although Modi's government had announced that it would seek the death penalty for Kodnani on appeal, it reversed its decision in 2013.[104][105] On 21 April 2018, the Gujarat High Court acquitted Kodnani while noting that there were several shortfalls in the investigation.[106]
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction."[4] Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode.[107] In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue.[95][108][109] In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings.[108] The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him.[108][110] In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence.[111][112] The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jaffri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.[113]
2.Donald Trump
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
WRITTEN BY: akshat kaushik
LAST UPDATED: See Article History
Donald Trump, in full Donald John Trump,
(born June 14, 1946, New York, New York, U.S.), 45th president of the United States (2017– ).
Trump was a real-estate developer and businessman who owned, managed, or
licensed his name to several hotels, casinos, golf courses, resorts, and
residential properties in the New York City area and around the world. From the
1980s Trump also lent his name to scores of retail ventures—including branded
lines of clothing, cologne, food, and furniture—and
to Trump University, which offered seminars in real-estate education from
2005 to 2010. In the early 21st century his private conglomerate, the Trump
Organization, comprised some 500 companies involved in a
wide range of businesses, including hotels and resorts, residential properties,
merchandise, and entertainment and television. In 2019 Trump became only the
third president in U.S. history (after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998) to be impeached by
the U.S. House of Representatives. He was also the
first president to be impeached during his first term of office.
Early Life And
Business Career
Trump was the fourth of five children of Frederick (Fred) Christ Trump, a successful
real estate developer, and Mary MacLeod. Donald’s eldest sister, Maryanne Trump
Barry, eventually served as a U.S. district court judge (1983–99) and later
as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit until her retirement in 2011. His elder brother, Frederick, Jr.
(Freddy), worked briefly for his father’s business before becoming an airline
pilot in the 1960s. Freddy’s alcoholism led
to his early death in 1981, at the age of 43.
Beginning in the late 1920s, Fred Trump built hundreds of
single-family houses and rowhouses in the Queens and Brooklyn boroughs of New York City, and
from the late 1940s he built thousands of apartment units, mostly in Brooklyn,
using federal loan guarantees designed to stimulate the construction of affordable housing. During World
War II he also built federally backed housing for naval
personnel and shipyard workers in Virginia and Pennsylvania. In 1954 Fred was investigated by
the Senate Banking Committee for allegedly abusing the loan-guarantee program
by deliberately overestimating the costs of his construction projects to secure
larger loans from commercial banks, enabling him to keep the difference
between the loan amounts and his actual construction costs. In testimony before
the Senate committee in 1954, Fred admitted that he had built the Beach Haven
apartment complex in Brooklyn for $3.7 million less than the amount of his
government-insured loan. Although he was not charged with any crime, he was
thereafter unable to obtain federal loan guarantees. A decade later a New York
state investigation found that Fred had used his profit on a state-insured
construction loan to build a shopping centre that was entirely his own property. He
eventually returned $1.2 million to the state but was thereafter unable to
obtain state loan guarantees for residential projects in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn.
Donald Trump attended New York Military Academy (1959–64), a
private boarding school; Fordham University in the Bronx (1964–66); and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of
Finance and Commerce (1966–68), where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree
in economics. In 1968, during the Vietnam
War, he secured a diagnosis of bone spurs, which qualified
him for a medical exemption from the military
draft (he had earlier received four draft deferments for
education). Upon his graduation Trump began working full-time for his father’s
business, helping to manage its holdings of rental housing, then estimated at
between 10,000 and 22,000 units. In 1974 he became president of a
conglomeration of Trump-owned corporations and partnerships, which he later
named the Trump Organization.
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, Donald Trump greatly expanded
his father’s business by investing in luxury hotels and residential properties
and by shifting its geographic focus to Manhattan and later to Atlantic City, New
Jersey. In doing so, he relied heavily on loans, gifts, and other
financial assistance from his father, as well as on his father’s political
connections in New York City. In 1976 he purchased the decrepit Commodore Hotel
near Grand Central Station under a complex
profit-sharing agreement with the city that included a 40-year property
tax abatement, the first such tax break granted to a commercial
property in New York City. Relying on a construction loan guaranteed by his
father and the Hyatt Corporation, which became a partner in the project, Trump
refurbished the building and reopened it in 1980 as the 1,400-room Grand Hyatt
Hotel. In 1983 he opened Trump
Tower, an office, retail, and residential complex constructed in
partnership with the Equitable Life Assurance Company. The 58-story building on
56th Street and Fifth Avenue eventually contained Trump’s Manhattan residence
and the headquarters of the Trump Organization. Other Manhattan properties
developed by Trump during the 1980s included the Trump Plaza residential
cooperative (1984), the Trump Parc luxury condominium complex (1986), and the
19-story Plaza Hotel (1988), a historic landmark for which Trump paid more than
$400
million.
