The military strike by India comes days after terrorists, allegedly linked to the outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), killed 26 civilians in Kashmir’s Pahalgam. The Ministry of Defence has called the strikes “measured and non-escalatory” and said that no Pakistani military facilities were targeted. The Hindu reported that the terror camps targeted are linked to various banned terror outfits, including LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen. According to an Indian Express report, four of the nine sites India claims it has struck are Bahawalpur and Muridke (in Punjab, Pakistan), and Muzaffarabad and Kotli in PoK.

Hindi media outlet Aaj Tak aired the visuals of missiles being fired in a segment hosted by its senior journalist Anjana Om Kashyap. In its reportage, the outlet counted seven strikes in the city of Bahawalpur alone. In an X post, the channel shared the same visual with the caption, “Here’s how Jaish’s terrorist base was destroyed”. (Archive)

ऑपरेशन सिंदूर | ऐसे ध्वस्त हुआ जैश का आतंकी अड्डा #OperationSindoor #Pakistan #IndianArmy #IndianAirforce #IndiaStrikesTerroristan #PahalgamTerrorAttack | @anjanaomkashyap pic.twitter.com/DxwLnhmDUr

— AajTak (@aajtak) May 7, 2025

ABP, another Hindi news outlet, also aired the purported visuals in a segment hosted by one of its star anchors, Chitra Tripathi. (Archive)

#OperationSindoor BREAKING | भारत की तीनों सेनाओं ने ये एयर स्ट्राइक की थी@chitraaum | @neeraj_rajput | @MeghaSPrasad | @shivank_8mishra
https://t.co/smwhXUROiK #OperationSindoor #BreakingNews #IndianArmy #PahalgamTerrorAttack pic.twitter.com/LhIEYwOmbK

— ABP News (@ABPNews) May 7, 2025

Zee News Gujarati used a screengrab from the video in a photo gallery on Operation Sindoor, while News18 Bangla, Business Today, Amar Ujala and Bartaman used similar screenshots from the video in their articles.

Well-known News18 journalist, Rubika Liyaquat, also shared the video on X along with a list of the nine terrorist hideouts where the Indian army struck. (Archive)

आतंकियों के वो नौ ठिकाने जिन पर क़हर बन कर टूटी भारतीय सेना। #OperationSindoor

1.मरकज़ सुबहान अल्लाह, Bahawalpur
(Punjab, Pakistan)
जैश-ए-मोहम्मद का हेडक्वार्टर
पुलवामा अटैक में भी यहीं से हुई थी प्लानिंग और ट्रेनिंग

2.मरकज़ तैय्यबा, Muridke
(Punjab, Pakistan)… pic.twitter.com/beCuvUcVh6

— Rubika Liyaquat (@RubikaLiyaquat) May 7, 2025

Senior journalist and executive editor of TV9 Network, Aditya Raj Kaul, who has been fact-checked by Alt News several times in the past, also shared the footage with the caption “Missiles fired at Kotli, Muzaffarabad, and Bahawalpur—confirmed by DG ISPR to Pakistani journalists. India goes after terror state Pakistan.” (Archive)

#BREAKING: Pakistan Army confirms attack by India. India has launched an attack on Pakistan. Missiles fired at Kotli, Muzaffarabad, and Bahawalpur — confirmed by DG ISPR to Pakistani journalists. India goes after terror state Pakistan. pic.twitter.com/Tog4sHGjdM

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) May 6, 2025

Digital media outlet NEWJ also shared the video with the same claim. (Archive)

Pakistan Army confirms attack by India. India has launched an attack on Pakistan. Missiles fired at Kotli, Muzaffarabad, and Bahawalpur — confirmed by DG ISPR to Pakistani journalists. India goes after terror state Pakistan. pic.twitter.com/TwmwwFJ9UQ

— NEWJ (@NEWJplus) May 6, 2025

X user @MeghUpdates, who often shares far-Right content and has been fact-checked by Alt News several times, shared the video claiming that India launched a missile attack on Pakistan. At the time of writing this, the post had garnered over 680,000 views. (Archive)

MASSIVE NEWS

India launches MISSILE ATTACK on Pakistan.

Pakistan Army confirms attack by India.

Missiles fired at Kotli, Muzaffarabad, and Bahawalpur pic.twitter.com/JzN32a1EyF

— Megh Updates (@MeghUpdates) May 6, 2025

Pakistan-based journalist Sabir Shakir, who is associated with local news outlet ARY, shared the video with an Urdu caption that reads ‘Indian attack in Bahawalpur’. (Archive)

بھارتی حملہ بہالپور میں pic.twitter.com/tODgn5IYPv

— Sabir Shakir (@ARYSabirShakir) May 6, 2025

Several other X handles, including propaganda outlet Panchjanya, amplified the video with the same claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

Fact Check

A reverse image search of key frames from the visuals shared above led us to a news report on Sputnik Armenia’s website from October 13, 2023 in which the same video was used. The Sputnik report said that Israel had struck 750 military targets in the Gaza Strip.

We also found a statement by the Israeli Air Force from October 13, 2023, claiming the same.

Several other social media accounts, too, shared this video on October 13. Here, here, here, here and here are links to their X posts. Screenshots below:

The video resurfaced again a few days later and was used by media outlet Al Mayadeen in its video report on the bombings in Gaza on October 23, 2023. On October 23, senior BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh, had pointed out on X that the visuals were “from 10 days ago”.

Israel’s air strikes on Gaza have intensified, but this video, viewed 350,000 times, doesn’t show “Gaza right now”.

It’s from 10 days ago. pic.twitter.com/41ah1sx0Pb

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) October 23, 2023

As it stands, several Indian media outlets ran a 1.5-year-old footage of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza with claims that these were visuals from India’s military operation against Pakistan-based terror outfits on May 7, 2025. These channels aired the footage without verification and these claims were also amplified by senior journalists and trickled down to social media users, resulting in misinformation regarding a sensitive issue spiralling.

The post Aaj Tak, ABP, Zee News, others air 2023 footage of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza as visuals of India’s Operation Sindoor appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

The passage of this historic legislation was celebrated by Prime Minister Modi on X, stating that it would mark a significant milestone for his government together with the abrogation of Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the Ram Temple construction. Very grandly put, but the legislation is highly contentious and complicated in its purpose, consequences, and outlook on Waqf properties spread across 9.4 lakh acres across India, making them the third-largest landholder in the country after Railways and Defence Forces.

What Is Waqf, and Why Does It Matter?

In the Islamic system of law, a Waqf is regarded as a charitable trust whereby an individual sets aside property-whether land, buildings, or other assets-for religious or social purposes. In its designation, the property is said to have been transferred to Allah so that it may be administered by a custodian (mutawalli) in fulfilment of specific purposes like the endowment of mosques, graveyards, or welfare activities. In India, this centuries-old practice has, however, been codified and regulated through various enactments starting from the Muslim Wakf Validating Act of 1913 to the Waqf Act of 1995, as amended in 2013. Presently 32 state Waqf Boards and a Central Waqf Council are in charge of these assets.

The scale of Waqf assets is indeed staggering: millions of properties, mosques, cemeteries, shops, and agricultural land. In theory, their income should be utilised for the education, healthcare, and welfare of the Muslim community. Mismanagement, corruption, and a poor revenue-generating capacity remained the catchwords for the schemes in practice-the last being about ₹163 crore a year as per the Sachar Committee Report in 2006. The report mentioned that if properly managed, Waqf could have made 12,000 crore ($1.4 billion) today, establishing a chasm between what could be and what is the functioning by the government, which now claims to correct.

