Swadeshi yes, but how?

IT WAS IN a Swiss village of undulating meadows and autumnal rain that I heard the Prime Minister’s appeal for ‘swadeshi’ last week.

- TAVLEEN SINGH

It was here in a hospital room that I watched with growing disbelief Donald Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly. As I listened to him accusing the UN of inertia and ineptitude, telling Europe that its countries were “going to hell” because of illegal immigration, and accusing India and China of funding Russia's war on Ukraine, my sense of disbelief grew and grew. How is India going to deal with our economic and political issues with the United States when it is led by a man who makes so little sense?

I brooded over this as I took my morning walk on a path that runs around this hospital. I am here not for personal health problems, but those of someone else. I clarify this because last time I mentioned being in and out of hospitals, I got many letters of solace from kind readers of this column. The path I take for my morning walks here looks onto peridot-coloured meadows in which soft mists rise, and fat Swiss cows brood. The immaculate beauty of this little village reminds me painfully of our own filthy, unsightly villages. It lent a poignant quality to the constant appeals for ‘swadeshi’ and ‘vocal for local’ that our Prime Minister now makes almost every day.