‘Maths didn't help Einstein discover gravity’: Union minister Goyal commits a Modi-model gaffe

Agencies
September 12, 2019

New Delhi, Sept 12: Trying to counter his critics on India's slowing economy, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal made a gaffe by invoking Einstein for the Theory of Gravity, which was propounded by Isaac Newton.

“Don’t go by all the calculations you see on TV, that if the country has to become a $5 trillion economy, it will have to grow at 12% but right now it is currently growing at 6-7%”.

“Don’t get into those maths. Maths never helped Einstein discover gravity,” Goyal said immediately after the Board of Trade meeting as he tried to defend the government’s projection of economic growth, which it believes can make India a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25.

Continuing his rant, Goyal said if Einstein had only gone by structured formulae and what was past knowledge, there would have been no innovation in this world.

Goyal's comments came close on the heels of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman saying the auto sales were down due to millennials preferring to ride by Ola and Uber.

“The automobile and components industry has been affected by the implementation of BS-VI norms and the mindsets of millennials who now prefer to ride by Ola and Uber rather than committing to buying an automobile,” Sitharaman has said in Chennai earlier this week.

After two back-to-back sub-6% GDP acceleration, most of the rating agencies and global banks have lowered their growth projection for the Indian economy in 2019-20.

While Moody's has cut its GDP forecast for India to 6.2%, domestic rating agency Crisil has lowered it to 6.3% after the economy slumped to a six-year low of 5% in the April-June quarter of FY20.

The Reserve Bank of India too revised its estimates downward to 6.9% from an earlier 7%.

Economists, however, believe that to become a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25, India needs to grow at least at 9% every year.

This is not the first gaffe by Goyal in the current year. Earlier in February, he was called out for sharing a video of a "high-speed" train that turned out to be a time-lapse of a slower train. At that time he was minister for railways.

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News Network
January 30,2020

Jan 30: BJP leader and West Bengal party head, Dilip Ghosh has yet again made a controversial statement. He said that one has to go to jail in order to gain respect or become a political leader.

"You will not be a leader if you don't go to jail, if Police don't take you, then you must go there yourself. If they don't give you any scope, you do something to go to jail, only then will people respect you. There is no place for soft people in politics," ANI quoted Ghosh as saying.

Earlier, Ghosh had triggered a controversy by saying that anti-CAA protestors in Assam and Uttar Pradesh were shot dead "like dogs", and similar punishment should be given to protestors in Bengal.

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News Network
June 5,2020

Jun 5: Underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his wife Mahzabeen have tested positive for COVID-19, a top government source told CNN News 18. They were admitted to the Army Hospital in Karachi.

Some of Dawood's personal staff and guards have also been quarantined, the report said on Friday.

Dawood was the mastermind of the 1993 Mumbai blasts and is one of the most-wanted gangsters by India. He has allegedly been living in Pakistan but the neighbouring country has always refusing to accept it.

Earlier in the day, a senior diplomat of the American embassy in Pakistan has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, a media report said.

In a statement, the embassy's spokesman said that while maintaining the privacy, the name of the citizen would not be disclosed.

The US State Department is responsible to protect its citizens, wherever they are, the spokesman added. In coordination with the Pakistani authorities, the consulate is working to enforce the coronavirus protocol in order to stem its spread. The spokesman added that isolation wards, contact tracing and quarantine facility are part of such protocols.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has 89,249 COVID-19 cases and the death toll is 1,838.

 

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News Network
April 15,2020

New Delhi, Apr 15: Tablighi Jamaat leader Maulana Saad Kandhalvi has been booked for culpable homicide after some of the attendees of the religious congregation died due to coronavirus, police said on Wednesday.

Kandhalvi had organised the religious gathering at Nizamuddin Markaz last month against the social distancing protocol imposed by the Centre to curb the spread of the deadly disease.

An FIR was registered against the cleric on March 31 at Crime Branch police station on a complaint of the Station House Officer of Nizamuddin.

He was earlier booked for holding the event, police said.

“After several attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat event succumbed to coronavirus, we added IPC section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) in the FIR against the leader, a police official said.

Some foreigners who attended the event have also been booked for violation of visa norms.

In an audio message, Kandhalvi had said that he was exercising self-quarantine after several hundreds who visited the Tablighi Jamaat congregation at Nizamudddin Markaz tested positive for coronavirus.

The FIR registered against the Tablighi Jamaat event says that the Delhi Police contacted the authorities of Nizamuddin Markaz on March 21 and reminded them of the government order which prohibited any political or religious gathering of more than 50 people.

It says that despite repeated efforts, the event organisers failed to inform the health department or any other government agency about the huge gathering inside the Markaz and deliberately disobeyed government orders.

“The sub district magistrate of Defence Colony inspected the premises several times and found that around 1,300 people, including foreign nationals, were residing there without maintaining social distance. It was also found that there were no arrangements of hand sanitizers and face masks,” the FIR adds.

The Nizamudddin centre, attended by thousands, turned out to be a hotspot for spread of coronavirus not only in the national capital, but the entire country.

More than 25,500 Tablighi members and their contacts have been quarantined in the country after the Centre and the state governments conducted a "mega operation" to identify them.

At least 9,000 people participated in the religious congregation in Nizamuddin. Later, many of the attendees travelled to various parts of the country.

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