The Bill: Key Changes and Controversies

The Waqf (Amendment) Bill is intended to introduce radical reforms intended to modernise and centralise Waqf administration. Among its most controversial provisions:

1. Abolition of ‘Waqf by User’ and Section 40: It was often said that “Waqf by user” applies to properties that had been put to religious uses for very long periods, such as ancient mosques or graveyards, making them Waqf even in the absence of formal documentation. According to Section 40 of the 1995 Act, it was also possible for Waqf Boards to determine unilaterally whether a property was under their purview. The new bill does away with both provisions and makes it mandatory for district collectors to undertake surveys and verify claims, a move the government says will stem the tide of arbitrary land grabbing. Critics fear, though, that it could endanger myriad undocumented historical sites to litigation and reclamation.

2. Centralised Registration and Transparency: The bill obliges all Waqf properties to be listed on the government portal within six months of its enactment, thereby promoting transparency. Disputes, which were previously adjudicated solely by Waqf Tribunals, can now be appealed in high courts, thus subject to the erstwhile arguments of ensuring justice, but critics say centralising control under the state.

3. Inclusion of Non-Muslims and Women: The bill proposes that in the Central Waqf Council (22 members) and state boards, aside from two Muslim women and representatives of Muslim communities (Pasmanda¹), four and three non-Muslim members, respectively, should be included. The government suggests this is a progressive step since Waqf decisions affect non-Muslims as well. On the other hand, opposition leaders, such as AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, argue that the diversity is not required for Hindu temple boards, thereby accusing the BJP of selective interference.

4. Inheritance Rights: A prohibition against Waqf dedications that disinherit daughters contributes towards gender equity. However, critics have noted the anomaly-the Hindu law on inheritance continues to allow fathers to discriminate in favour of their sons, and no reforms have been made to address this.

5. Limitation Law: Property disputes will be subject to a limitation period, thereby precluding claims more than “x” years after the event. While this purportedly hastens the wheels of justice, it has evoked opposition, such as by Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who warns that lingering unresolved cases might legitimise illegal encroachments under the evil doctrine of “adverse possession.”

The Debate: Polarization and Power Plays

Confusion and Vast Misdirection: The next step is to satisfy the Parliament’s vagaries. In the Lok Sabha, 288 MPs voted for it and 232 against. The Rajya Sabha saw 128 votes for and 95 against. TDP and JD(U) are allies, while BJP got help from the YSRCP and BJD, which allowed free votes among their MPs to ensure the simple majority was achieved.

Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Minority Affairs, introduced the bill on April 2, citing “97 lakh petitions” from stakeholders as proof of public demand for one that would uplift poor Muslims and modernise the broken system. He charged Waqf Boards with misusing their powers to lay claims to properties such as that of Delhi’s CGO Complex or land of a 1,500-year-old Tiruchendur temple in Tamil Nadu, aided on many occasions by past Congress governments.

The substantive opposition came from Congress, DMK, and RJD. A. Raja of DMK stated the existing process involving independent survey commissioners and civil procedure codes prevented arbitrary acquisitions and charged that the BJP was exaggerating the ills so that control could be gained via district collectors who lack the independence of earlier officials. Congress member Imran Pratapgarhi disproved all claims that Waqf Tribunals were unaccountable “religious panchayats,” emphasising judicial scrutiny of their operations since the 1995 Act. Manoj Jha from RJD posed the question of how sites centuries old could have modern documentation and predicted a “mountain of litigation.”

Owaisi and others posed a much graver question: the stripping of “Waqf by user” status and demands for paperwork could put historic properties on shaky ground, making them susceptible to takeovers by the government or corporations. They reminded them that of the 14,500 hectares of Waqf land in Uttar Pradesh, 14,000 hectares were recently declared state land, including old mosques and graveyards, a precedent they fear would become widespread.

A Watershed Moment—or a Polarising Ploy?

Crossing the divide, Modi’s term resonates differently. For BJP, the bill is a stroke of genius, falling well into its agenda of uniformity and reform. His supporters contend that it follows in the lines of Waqf modernisation of Muslim countries-transferring lands for public welfare. Rijiju assured that registered Waqf properties would not be touched, letting slide much-elaborated fears of retrospective actions.

But “Jai Shri Ram” chants resounded through parliament once the passage was done, with critics like Uddhav Thackeray branding it a conspiracy to adopt Waqf lands for crony capitalists. The opposition plans to challenge the bill in the Supreme Court, which cites the guarantee of Article 26 on religious autonomy and warns of increased communal tensions as the result of this bill.

The best test for the bill lies ahead yet. Will it streamline Waqf management and improve income back to Muslims, as the government claims? Or will it create polarisation, case-laden challenges, and space grabs as its detractors predict? As 99% of Waqf properties have already been digitised (per an affidavit by the government in 2020), whether such upheaval needs elimination is being debated. As India watches on, this UMEED Act, born of hope, may yet find whether it delivers progress or oozes deeper divides.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Syed Salman Mehdi.

Trump spoke to reporters on Thursday after meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House.

“I look at India and I do see the skirmishes on the border and I guess they continue to go on,” he said. “If I could be of help, I would love to help.”

Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Russia last October on the sidelines of a summit for leaders of developing nations shortly after their governments reached an agreement over a disputed area along their shared border.

Thousands of Indian and Chinese troops faced off in June 2020 at three or four locations in the western Himalayas after Beijing’s forces intruded into Indian territory, according to Indian security officials and local media.

China denied intruding into Indian territory near the Galwan River in the mountainous Ladakh region.

Trump was also asked on Thursday about how he expects the United States to compete with China if it also implements tough trade measures on India.

“We are in very good shape to beat anybody we want, but we are not looking to beat anybody. We are looking to do a really good job,” Trump said, adding that he expects to have a “very good relationship with China.”

Modi noted the summit of leaders from the Quad — made up of the United States, India, Australia and Japan — is scheduled to be held in India this year, possibly in September.

The grouping formally convened in 2007 but it was largely dormant until Trump revived it a decade later during his first presidency. The Quad was a pillar of the Biden administration’s efforts to counter China.

China has derided the grouping as a relic of what it calls a U.S.-driven “Cold War” mindset and insisted that it has no designs for territorial expansion or aggression in the vast Indo-Pacific region.

Modi said he looked forward to hosting Trump in New Delhi for the summit.

“The partnership between India and the U.S. strengthens democracy and democratic values and systems,” he said.

Trump’s comments about engagement with China appear reflective of the “different approaches he’s contemplating, and different voices among those around him, on how much to engage or compete with Beijing, and in what manner,” said Dhruva Jaishankar, executive director of the Washington-based Observer Research Foundation America.

Edited by Tenzin Pema and Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Dickyi and Passang Dhonden for RFA Tibetan.

Authorities in the eastern Indian state of Manipur are warning thousands of Myanmar nationals who fled conflict in the Sagaing region that they have one month to return home, despite the ongoing threat of junta airstrikes that wiped out many of their villages.

Sagaing has seen some of the fiercest fighting between junta troops and the armed opposition since the military‘s February 2021 coup d’etat, which has forced around 5,000 residents of the region to seek shelter in neighboring India’s Manipur state.

Late last month, Manipur authorities met with the displaced in the state‘s Kamjong and Ukhrul districts, across the border from Sagaing region’s Tedim township, and told them they would have to return home in the coming weeks, one of the Myanmar refugees told RFA Burmese.

“It remains unclear what is happening in other districts [of Manipur],” said the refugee who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “The head of Kamjong district met with [the displaced] on Oct. 23 and told them to return home by Dec. 10. The [refugees] there are now preparing to go back.”

Of around 5,000 Myanmar war refugees in Manipur state, approximately 3,000 are sheltering in the two districts, according to aid workers.

Families with schoolchildren are allowed to stay until March 2025, when exams are over, they said.

Threats back home

While towns like Kham Pat and Myo Thit in Sagaing are now under the control of the armed opposition forces, many homes were destroyed in junta arson attacks and rebuilding will be tough, another displaced person told RFA.

