Wall built to hide poverty from Trump

By Ryan Grenoble in the USA:

This Photo Of A Trump Billboard In Mumbai Is Real, And So Is The Dark Irony

Let them eat cake.

12/31/2016 06:25 pm ET

It’s a photo so poignant and so symbolic you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s faked.

And you wouldn’t be alone in that conclusion: Both Reddit and Snopes dismissed it as fake when it went viral earlier this year. And yet this is a real photo of a real billboard, featuring President-elect Donald Trump promoting Trump Tower in Mumbai while homeless children camp in the street below.

“There is only one way to live,” the billboard reads, next to a larger-than-life photo of Trump smiling down on a scene of poverty from his gilded room. “The Trump way.”

Outside of cropping it and possibly tweaking the contrast, photographer Paul Needham assured The Huffington Post “the image is neither doctored nor edited in any way.”

Needham is the co-founder of SimpaNetworks, a company that helps farmers and small shops in rural India install and use solar power systems. …

“I saw Trump towering over the homeless, the children sleeping on cardboard on the street, and I was reminded of the ways in which our economic system can be painfully exclusive and unfair.”

From Reuters news asgency, 13 February 2020:

Another wall goes up for Trump, this time in India

By Amit Dave

AHMEDABAD, India – U.S. President Donald Trump will be shielded from the sight of slums by a newly built wall when he visits the city of Ahmedabad during a visit to India this month.

This 14 February 2020 video from India is called Ahead of Trump’s Visit, Gujarat Builds Wall to Hide Slum.

The contractor building it told Reuters the government “did not want the slum to be seen” when Trump passes by on the ride in from Ahmedabad’s airport.

“I’ve been ordered to build a wall as soon as possible, over 150 masons are working round-the-clock to finish the project,” the contractor said, speaking on condition of anonymity. …

It would be better if these over 150 masons would build decent homes for people now living in slums instead.

It would be better if the governments of India and neighbouring Pakistan would use money for fighting poverty instead of on nuclear weapons which almost led to nuclear war killing billions of people.

It would be better if Trump in the USA would stop wasting trillions of dollars on nuclear and other weapons; money which should be used for fighting poverty, for education, for health, etc. instead.

Whatever the reason, the 400-meter-long and seven-feet-high wall will prevent the U.S. leader from getting a glimpse of a slum district that houses an estimated 800 families.

Trump, who has made his pledge to build a wall along the United States’ border with Mexico a feature of his presidency, will visit India on Feb. 24-25 to reaffirm strategic ties that have been buffeted by trade disputes.

He is expected to attend an event dubbed “Kem Chho Trump” (“How are you, Trump”) at a stadium in Ahmedabad along the lines of the “Howdy Modi” extravaganza he hosted for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Houston last September.

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump quoted Modi as saying “millions and millions of people” would attend the rally.

But some slum dwellers whose homes will be cordoned off by the wall in Ahmedabad – the largest city in Modi’s home state of Gujarat – said the government was wasting tax-payer money to hide the poor.

“Poverty and slums are the reality of our life, but Modi’s [right-wing] government wants to hide the poor,” said Parvatbhai Mafabhai, a day worker who has lived there with his family for more than three decades.