monDAY 02 November, 2020 epaper.morningstandard.in facebook.com/TheMorningStandard twitter.com/TheMornStandard jean dreze ‘NITISH Seems DISTRACTED’ Unemployment is a big issue in the poll-bound Bihar, asserts the economist A CAPITAL VIEW OF NEWS Page 8 Why swing states matter Indian Americans stats 28.4 lakh To t a l p o p u l a t i o n 1% of population 0.82% of eligible voters I n d i a n Am e r i c a n s i n s w i n g s t a t e s Minnesota 10 33,031 0.52 Michigan 16 77,132 0.78 Wisconsin 10 22,899 0.4 Pennsylvania 20 1,03,026 0.8 North Carolina 15 57,400 0.6 Arizona 11 36,047 0.56 Georgia 16 96,116 0.99 Florida 1,28,735 0.68 29 Indirect voting Voters don’t directly vote for the president but for a group of people known as electors Each elector represents one vote in the electoral college. Electoral votes are partly based on a state’s population  Number of votes in electoral college  IndianAmerican population  % of population Electoral College Total votes 538 127 Votes cast by swing states What polsters say Biden is leading in both national and state-wide opinion polls. Even Trump-supporting Fox News said in its latest poll on Sunday that Biden has a clear 8% lead over the US president, with the majority of voters trusting Biden more than Trump to handle Covid-19 better It’s going to be a very interesting Tuesday. You have a big red wave that has formed. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this - Donald Trump Magic number needed to win 270 l New Delhi l J8.00 PAGES 12 l Indian-American factor in battleground states P u s h k a r B a n a k a r @ New Delhi At under 1% of the US population, Indian-Americans don’t count for much in the country’s November 3 presidential elections. But which way they will swing in eight key battleground states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nor th Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — could impact the final outcome, as these states collectively hold 24% of electoral college votes (see box). The candidate who gets at least 270 electoral college votes wins the jackpot, not the one who bags the highest popular votes, as the 2016 experience showed. Needless to say every , vote counts in swing states. Unlike in the rest of the US, these swing states are not clearly Democrat- or Republican-leaning, so Indian-Americans could possibly play a marginal yet decisive role there. The prosperous IndianAmerican community is so thinly spread out in the 50 US states that in almost all of them, they number less than 0.5% of the average population. But in the swing states, their numbers are better. According to the 2010 US Census, IndianAmericans make up 0.66% of the population on an average in the swing states with Georgia having the highest, 0.99%, and Wisconsin the lowest, 0.4%. “Indian Americans make up only 0.82% of the eligible vot- 91 million votes Already cast in this presidential election 58 mn mail-in 33 mn in-person 66 per cent of the total 139 million votes cast in 2016 have already been cast in early voting, with the election still two days away We’re done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the failure, the refusal to take any responsibility - Joe Biden ers, which is not much. But they are significant for a few reasons. First, because of their presence in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin,” said Kriti Upadhyaya, a researcher at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Citing her institute’s tally she said the Indi, an-American population is 1,56,000, 1,25,000 and 37,000 respectively in these three states. “In these states where the 2016 victory was achieved through rather narrow margins, each vote counts and the Indian Americans make up a vote bank that can make or break a candidate’s chances of victory she added. ,”  Continued on P7 Race factor % of those likely to vote for Biden/Trump  biden trump Latino 50 Black 90 White 44 30 Over L1 lakh cr GST yield after eight months Finance ministry sees it as an indicator of economic recovery but experts are wary Express News Service @ New Delhi With the GST mop-up in October crossing `1 lakh crore for the first time in the current fiscal, mainly on account of the festival season, the finance ministry saw in it an indicator of economic recovery though experts remained wary . The overall October collection was `1,05,155 crore. The last time GST revenue had crossed the `1 lakh crore milestone was in February 2020, when it totted up `1,05,366 crore. The total number of GSTR-3B returns filed till October 31 is 80 lakh. “The growth in GST revenue as compared to that in months of July August and , September, 2020 of -14%, -8% and 5% respectively clearly shows the trajectory of recovery of the economy and, correspondingly of the , revenues,” the finance ministry said in a statement. However, experts warned it is too early to predict recovery. “Given the festivities, collections in November could also be robust. We would need to see if this trend continues after November,” PwC India partner Pratik Jain said. Eight million retur ns were filed as the last date for claiming input tax credit for 2019-20 was September 30 and a lot of companies must have carried out a yearly reconciliation and asked vendors to file returns or report missing transactions, among other factors, he reasoned. Of the total GST collection in October, CGST was `19,193 crore, SGST `25,411 crore, IGST `52,540 crore and cess `8,011 crore. The total revenue earned by Central and the state governments after regular settlement in October is `44,285 crore and `44,839 crore, respectively . 4 50 Source: NYT/Siena College poll, Oct 20 Biden leads in 4 key states Biden has a clear lead over Trump in swing states Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona, shows the latest New York Times/Siena College poll west up DALITS in this region FACE brunt of CASTe VIOLENCE While Dalits here are more assertive in confronting the upper caste, the region’s proximity to Delhi means such atrocities quickly grab the media’s attention | P7