“In the upper area of Sagaing, Nan Aung Maw village was completely burnt down, while all the houses in Su Thar Yar ward of Aung Zeya town were also destroyed,” he said. “The refugees from these areas are preparing to return home this month. They will have to build makeshift bamboo houses, and they will face difficulties.”

Those displaced from Sagaing’s Tamu township dare not return, as the area remains under the control of junta forces and allied Pyu Saw Htee militias, he added.

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An official from the Burma Refugee Committee in Sagaing’s Kabaw area who also declined to be named told RFA that the refugees were asked to return home “to prevent armed conflict at the border” and “address ethnic issues.”

“These Manipur districts have ties to Naga rebels [fighting for independence in India’s Nagaland], who entered Myanmar through the border with Tamu township to join junta troops in armed conflict,” he said.

“Some of them were killed or arrested [in Myanmar] ... So, the Manipur authorities might have decided to force Myanmar refugees to return home to prevent ethnic conflicts,” he added.

Attempts by RFA to contact the U.N. refugee agency, the Myanmar Embassy in India, and the Indian Embassy in Yangon for comment on the deadline set by Manipur authorities went unanswered Friday.

Porous shared border

India shares a 1,600-kilometer (1,000-mile) border with Myanmar along its far-eastern states of Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

Junta attacks against ethnic minority insurgents and pro-democracy militias that emerged in the wake of Myanmar’s coup have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Chin state and neighboring Sagaing region, with thousands seeking refuge across the porous Indian border.

Among those who have slipped into India are supporters of those fighting to end military rule and they could be in grave danger if forced back into the arms of the junta, activists say.

Attempts by India to stem the flow of refugees from Myanmar have affected people on both sides of the border.

In August, people in western Sagaing region said their supplies of rice, cooking oil, salt, fuel and medicine were dwindling because of trade disruptions caused by Indian border gate closures.

Indian authorities cited the need to check the flow of illegal goods from Myanmar as the reason for the closures, but a diplomat at India’s Embassy in Yangon told RFA that the Indian government permits movement through designated border crossing points and any restrictions were likely imposed by Myanmar or local authorities.

India has also repatriated scores of junta troops who fled across the border to escape armed opposition offensives in recent months.

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.

When it comes to the Sikhs outside India, located in such far-flung places as Canada and Australia, the patience of the Indian national security state was worn thin.  Concerned that the virus of Khalistan – the dream of an independent Sikh homeland – might be gathering strength in the ideological laboratories of the diaspora, surveillance, threats and assassinations have become a feature of India’s intelligence services, benignly named the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

The case of Canada is particularly striking, given the audacious killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18 last year by two-masked men just as he was about to leave the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia.  In September, Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, told the House of Commons that Canada’s security services were investigating links between New Delhi and the murder.  Canadian officials, including the director of the CSIS, had travelled to New Delhi to put their case.  Pavan Kumari Rai, the Canadian chief of RAW, had been expelled and four Indian nationals charged in connection with the killing.

When it took place, the Modi government wondered why the Canadians were getting themselves into a tizz over the demise of a man deemed by Indian authorities to be a terrorist.  Trudeau was having none of the balletic sidestepping Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become so used to from foreign leaders.

Over the course of this year, matters have only worsened.  Since October 14, the pot has been boiling over.  Evidence had been presented by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) making a compelling case that agents of the Indian government had engaged in, and continued to engage in, activities described as a significant threat to public safety.

In a statement released on that day, Trudeau spoke of his country being one “rooted in the rule of law”.  Protection of its citizens was a “paramount” consideration. “That is why, when our law enforcement and intelligence services began pursuing credible allegations that agents of the Government of India were directly involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen […] we responded.”  Trudeau went on to explain that the evidence uncovered by the RCMP included “clandestine information gathering techniques, coercive behaviour targeting South Asian Canadians, and involvement in over a dozen threatening and violent acts, including murder.”

The response from New Delhi was one of unbridled indignation.  In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal claimed that Canada had “presented us no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats.”

Trudeau, in turn, had hoped that the matter could have been handled “in a responsible way” that left the bilateral relationship between the two countries unblemished.  Indian officials, however, had snubbed Canadian efforts to assist in the investigation.  “It was clear that the Indian government’s approach was to criticise us and the integrity of our democracy.”  A series of tit for tat expulsions of top envoys from both countries has figured.

New Delhi’s global program against the Sikh separatist cause has also made its presence felt in the United States.  Last November, the US Department of Justice alleged that an Indian official, identified as CC-1, oversaw a plot to assassinate a Sikh US national, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York earlier in the year.  The DOJ, in an unsealed superseding indictment, alleged murder-for-hire charges against Nikhil Gupta, who had been recruited by CC-1.  (Gupta was subsequently arrested by the Czech authorities and deported back to the US.)

Gupta’s curriculum vitae, featuring narcotics and weapons trafficking, was that of a standard gopher in such an operation, while his target was described as “a vocal critic of the Indian government and leads a US-based organization that advocates for the secession of Punjab”.  The plot was foiled largely through the intervention of an undercover official from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), who had been contacted by Gupta for assistance in contracting a gun for hire.  The going price for murder: $100,000.

On October 17, FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed that CC-1, one Vikash Yadav, had “allegedly conspired with a criminal associate and attempted to assassinate a US citizen on American soil for exercising their First Amendment rights.”  The second unsealed superseding indictment notes Yadav’s prominent role: an employee of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Indian government, “which houses India’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (‘RAW’).”  Charges include murder-for-hire conspiracy, murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Pannun has certainly been vocal about the Modi government.  When interviewed about his response to India’s banning of a CBC Fifth Estate documentary dealing with Nijjar’s killing, he offered a grim assessment: “India, no matter what it claims, is an authoritarian regime run by a fascist [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s BJP.”  India had operated as “an authoritarian state under the garb of democracy since 1947” and “usurped the religious identity of Sikhs in the Constitution and committed genocidal violence against Sikhs to suppress the movement for restoration of their religious identity and growing political dissent in the 1980s and 90s.”

The broader problem here remains how states – notably those with Sikh populations – have approached Modi’s transnational efforts to snuff out the Khalistan movement.  The mood in New Delhi is also one of discrimination.  While India has remained stroppy with Canada, the same cannot be said about its response to the United States.  Instead of dismissing allegations made by the DOJ with cold stiffness, the Ministry of External Affairs announced an inquiry indicating “that India takes such inputs seriously since they impinge our national security interests as well, and relevant departments were already examining the issue.”  The United States, declared the India’s First Post, had “pursued the case through proper channels” while Canada had “indulged in mudslinging throughout.”

New Delhi also sees little reason to be concerned about the response of another ally, Australia, in terms of how the Sikh community is treated.  The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shown himself to be disgracefully timid before calls by Modi that he restrain the Khalistan movement in Australia. This, despite the quiet expulsion of Indian foreign agents in 2020 – up to four of them – for engaging in activities described by the domestic intelligence chief, Mike Burgess, as including the monitoring of India’s “diaspora community”.  “I don’t propose to get into those stories,” stated the Treasurer Jim Chalmers.  “We have a good relationship with India… It’s an important economic relationship.”

It’s precisely that sort of attitude that has certain parliamentarians worried.  Greens Senator David Shoebridge sums up the mood.  “Not only would’ve [it] been good to have an honest baseline for our relationship with India, but it would’ve also sent a message to the diaspora communities here that we’ve got your back.”

Not when matters of economy and trade are at stake. Modi may not have the saintly attributes of being able to walk on water, but he continues to prove adept in escaping condemnation for his sectarian vision of India that has, through activities of the RAW, been globalised in murderous fashion.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

A 19-year-old has made history as the first Tibetan female cricketer to break into India’s highly competitive state-level cricket scene.

Jetsun Narbu competes for the all-women’s Mumbai Cricket Association — the city’s top state-level team — and has her sights on the Indian national team.