In the 1980s Trump invested heavily in the casino business in Atlantic City, where
his properties eventually included Harrah’s at Trump Plaza (1984, later renamed
Trump Plaza), Trump’s Castle Casino Resort (1985), and the Trump Taj Mahal
(1990), then the largest casino in the world. During that period Trump also
purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the short-lived U.S. Football
League; Mar-a-Lago, a 118-room mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, built in the 1920s by the
cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post; a 282-foot yacht,
then the world’s second largest, which he named the Trump Princess; and an East Coast air-shuttle service,
which he called Trump Shuttle.
In 1977 Trump married Ivana Zelníčková Winklmayr, a Czech model,
with whom he had three children—Donald, Jr., Ivanka, and Eric—before the couple
divorced in 1992. Their married life, as well as Trump’s business affairs, were
a staple of the tabloid press in New York City during the
1980s. Trump married the American actress Marla Maples after she gave birth to
Trump’s fourth child, Tiffany, in 1993. Their marriage ended in divorce in
1999. In 2005 Trump married the Slovene model Melania Knauss, and their son,
Barron, was born the following year. Melania Trump became only the second
foreign-born first lady of the United States upon
Trump’s inauguration as president in 2017.
When the U.S. economy fell into recession in
1990, many of Trump’s businesses suffered, and he soon had trouble making
payments on his approximately $5 billion debt, some $900 million of which he
had personally guaranteed. Under a restructuring agreement with several banks,
Trump was forced to surrender his airline, which was taken over by US
Airways in 1992; to sell the Trump Princess; to
take out second or third mortgages on nearly all of his properties and to
reduce his ownership stakes in them; and to commit himself to living on a
personal budget of $450,000 a year. Despite those measures, the Trump Taj Mahal
declared bankruptcy in 1991, and two other casinos
owned by Trump, as well as his Plaza Hotel in New York City, went bankrupt in
1992. Following those setbacks, most major banks refused to do any further
business with him. Estimates of Trump’s net worth during this period ranged
from $1.7 billion to minus $900 million.
Trump’s fortunes rebounded with the stronger economy of the
later 1990s and with the decision of the Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG to establish a presence
in the U.S. commercial real estate market. Deutsche Bank extended hundreds of
millions of dollars in credit to Trump in the late 1990s and the 2000s for
projects including Trump World Tower (2001) in New York and Trump International Hotel and Tower (2009)
in Chicago. In the early 1990s Trump had floated
a plan to his creditors to convert his Mar-a-Lago estate into a luxury housing
development consisting of several smaller mansions, but local opposition led
him instead to turn it into a private club, which was opened in 1995. In 1996
Trump partnered with the NBC television network to purchase the
Miss Universe Organization, which produced the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and
Miss Teen USA beauty pageants. Trump’s casino businesses continued to struggle,
however: in 2004 his company Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts filed for
bankruptcy after several of its properties accumulated unmanageable debt, and
the same company, renamed Trump Entertainment Resorts, went bankrupt again in
2009.
In addition to his real-estate ventures, in 2004 Trump premiered
a reality television series in which he
starred, The Apprentice, which featured
teams of contestants competing in various business-related projects, with a
single contestant ultimately winning a lucrative one-year contract as a Trump
employee (“apprentice”). The Emmy-nominated
show, in which Trump “fired” one or more contestants on a weekly basis, helped
him to further enhance his reputation as a shrewd
businessman and self-made billionaire. In 2008 the show was revamped as The Celebrity Apprentice, with
newsmakers and entertainers as contestants.
Trump marketed his name as a brand in numerous other business
ventures including Trump Financial, a mortgage company,
and the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (formerly Trump University), an
online education company focusing on real-estate investment and
entrepreneurialism. The latter firm, which ceased operating in 2011, was the
target of class-action lawsuits by former students
and a separate action by the attorney general of New York state,
alleging fraud. After initially denying the
allegations, Trump settled the lawsuits for $25 million in November 2016. In
2019, more than two years into his presidency, Trump agreed to pay $2 million
in damages and to admit guilt to settle another lawsuit by the attorney general
of New York that had accused him of illegally using assets from his charity,
the Trump Foundation, to fund his 2016 presidential campaign. As part of the
settlement, the Trump Foundation was dissolved.
In 2018 The New York Times published a
lengthy investigative report that documented how Fred Trump had regularly
transferred vast sums of money, ultimately amounting to hundreds of millions of
dollars, to his children by means of strategies that involved tax, securities,
and real-estate fraud, as well as by legal means. According to
the report, Donald was the main beneficiary of the transfers, having received
the equivalent (in 2018 dollars) of $413 million by the early 2000s.
Trump was credited as coauthor of a number of books on
entrepreneurship and his business career, including Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), Trump: The Art of the Comeback (1997), Why We Want You to Be Rich (2006), Trump 101: The Way to Success (2006), and Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into
Success (2008).
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