‘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
April 20,2020

New Delhi, Apr 20: With 1,553 more COVID-19 cases, India's total number of coronavirus cases has reached 17,265, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday.

Out of the total cases, 14,175 cases are active, while 2,547 people have been cured/discharged/migrated and 543 deaths have been reported, as per the ministry.

As many as 36 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Maharashtra continues to be the worst-affected state with a total of 4,203 cases. While 507 patients have recovered, 223 deaths have been reported.

Delhi comes next with 2,003 cases, out of which 72 patients have recovered while 45 patients have died.

Rajasthan has confirmed 1,478 cases, out of which 183 people have recovered while 14 patients are dead.

Tamil Nadu has reported 1,477 cases, out of which 411 have recovered and 15 have succumbed to the virus.

Madhya Pradesh has reported 1,407 cases, including 127 patients recovered and 70 patients dead. On the other hand, Uttar Pradesh has 1,084 COVID-19 positive cases.

In Kerala, which reported the country's first COVID-19 case, 402 people have been detected positive for coronavirus.

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News Network
March 4,2020

Mar 4: Twenty-one Italian tourists and three Indian tour operators have been sent to an ITBP quarantine facility in Delhi on Tuesday for suspected coronavirus exposure, official sources said.

Health Ministry sources said these foreigners, 13 women and eight men, were in the same group of which an Italian and his wife have tested positive in Rajasthan capital Jaipur.

“His (Italian in Jaipur) condition is stable,” a source said.

Three Indians, who were accompanying this Italian group as tour operators, have also been sent to the ITBP facility in Chhawla area of south-west Delhi, they said.

All these people, staying at a five-star hotel in south Delhi, have been put in “preventive isolation” at the ITBP camp and their samples will be taken on Wednesday, sources said.

The centre already has 112 people, 76 Indians and 36 foreigners, since February 27 after they were evacuated by an IAF plane from Wuhan in China, the epicentre of the coronavirus.

The first samples of these 112 people had tested negative when reports came in last week.

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News Network
January 15,2020

New Delhi, Jan 15: The mother of 23-year-old paramedic student, who was raped and brutally assaulted by six men in December 2012, on Tuesday said she knew that the curative petitions of the convicts will be rejected and is confident that they will be hanged on January 22.

Her remarks came after the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to stay the execution of two of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case while dismissing their curative petitions against their conviction and capital punishment.

"The curative please had to be rejected. This was the third time they had gone to the Supreme Court. Whatever pleas they file, we are ready to face them and we will fight it out. We feel that they will be hanged on January 22. We want that to happen," Nirbhaya's mother told PTI over phone.

The four convicts -- Vinay Sharma (26), Mukesh Kumar (32), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- are to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail as a Delhi court issued their death warrants on January 7.

Vinay and Mukesh had filed curative petitions on January 9.

Shortly after the apex court refused to stay the execution of two of them, Mukesh moved a mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind.

Mukesh also approached the Delhi High Court for quashing the death warrant. The high court is expected to take up his petition on Wednesday.

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