Narbu, who was born in Mumbai and has Indian citizenship, told Radio Free Asia that she hopes to use her platform to raise awareness about Tibetan identity and culture on the international stage.

“I want to represent India and bring attention to my Tibetan heritage through cricket,” she said. “And If I could achieve that as a Tibetan cricketer, it would be a dream come true.”

Narbu’s rise in cricket marks a significant milestone, both for her as an athlete and for the Tibetan community in India. 

Indians are passionate about cricket. Played everywhere from crowded city streets to dirt lanes of rural villages, the sport unites people of all ages and backgrounds.

Early seeds

Narbu’s love for cricket developed during her childhood, when she first saw her father watching a match of female cricket players on TV. The image of women playing a traditionally male-dominated sport captivated her, fueling her ambition to become a cricketer. 

Encouraged by her father, Narbu Chee, she started training to be a cricketer at the age of 13. 

Narbu developed her athletics skills with help from Indian coaches and strong family support, and has played in multiple tournaments, including Under-19 and T20 competitions, representing various teams at a state and national levels. 

In 2021, Narbu represented the northeastern state of Sikkim during the Women’s Senior One-Day Trophy and the T-20 Women’s Senior Tournament. In 2023, Narbu represented Mumbai in the national T20 and under-19 ODI tournaments. 

As a university student, Narbu studies finance at Jai Hind College in Mumbai and hopes to land a job in investment banking with the specialization in mergers and acquisitions.

Ethnic background

Narbu said she has never experienced discrimination based on her ethnicity, though she has occasionally noticed curious glances from Indian onlookers because of her different facial features. 

“In sports, skills and dedication should matter more than your background or ethnicity,” she said, underscoring her belief in merit over identity.

Her ambition, however, does come with challenges. 

Competing in a sport where few Tibetan women are visible, Narbu is paving her path with little precedent, which can be both daunting and empowering, she says. 

“Whatever sport you choose, focus on your training and commitment,” she said. “Through sports, we can not only showcase our talents but also bring attention to Tibet’s culture and cause.”

Additional reporting by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Translated by Dawa Dolma. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Dechen Wangmo for RFA Tibetan.

A 19-year-old has made history as the first Tibetan female cricketer to break into India’s highly competitive state-level cricket scene.

Jetsun Narbu competes for the all-women’s Mumbai Cricket Association — the city’s top state-level team — and has her sights on the Indian national team.

Narbu, who was born in Mumbai and has Indian citizenship, told Radio Free Asia that she hopes to use her platform to raise awareness about Tibetan identity and culture on the international stage.

“I want to represent India and bring attention to my Tibetan heritage through cricket,” she said. “And If I could achieve that as a Tibetan cricketer, it would be a dream come true.”

Narbu’s rise in cricket marks a significant milestone, both for her as an athlete and for the Tibetan community in India.

Indians are passionate about cricket. Played everywhere from crowded city streets to dirt lanes of rural villages, the sport unites people of all ages and backgrounds.

Early seeds

Narbu’s love for cricket developed during her childhood, when she first saw her father watching a match of female cricket players on TV. The image of women playing a traditionally male-dominated sport captivated her, fueling her ambition to become a cricketer.

Encouraged by her father, Narbu Chee, she started training to be a cricketer at the age of 13.

Narbu developed her athletics skills with help from Indian coaches and strong family support, and has played in multiple tournaments, including Under-19 and T20 competitions, representing various teams at a state and national levels.

In 2021, Narbu represented the northeastern state of Sikkim during the Women’s Senior One-Day Trophy and the T-20 Women’s Senior Tournament. In 2023, Narbu represented Mumbai in the national T20 and under-19 ODI tournaments.

As a university student, Narbu studies finance at Jai Hind College in Mumbai and hopes to land a job in investment banking with the specialization in mergers and acquisitions.

Ethnic background

Narbu said she has never experienced discrimination based on her ethnicity, though she has occasionally noticed curious glances from Indian onlookers because of her different facial features.

“In sports, skills and dedication should matter more than your background or ethnicity,” she said, underscoring her belief in merit over identity.

Her ambition, however, does come with challenges.

Competing in a sport where few Tibetan women are visible, Narbu is paving her path with little precedent, which can be both daunting and empowering, she says.

“Whatever sport you choose, focus on your training and commitment,” she said. “Through sports, we can not only showcase our talents but also bring attention to Tibet’s culture and cause.”

Additional reporting by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Translated by Dawa Dolma. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Dechen Wangmo for RFA Tibetan.

According to various news reports across Andhra media, the four TV news broadcasters have been blocked since Thursday, June 6, in connection with their critical reporting of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which defeated the incumbent Yuvajana Sramika Rythu (YSR) Congress Party in state-level elections. 

On June 11, Parliament member S. Niranjan Reddy, of the YSR Congress Party, wrote a letter to the chairperson of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, raising concerns about the ban. In his letter, reviewed by CPJ, he highlighted how such an action violates the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Interconnection (Addressable Systems) Regulations, which ensure fair and non-discriminatory interconnection arrangements among service providers. Reddy also emphasized the impact on press freedom and the public’s right to information.

“The news of the blacking out of four news broadcasters by the Cable TV Operators Association is a disturbing one. It is crucial for the new Andhra Pradesh government to uphold the principles of a free and independent press- to ensure that all broadcasters, regardless of how critical they may be, can operate without interference or censorship,” said Kunāl Majumder, CPJ India Representative. “The public’s right to access diverse sources of information is fundamental to a healthy democracy, and any attempts to silence the media must be swiftly addressed and rectified.”

On June 12, TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu was sworn in as the Chief Minister of the state. TDP is also a partner of the ruling alliance led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the federal level.

CPJ’s attempts to contact the Andhra Pradesh Cable TV Operators’ Association were unsuccessful. TDP national spokesperson Deepak Reddy has not responded to CPJ’s message seeking comment. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The post Demand for University by Women in One of India’s Poorest Districts appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.

Photograph Source: Shaunak Modi – CC BY 4.0

There are several exercises in extremes playing out in India right now. Nearly a billion people are voting in elections that will last into early June, braving record-high temperatures to cast ballots. Against this backdrop, Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is throwing what will likely be the world’s most expensive wedding for his youngest son.

Although they appear unrelated, these phenomena are intimately linked.

With 1.4 billion people, India now has the largest population of any nation in the world, surpassing China in 2023. It is also the world’s largest democracy, a title it has held since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. India’s secular democracy has eroded, particularly since 2014 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s leadership ushered in a dawn of Hindu supremacy in a nation that is home to many different faiths.

Much like the Christian right in the United States blended religious fervor with capitalist fundamentalism, the BJP has cloaked its pro-business position in saffron robes. And, just as American billionaires embrace the white supremacist Donald Trump, India’s wealthy seem unperturbed by incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hate-filled speeches.

Indian corporate interests are counting on incumbent Modi winning another five years in office, “hoping for further easing of stifling investment restraints,” as per the Financial Times. This dismantling of regulations, which began a few decades before the BJP gained power, ushered in an erosion of India’s socialist infrastructure. Economists Subhashree Banerjee and Yash Tayal explained in the Deccan Herald, that India’s 1991 reforms ended up “liberalizing the Indian economy to an unprecedented extent. These reforms facilitated an environment for the wealthy to profit from the less-affluent without repercussions.”

The BJP accelerated this trend so that India, which housed nine billionaires in 2000, was home to 101 by 2017. According to Oxfam, “The top 10 percent of the Indian population holds 77 percent of the total national wealth,” and “73 percent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1 percent, while 670 million Indians who comprise the poorest half of the population saw only a 1 percent increase in their wealth.” It’s clear that deregulation helped catapult the rich into greater riches while keeping India’s poor relatively impoverished.

