Parties should not give tickets to candidates with criminal background: ECI to SC

New Delhi, Mar 5: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan assuring that the government has the coronavirus crisis under control, is like the Titanic captain telling passengers not to panic as his ship was unsinkable, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Thursday.

Gandhi's remarks came after Vardhan's assurance in Parliament that the government is taking all necessary measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) in India.

“The health minister saying that the Indian government has the coronavirus crisis under control, is like the Captain of the Titanic telling passengers not to panic as his ship was unsinkable,” Gandhi said in a tweet.

“It's time the government made public an action plan backed by solid resources to tackle this crisis,” he said.

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.

Gandhi has been raising concerns over the coronavirus infection since long. In a February 12 tweet, he had said coronavirus is an extremely serious threat to “our people and our economy”.

“My sense is the government is not taking this threat seriously. Timely action is critical,” he had said.

Earlier this week, Gandhi had hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the detection of fresh coronavirus cases in the country, saying he should quit wasting India's time “playing the clown” with his social media accounts when India is facing an emergency.

With the message of “Here's how it's done”, Gandhi had also tweeted a video of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong addressing Singaporeans on how to deal with the coronavirus.

The number of coronavirus cases in India is 29, including 16 Italians, the government had said on Wednesday, adding all international passengers will now be screened at airports, amid growing concern over the spread of the respiratory infection.

May 19: Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's office on Tuesday said the Uttar Pradesh government has demanded that the 1,000 buses the party wants to ply for ferrying migrant labourers back to the state be handed over in Lucknow this morning and alleged that the move is politically motivated.

It also alleged that the demand shows that the UP government lacks the intention to help those stranded at the state's borders.

The Uttar Pradesh government on Monday had accepted the Congress' offer to run 1,000 buses to bring migrant labourers back to the state, a proposal which had triggered a war of words between the two sides.

In a letter to Additional Chief Secretary Avneesh Kumar Awasthi, Priyanka Gandhi's private secretary Sandeep Singh said a letter was received from the UP official at 11.40 am via email, in which it has been stated that 1,000 buses with all documents be handed over at Lucknow by 10 am on Tuesday.

"In a situation when thousands of workers are walking on the streets and thousands of people have gathered at the UP borders at various registration centres, sending 1,000 empty buses to Lucknow is not only a waste of time and resources but is also inhuman and the product of an anti-poor mindset," Singh said in the letter in Hindi.

"This demand of your government seems politically motivated. It does not seem that your government wants to help our labourer brothers and sisters who are facing a disaster," the letter said.

The state government had asked Priyanka Gandhi, who had made the offer, to provide it with a list of buses along with the names of their drivers and conductors.

Subsequently, her private secretary Singh had given details of the buses and its drivers to the UP government in an email.

"All details of the 1,000 buses are attached with this e-mail. Out of them, a few drivers will be reverified and those details will also be mailed to you in a few hours. I hope you will give permission for those buses to ply as soon as possible," Singh had said in the communication to the UP government on Monday.

The Congress leader had recently written to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, seeking permission to run 1,000 buses at her party's expense.

The party had then accused the BJP-run UP government of ignoring the offer.

"The offer made to the chief minister through the letter on May 16 in connection with migrant labourers has been accepted," Additional Chief Secretary Awasthi (Home and Information) had said in a letter to Priyanka Gandhi's private secretary.

A little later on Twitter, Priyanka Gandhi, who is the Congress general secretary in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, had thanked Adityanath.

"Thank you for allowing us to run 1,000 buses at the expense of the Congress to help thousands of brothers and sisters walking on the roads in Uttar Pradesh," she had tweeted in Hindi.

She had said the Congress will stand with these people during the difficult time they face.

In a television interview earlier on Monday, Adityanath accused the Congress of playing politics over the plight of migrant workers.

Singh in his letter on Tuesday also expressed surprise at the chief minister, saying his government was demanding the details of buses since the last three days and asserted that the details were provided immediately after the letter from the UP government was received in this regard.

Davos, Jan 20: India's richest 1 per cent hold more than four-times the wealth held by 953 million people who make up for the bottom 70 per cent of the country's population, while the total wealth of all Indian billionaires is more than the full-year budget, a new study said on Monday.

Releasing the study 'Time to Care' here ahead of the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), rights group Oxfam also said the world's 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 per cent of the planet's population.

The report flagged that global inequality is shockingly entrenched and vast and the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade, despite their combined wealth having declined in the last year.

"The gap between rich and poor can't be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these," said Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar, who is here to represent the Oxfam confederation this year.

The issues of income and gender inequality are expected to figure prominently in discussions at the five-day summit of the WEF, starting Monday. The WEF's annual global risks Report has also warned that the downward pressure on the global economy from macroeconomic fragilities and financial inequality continued to intensify in 2019.

Concern about inequality underlies recent social unrest in almost every continent, although it may be sparked by different tipping points such as corruption, constitutional breaches, or the rise in prices for basic goods and services, as per the WEF report.

Although global inequality has declined over the past three decades, domestic income inequality has risen in many countries, particularly in advanced economies and reached historic highs in some, the Global Risks Report flagged last week.

The Oxfam report further said "sexist" economies are fuelling the inequality crisis by enabling a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls.

Regarding India, Oxfam said the combined total wealth of 63 Indian billionaires is higher than the total Union Budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19 which was at Rs 24,42,200 crore.

"Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist," Behar said.

As per the report, it would take a female domestic worker 22,277 years to earn what a top CEO of a technology company makes in one year.

With earnings pegged at Rs 106 per second, a tech CEO would make more in 10 minutes than what a domestic worker would make in one year.

It further said women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day -- a contribution to the Indian economy of at least Rs 19 lakh crore a year, which is 20 times the entire education budget of India in 2019 (Rs 93,000 crore).

Besides, direct public investments in the care economy of 2 per cent of GDP would potentially create 11 million new jobs and make up for the 11 million jobs lost in 2018, the report said.

Behar said the gap between rich and poor cannot be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these.

He said women and girls are among those who benefit the least from today's economic system.

"They spend billions of hours cooking, cleaning and caring for children and the elderly. Unpaid care work is the 'hidden engine' that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses and societies moving.

"It is driven by women who often have little time to get an education, earn a decent living or have a say in how our societies are run, and who are therefore trapped at the bottom of the economy,” Behar added.

Oxfam said governments are massively under-taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations and failing to collect revenues that could help lift the responsibility of care from women and tackle poverty and inequality.

Besides, the governments are also underfunding vital public services and infrastructure that could help reduce women and girls' workload, the report said.

As per the global survey, the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.

Besides, women and girls put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day -- a contribution to the global economy of at least USD 10.8 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech industry.

Getting the richest one per cent to pay just 0.5 per cent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health.

Governments must prioritise care as being as important as all other sectors in order to build more human economies that work for everyone, not just a fortunate few, Behar said.

Oxfam said its calculations are based on the latest data sources available, including from the Credit Suisse Research Institute's Global Wealth Databook 2019 and Forbes' 2019 billionaires list.