Sitting atop this inglorious dung heap of billionaires is Mukesh Ambani, who is not only India’s richest man, but the wealthiest person in all of Asia—the world’s largest continent. He is also the world’s 11th richest man. And he appears to feel no shame in having spent $152 million for a three-day extravaganza in early March celebrating the coming nuptials of his youngest son.

Yes, that’s correct. Twenty-nine-year-old Anant Ambani’s “pre-wedding” festivities, which took place in Gujarat over three days (several months before the actual wedding), cost the equivalent of feeding nearly 50 million of India’s poorest citizens for a day. The groom-to-be’s mother sported a $60 million necklace to the party, while American pop icon Rihanna flew in to perform for guests for one-tenth of the cost of the jewels.

This brazen display of excess is oddly refreshing. Unlike many American billionaires who prefer hiding the perverse extent of their wealth, the Ambanis are delightfully honest in flexing their economic power for the world to see. The pre-wedding has generated countless headlines in India and in the world for its mind boggling lavishness—1,200 guests, including the world’s top CEOs and Bollywood’s most popular stars! More than 2,500 unique dishes including 70 breakfast options and 85 varieties of midnight snacks! Bespoke designer gowns dripping with pearls!

Forget Britain’s royal family, whose weddings appear humble in comparison—Harry and Meghan’s wedding cost a mere $43 million, cheaper than Mrs. Ambani’s necklace—India’s royalty is newly minted and unwilling to bow down at the altar of modesty.

The Ambanis’ conspicuous consumption has also generated endless derision from ordinary Indians who are having a field day lambasting the family’s apparent need for such profligacy on social media. One popular YouTube channel spent more than 13 minutes gleefully delving into every over-the-top detail, ridiculing the ridiculous.

There seemed to be at least some semblance of an attempt by the wealthy family to thwart the inevitable public criticism. Forbes reported that the festivities were held against the backdrop of a wildlife sanctuary called Vantara, which apparently is “the manifestation of Anant’s vision for a brighter future for the animal kingdom, from spreading awareness on the mistreatment of animals to working to breed near-extinct species.”

A friend of the happy couple told Forbes that, “The events brought incredible exposure and shone a spotlight on the good work that’s been done, and also spread the message on the state of animals in the world and the challenges to overcome in improving their welfare.”

Was it charity, shame, or public relations that prompted such a ludicrous juxtaposition as justification? We may never know.

Meanwhile, the defenders of corporate profiteering in India’s business-friendly atmosphere have enjoyed a public relations coup with the release of a long-overdue report by the BJP government earlier this year claiming that poverty in India now afflicts only 5% of the population. The report spawned such wild conclusions by publications like the Brookings Institute as “[d]ata now confirms that India has eliminated extreme poverty,” promoting the wild idea that predatory capitalism is good for Indian democracy.

But critics point out that the report’s numbers have been massaged to align with the BJP’s reelection efforts so as to paint the government as having achieved the near-impossible. According to Princeton economist Ashoka Mody, “While the publication of India’s first consumption figures in over a decade has generated much excitement, the official data appear to have been chosen to align with the government’s preferred narrative.”

Mody eloquently surmised, “[W]hile such misuse of statistics will amplify the India hype in elite echo chambers, poverty remains deeply entrenched in India, and broader deprivation appears to have increased as inflation erodes incomes of the poor.”

The “elite echo chambers” he references are very real. One Indian billionaire, NR Narayana Murthy, argued for a 70-hour work week in India (even as Americans are now debating working for less than half that time). A tech mogul and co-founder of Infosys, Murthy happens to be the father-in-law of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. He complained on a podcast that “India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world,” and that the nation’s youth ought to be saying, “This is my country. I’d like to work 70 hours a week.’”

India’s political and financial elites are painting a gold-plated vision of a modern Gilded Age: Because billionaires are saving wildlife from extinction it’s okay for them to obscenely flaunt their wealth, and meanwhile everyone’s fortunes are rising through hard work!

But the strongest evidence that this vision is a lie is for Indians to see their own lives against the Ambanis’. Nearly a billion Indians will finish casting ballots about a month before their “royal family” jet sets off to London for the youngest heir’s actual nuptials, to be held at the exclusive Stoke Park estate. If there’s anything voters can be grateful for, it is that their nation’s wealthy elites are busy reminding them of how little they have in comparison and how morally bankrupt a system is that allows such inequality.

The post India’s Billionaire Wealth is on Display as Nation Votes appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

We speak with award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay about her latest feature film, Origin, which explores discrimination in the United States and beyond through a dramatization of the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose process of writing the book is a central part of the film’s story. DuVernay, whose previous projects include Selma and 13th, says she was captivated by the ideas in the book after reading it in 2020 amid mass protests over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “Isabel Wilkerson writes it in a beautiful way, but it is pretty dense material. And so my goal was to attach character into that so that there could be a deeper empathy,” DuVernay tells Democracy Now! “The film follows Isabel Wilkerson in her pursuit of truth as she writes the book.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Five Eyes. Image Source: Applysense – Public Domain

Since mid-2023, a series of assassination plots have strained India’s relations with Canada and the U.S. In June 2023, a Sikh separatist activist living in Canada was reportedly killed on orders from Indian security services. Subsequently, in November, it came to light that U.S. authorities were investigating an assassination attempt against another Sikh separatist figure on U.S. soil. While India vehemently denied the accusations from Canada, it later committed to conducting an investigation following the accusations by U.S. authorities.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, confirmed that the information that led Canada to accuse India of the assassination was facilitated by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, consisting of the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Originating from intelligence collaboration during World War II, the intelligence-sharing agreement operated in such secrecy that Australian prime ministers remained unaware of its existence until 1971 and it was publicly revealed only in 1999. The Five Eyes later gained wider public awareness following the 2013 Snowden Leaks.

In addition to extensive data and intelligence sharing, the Five Eyes share substantial military, technology, and cultural ties. With largely cohesive foreign policies, the Five Eyes have become a significant force in international affairs. India values diplomatic relations with all five countries, but its strategic focus is on the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the UK due to their geopolitical significance. India’s complex history with these countries has resulted in varying levels of cooperation and apprehension.

There has been significant tension between the U.S. and India since the latter’s independence from the UK in 1947. This included U.S. support for Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and U.S. military maneuvers against India during the war. Sanctions were placed on both India and Pakistan following their nuclear tests in 1998, while India grew wary after the U.S. increased its support for Pakistan to aid the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan from 2001 onward.

Nonetheless, almost all U.S. sanctions against India were lifted in 1999, and its relations with the U.S., as well as Australia, have significantly strengthened in the 21st century. The U.S. has been India’s largest trading partner since 2022, and in late 2023 India agreed to most of the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economy Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) policies to deepen regional economic ties.

India also stands as Australia’s fourth-largest export destination, marked by the signing of the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (AI-ECTA) in 2022. Growing numbers of Indian emigrants and students increasingly travel to both the U.S. and Australia.

Washington continues to pursue closer collaboration with India in space, AI, defense agreements, and mineral supply chains. Yet the primary reason behind enhanced relations among India and all Five Eye countries is the shared concern over China. Their common anxiety has led to closer military ties among India, the U.S., Australia, and the strong U.S. ally Japan in the Indo-Pacific. In 2007, the first Quadrilateral Dialogue was held, with all four countries’ navies later taking part in the Malabar exercises to increase interoperability.

Closer military integration typically languished because of India, until the India-China clash in 2017 prompted New Delhi to revive the Quad. Following another clash with China in 2020, India extended an invitation to Australia to rejoin the Malabar exercises, and India currently conducts more joint military exercises with the U.S. than it does with any other country.

Nonetheless, India’s history as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War has continued to influence its foreign policy. Three weeks before the 2023 Malabar exercises, India declined to participate in the Australia-U.S. Talisman Sabre military exercises, underscoring India’s aversion to military alliances in pursuit of its own course for increasing power and influence.

India’s ascendance as a major power has added complexity to Washington’s strategy of preserving the U.S.-led global order. China’s assertive foreign policy challenges the established norms and influence of the U.S., while Russia’s is characterized by disruptions to that order. But India’s accommodating yet somewhat nonchalant foreign policy as a major power doesn’t quite fit with the formal alliance-based approach that the U.S. has historically used to develop ties with allies and isolate adversaries.

Despite ongoing concerns over India’s positive relations with Russia and Iran, hopes were high for an increasingly collaborative foreign policy alignment between the world’s two largest democracies. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a warm welcome when he visited in 2019 and 2023, despite reservations from progressive Democrats about India’s democratic backsliding. That was until the assassination attempt in the U.S. revealed in November derailed U.S.-India relations and resulted in significant criticism from U.S. officials.

But the assassination accusations from Canada prompted a notably more confrontational response from New Delhi months before, indicative of the heightened antagonism that has come to characterize Indian-Canadian relations in the last few years. Following Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s accusation that India orchestrated the assassination, India expelled dozens of Canadian diplomats, suspended visa applications for Canadians, and warned Indian citizens to “exercise extreme caution” in Canada due to anti-India sentiment.

While Sikh separatist activities remain India’s most pressing concern in Canada, additional issues have strained relations between Ottawa and New Delhi. Under Trudeau, Canadian officials, more so than those from other Five Eyes countries, have become increasingly critical of India’s democratic backsliding and human rights violations. This includes India’s social media restrictions, internet blackouts, targeting of Muslims and other religious minorities, and the Indian governments confrontations with human rights organizations.

Trudeau’s 2018 trip to India was also beset by controversy. Criticism was directed at his choice to wear full Indian traditional dress and his decision to invite Jaspal Singh Atwal, previously convicted in a 1986 assassination plot, to an event. Atwal had targeted Punjab minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu, and Trudeau’s wife later posed for a photo with him, causing Indian media and social media to highlight the issue Additionally, visa and immigration issues, as well as trade disagreements, have also prevented closer ties, while economic ties remain limited.

Alongside worsening ties with Canada, India’s historical resistance to Britain, its former colonial ruler, continues to influence dynamics between the two countries. Since India gained its independence, the UK’s alignment with U.S. foreign policy also contributed to tensions with India, notably during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, British sanctions on India after the latter’s 1998 nuclear tests, and British politicians’ continued involvement in Kashmir.

Despite historical grievances, British-India ties experienced a positive shift from the early post-colonial era in the 1990s. The establishment of a Defense Consultative Group in 1995 reflected growing military cooperation. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed to elevating UK-India ties in 2021, and the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Britain’s first Hindu leader was also warmly received in India.

British leaders often highlight India and the UK as the world’s largest and oldest parliamentary democracies to underscore the significance of the relationship. London also perceives its ties with India as crucial for maintaining global relevance in the aftermath of Brexit.

Yet despite being India’s second-biggest trade partner in 1998-99, the UK’s ranking plummeted to 17 just two decades later. Attempts by previous prime ministers, such as David Cameron, to strengthen UK-India ties, particularly through increased trade, proved unsuccessful.

Concerns within the British political establishment regarding India’s democratic backsliding have also been raised. In 2013, elements within the British Labour Party openly questioned the Labour Friends of India parliamentary grouping’s plans to invite Modi to the UK over his role in the 2002 Gujarat religious riots. These criticisms from the UK are often viewed with disdain in India considering the context of Britain’s colonial legacy. After a critical documentary on Modi’s role in the 2002 riots aired on BBC in 2023, Indian authorities exerted extreme pressure on the broadcaster that affected its operations in India.

Indian politicians have also long criticized British authorities for what they perceive as inaction over the proliferation of Sikh separatist elements in the UK. In 2022, pro-Khalistan separatists vandalized the Indian High Commission in London and assaulted staff. Dissatisfied with Britain’s response, India subsequently reduced security outside the British High Commission and the High Commissioner’s residence in New Delhi. Additionally, New Delhi authorities pledged to build a public toilet outside, sparking displeasure from London.

India stands as a unique factor among the foreign policies of the Five Eyes countries, which are typically aligned. New Delhi’s growing ties to the U.S. and Australia contrast to its more complex relations with Canada and the UK. With concern growing that shared democratic values will not resonate as effectively in the future, the major factor driving more positive relations between India and the Five Eyes will continue to be anxiety over China.

But the prospect of greater collaboration in areas such as countering piracy and confronting Islamist groups like the Taliban, ISIS, and Al Qaeda will remain stalled as long as India believes insufficient attention is being given to Sikh separatist elements in Five Eyes countries. In September 2023, Indian security agencies were instructed to identify all Khalistan separatists living in Australia, the U.S., Canada, and the UK, cancel their Overseas Citizenship of India status where applicable, and confiscate their assets in India.

The controversy surrounding the assassination plots highlights the broader challenge of Washington’s engagement with India, especially when core allies like Canada have additional issues with New Delhi. However, India’s leap over the UK in 2022 to become the world’s fifth-largest economy reflects the changing dynamics and India’s growing international profile.

Biden’s decision to decline Modi’s invitation for India’s Republic Day celebrations on January 26 reflects Washington’s frustrations. The U.S. remains cautious of providing India excessive leverage in international affairs to the point where it feels bold enough to assassinate U.S. citizens on American soil. However, as long as India remains crucial for the U.S. in confronting China, New Delhi will continue to test how far it can push the envelope in Washington, as well as in London, Ottawa, and Canberra.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post An Assassination Scandal Threatens India’s Relations With the Five Eyes appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John P. Ruehl.

For Muskan, the arrival of summer in Delhi is the “beginning of hell.” As temperatures in her cramped, densely populated east Delhi neighborhood often soar above 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), she dreams of only one thing: air conditioning.

During the day, in the tiny, windowless kitchen where she cooks for her family, she often feels like she will collapse from the heat and her health deteriorates. Nights are even more painful. Sleep becomes almost impossible in their single-room apartment.

Her three children, sticky and uncomfortable, cry out begging to be cooled down, and she wakes every five minutes to douse them and herself with cold water and wet scarves.

The single fan hanging from the flaking yellow ceiling does little to ease their woes and the putrid stench from the sewage and festering rubbish means opening a window is impossible. In any case, as she points out: “It’s usually even hotter outside.”

In her previous marriage, the 30-year-old had tasted the sweet relief of air conditioning in Delhi’s increasingly blistering summers. But after her husband died, her family remarried her to a scrap dealer, whose earnings are barely enough to pay for rent and food. The costs involved in renting or buying an air conditioner (AC) are far beyond their means, yet she fears for her family without one.

“I can’t keep seeing my children suffer like this,” she says. “I keep promising that next summer we will get an AC but the reality is I know we can’t afford it. But as more and more people around us buy ACs, the hotter it gets outside. Soon, I don’t know how we will survive.”

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India’s market for ACs is growing faster than almost anywhere else in the world. A mixture of rising incomes, rising temperatures in an already hot and humid climate, and increasing affordability and access are driving more and more Indians towards buying or renting one as soon as they can afford it – and sometimes even when they cannot.

Between 8 percent and 10 percent of the country’s 300 million households – home to 1.4 billion people – have an AC, but that number is expected to hit close to 50 percent by 2037, according to government projections. A report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that by 2050, India will have more than 1 billion ACs in operation.

Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a fellow at the council on energy, environment and water, a Delhi thinktank, was among those who believed AC penetration would exceed all current predictions.

“Traditionally, air conditioning was viewed as a luxury commodity but not any more,” he said. “It is seen as a necessity to survive. The way the market is developing, it could be that 100 percent of households have AC by 2050.”

Others are more sceptical that ACs will become so widespread among India’s poor people, and have raised concerns that access to sufficient cooling, particularly to work, sleep, and stay healthy, could drive up the already rampant inequality in the country even further.

The problem of keeping cool in increasingly hotter temperatures — while not exacerbating the climate crisis in the process — is not India’s alone. Globally, AC numbers have increased to more than 2 billion. More than 20 percent of all the world’s electricity is used by fans or ACs, a proportion that is expected to soar further in coming years.

It could have significant implications for the global effort to keep temperature rises within 1.5 degrees C. Around the world, ACs are still largely inefficient and use a huge amount of electricity mostly generated by fossil fuels.

En masse, they can drive up outside temperatures as they pump out heat from indoors to outdoors. They contain chemical refrigerants which, if leaked, can be almost 1,500 times more environmentally destructive than CO₂.

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At this year’s UN COP28 climate summit, which took place in Dubai, the issue was at the forefront of discussions as some of the world’s largest economies signed up to the first ever global cooling pledge, led by the UN environment program.

So far, more than 60 signatories including the US, UK, Nigeria, and Brazil have signed on to cut their cooling emissions by 68 percent by 2050. India, however, has not joined.

There is little doubt in the minds of experts and citizens that India’s need for ACs is both essential and unstoppable. March 2022 was the hottest since 1901 and there were more than 200 heatwave days across the whole year. This February was the hottest in 122 years and in June a deadly heatwave in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar killed at least 100 people, which is probably a radical undercount.

In July, during the pre-monsoon humidity in Delhi the wet bulb temperature hit a record high of 30 degrees C — when it hits 35 degrees C, the human body, no matter how healthy, can not survive for more than a few hours as it can no longer cool itself down.

Experts commonly point to “cooling degree days” to demonstrate India’s overwhelming – and largely unmet — requirement for cooling: a figure calculated by the number of hours in a day that temperatures go above 18 degrees C.

By this calculation, India has more than 3,000 cooling degree days per year, one of the highest in the world. If applied to all 1.4 billion people in the country, it comes to more than 3 trillion annually — a figure four times higher than China and five times higher than the US.

“People are going to buy ACs, that’s a given,” says Satish Kumar, president and executive director of the Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy.

“The latent demand for cooling is massive. What we have to focus on is how to chart a more sustainable and energy efficient path, one where air conditioning is not the be all and end all solution.”

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Extreme heat is particularly problematic in cities such as Delhi, home to 32 million people, where the number of hot days is expected to increase by 33 percent, heatwaves will be 30 times more likely and overall temperatures could rise by as much as 5 degrees C. By 2028, it will also become the most populous city on the planet, according to UN projections.

A phenomenon known as “urban heat islands” has already emerged across India’s capital. Here, surfaces of homes, roads and rooftops are predominantly covered with concrete, brick, steel and tarmac, which absorb and trap the heat. Homes are often high-rise buildings packed tightly together and there are few trees to provide shade.

With an increasing number of ACs also belching out hot air into these confined, unventilated urban areas, temperatures sometimes rise 6 degrees C above the city average.

In the congested alleyways of old Delhi, in a neighbourhood known as Chandni Chowk, historically people have had ways of adapting to Delhi’s hot summers. Kamla, 65, a chai seller, lives in a traditional courtyard home, about a century old, which has thick walls to keep the inside cool, as well as several terraces and an outdoor kitchen for ventilation. Though Chandni Chowk is deemed an urban heat island, and often becomes one of the hottest places in Delhi, in the hot summer months Kamla and her children and grandchildren rely only on a single fan and sleep outside at night.

“AC is not a necessity for me, I have lived with this heat all my life” she says. “It is difficult but it is life. But people are different now, they can’t bear the summers for even a few days. I have seen many people are buying ACs as a status symbol even when they can’t afford it.”

But in Shaheen Bagh, another heat island neighborhood in Delhi where people mostly live in small modern high-rise buildings, Nazim Khan, 54, who has run his AC-rental business for more than a decade, described the rise in temperatures, desperation and demand he had witnessed first-hand.

“It’s a matter of survival,” he says. “I would say 50 percent of the apartments in this neighborhood are unlivable without an AC: they are small with no windows or ventilation even for cooking. I see families making huge sacrifices to afford one.”

For most families in this neighborhood, renting a secondhand AC is the only affordable option, though it often leaves them with the most inefficient models, which come with much higher electricity costs and are more prone to leaking gas.

It has become common for several families or groups to collectively rent out an AC to share the cost and then all sleep together in a single room for the summer months.

Khan rents out each of his 50 ACs, which are more than eight years old, for 7,000 rupees ($84) for a season that runs from April to October. During those months, his team of laborers run around the city non-stop installing and repairing the machines, which often break down in the extreme temperatures.

“We are like emergency workers,” he said. “Every summer I see more people dying. They say it was from one disease or another but we all know that it’s the terrible heat that leads to their death.”

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The vast amount of electricity that India’s growing number of ACs will require presents a significant challenge. Already during peak summertime hours, ACs have accounted for 40 percent to 60 percent of total power demand in the cities of Delhi and Mumbai. According to the IEA, by 2050, the amount of power India consumes solely for air conditioning is expected to exceed the total power consumption of all of Africa.

Most of this electricity is produced by burning coal, and while India’s capacity from renewables such as solar power is expanding, it is happening nowhere near as fast as the growth of the AC market, which will soon outpace all other household appliances.

India already struggles to meet its current power demand, with long power outages and load-shedding inflicted mostly on poorer districts during peak summer hours.

With peak demand likely to increase by another 60 percent in the next seven years – half of which would come from ACs, fans, and coolers – the government has also looked to boost coal production to help fill in the gaps, which is likely to drive up India’s CO₂ emissions even as it commits to net zero by 2070.

Nonetheless, many are working to ensure that India does not become overwhelmed by its growing cooling demand. In 2019, the Indian government became the first in the world to implement a national cooling action plan, which was described as ambitious in scope even if the subsequent implementation is moving slowly.

Individual states such as Tamil Nadu have also recently announced their own. The efficiency of ACs, seen as crucial to reducing the energy demand, is also increasing faster every year thanks to various initiatives, which will gradually also make the secondhand market more efficient.

Yet Rajan Rawal, a professor in energy performance at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, was among those emphasizing that ACs should not be considered the only solution to staying cool. “Buildings and urban planning, urban design have an important role to play,” he says.

India’s cities may already be hot and overcrowded, but estimates say that the number of buildings in India is expected to double in the next 20 years.

As India undergoes this huge, largely unregulated development boom, vast numbers of new homes and buildings are being constructed in the cheapest and quickest way possible; mostly from brick, steel, and concrete, which can quickly turn homes to ovens in the summer.

Little thought is given how to keep them cool or ventilated, except by assuming residents will install an AC. Meanwhile, the materials traditionally used in India to build heat-deflecting houses are largely being neglected.

While new building efficiency codes have been introduced, they are not mandatory. In India’s market, where price drives everything, few developers are willing to voluntarily take on any extra cost or added time to make new homes more suitable to extreme heat. Even cheap measures such as painting roofs white to deflect heat are still not widespread.

“Modern buildings are not a good skin,” says Rawal. “They are inefficient and drive up temperatures. Wherever the possibility exists, we must build climate response-sustainable or energy-efficient buildings to reduce the individual need required to cool down.”

Rajan also said that growing over-reliance on ACs in India put people at risk of losing their high tolerance and adaptation to heat, which will become increasingly more vital in coming years.

“It is a scientific fact that we will have more and more heatwaves, more and more severe conditions,” he says. “What AC does is it stops providing an opportunity to adapt. If we don’t sweat, if we don’t shiver for a few minutes every day, we will land ourselves in trouble.”

Aakash Hassan contributed reporting.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘A matter of survival’: India’s unstoppable need for air conditioners on Dec 16, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

Young Vishal Khule, the son of a famer in Akola’s Dadham village, took his own life in 2015. Seen here are Vishal’s father, Vishwanath Khule and his mother Sheela (on the right); elder brother Vaibhav and their neighbour Jankiram Khule with Vishal’s paternal uncle (to the left). Dadham, with a population of 1,500, is among the poorest villages in western Vidarbha, Maharashtra’s cotton and soybean belt, which has been in the news since the mid-1990s for a continuing spell of farmers’ suicides. The region is reeling under successive years of drought and an agrarian crisis that has worsened. Photo: Jaideep Hardikar.

If there are a few words of English that almost every Indian farmer would know, those would be ‘Swaminathan Report’ or ‘Swaminathan Commission Report.’ They also know what for them is its main recommendation: Minimum Support Price (MSP) = Comprehensive Cost of Production + 50 percent (also known as C2+50 percent).

Professor M.S. Swaminathan will be remembered not merely in the halls of government and bureaucracy, or even the institutions of science – but mainly in the hearts of millions of peasants demanding the implementation of the Report of the National Commission for Farmers (NCF).

Indian farmers, though, simply call it the ‘Swaminathan Report’ – because of the huge input, impact and indelible imprint he made on the reports of the NCF, of which he was chairman.

The story of the reports is one of betrayal and suppression by both the UPA and NDA governments. The first of the reports was submitted in December 2004, the fifth and final one around October 2006. Let alone a special session of Parliament on the agrarian crisis – which is what we desperately need – not even an hour’s dedicated discussion has ever been held. And it is now 19 years since the first report was submitted.

In 2014, the Modi government came to power, to some degree aided by a promise they made of speedily implementing the Swaminathan Report, especially its MSP formula recommendation. Instead, the incoming government speedily filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that would not be feasible as it would distort market prices.

Perhaps the reasoning of the UPA and NDA was that the reports were too ‘pro-farmer’, while both governments were trying to hand over Indian farming to the corporate sector. The report was the first thing approaching a positive blueprint for agriculture since Independence. Helmed by a man who sought an entirely different framework: that we measure growth in agriculture in terms of growth of farmers’ income, not merely in increased output.

The post M.S. Swaminathan Lives on in the Hearts of India’s Farmers appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by P. Sainath.

The Indian government’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has been planning assassinations targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists living in foreign countries, according to secret Pakistani intelligence assessments leaked to The Intercept.

The intelligence documents identify a series of threats against people living in Pakistan from RAW, which Pakistani security officials believe is working in conjunction with local criminal and dissident networks to carry out assassinations and other attacks. According to the documents, RAW is targeting individuals and religious institutions alleged to support an armed insurgency in the disputed territory of Kashmir, as well as militant Sikh activists living in Pakistan and wanted by the Indian government.

The documents offer compelling substantiation for the sensational claim that India has been carrying out a transnational assassination program against its political enemies. The Canadian government first made headlines in September with the accusation that Indian intelligence agents orchestrated the assassination of Sikh Canadian activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. Nijjar was gunned down outside a gurdwara — a Sikh temple — this summer in Surrey, British Columbia.

In October in Britain, the family of activist Avtar Singh Khanda called for an inquest into his sudden death, alleging that he had been poisoned by Indian intelligence agents following a series of public threats to his life. In September, The Intercept reported on threats to Sikh activists in the U.S. after the FBI warned a number of Sikh Americans about intelligence showing that their lives were in danger after the killing of Nijjar. In 2022, a 75-year-old Sikh Canadian man named Ripudaman Singh Malik, who had been acquitted of involvement in a deadly bombing of an Air India flight in 1985, was shot to death in front of his family business in Canada under circumstances that remain unclear. Despite these accusations of involvement in international assassinations, which have caused increased friction in India’s foreign relations, so far little intelligence — Canadian, Pakistani, American, or otherwise — has been made publicly available about these killings.

According to a Pakistani intelligence assessment, this summer RAW was also targeting two Sikh activists in Pakistan for assassination in the cities of Lahore and Islamabad. One alleged target in Islamabad is unnamed, while another is Lakhbir Singh Rode, a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in Pakistan since the 1990s who has long been accused of terrorism by India’s government. Rode was involved in a movement that aimed to create an independent nation in the region of Punjab known as Khalistan in the 1980s and ’90s. That campaign was crushed by a brutal counterinsurgency that claimed the lives of thousands of Sikhs, while forcing many more into exile.

Rode’s son, a Canadian citizen named Bhagat Singh, is, like his father, prominent in the diaspora movement for Sikh separatism. He told The Intercept that his father has long been living under threat from Indian intelligence. 

“It is a well-known fact that he has been on the Indian government’s hit list for years,” Singh said, adding that he was also warned by Canadian intelligence about threats to his own life following the assassination of Nijjar this summer, which he presumes are from Indian intelligence.

“When [Nijjar] was killed, the response from many of us to our governments was, ‘We told you so,’” added Singh, referring to the community of diaspora Sikh activists. “But there is also a lot of anger that a foreign government could simply come here and murder a Canadian citizen.”

The Pakistani, Indian, and Canadian embassies did not provide comment for this story. The pace of suspected attacks inside Pakistan against individuals wanted by India appears to have accelerated in recent weeks. On November 13, India media reported the killing of another militant connected to an Islamist group in Karachi. The possible assassination followed the killings of two other Islamist militants wanted by India that had taken place recently in Pakistan’s tribal regions and the disputed territory of Kashmir. While covered in great detail by the Indian press, these killings have gone almost unmentioned in Pakistan, where local media and civil society are under de facto military control following the removal of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The lack of attention to the suspected assassinations of both political dissidents and militants has prompted calls for more pressure on India from some members of its diaspora. 

“Anyone who speaks out against the Indian government anywhere in the world is under threat,” said Singh.

The secret documents, which were produced by Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, a civilian-controlled security agency somewhat akin to the FBI, show serious concern that Indian intelligence will carry out more killings on its soil in the future.

In May, the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau warned that Indian intelligence agents based in two other countries, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, are being activated to carry out operations in Pakistan, suggesting that Indian operatives have a footprint throughout the region. In September, an Intelligence Bureau document again warned that the Indian government’s intelligence agency was planning “terrorist attacks” and assassinations against targets inside Pakistan: RAW agents were operating from a militant training camp in the Afghan city of Spin Boldak, it said, “to target wanted / prominent Sikh personalities in Pakistan.”

The documents are marked “Not to be disclosed/Communicated to any unauthorized person,” and The Intercept is not publishing them in full in order to protect the source who provided them. The documents specifically name threats to militants involved in the Kashmiri and Sikh separatist causes, as well as conservative Islamic movements in Pakistan. One document states that, “it has been learnt through reliable sources that hostile intelligence agency (RAW) with the collaboration of sub-nationalist groups / anti-state activists and local criminal networks is already planning to carry out terrorist attacks on the marakiz / masjid / religious seminaries / leaders / notables of Ahl-e-Hadith sect linked with organizations remained active in the Kashmir Jihad.” 

Inside Pakistan, a spate of assassinations and other attacks in recent years targeted people alleged to be involved in Sikh and Kashmiri separatism as well as Islamist militancy inside India. This October, the Pakistani government arrested people it says were involved in targeted killings of suspected militants inside Pakistan. The killings were attributed in public statements to a “hostile spy agency,” a common reference to Indian intelligence in Pakistani official communications. This summer, a former commando in Pakistan’s elite Rangers paramilitary unit was also arrested on accusations of running a network carrying out assassinations of accused militants on behalf of RAW.

“Usually, the truth of these things are only fully known decades later, but India has a long history of these types of actions.”

“The general perception in the West is that India can do no wrong and that when Pakistan accuses India of doing these types of things, they’re just being paranoid. But that is not borne out by history,” said Arif Rafiq, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan. “Usually, the truth of these things are only fully known decades later, but India has a long history of these types of actions. When you piece it all together, it seems clear that there is a campaign today by India’s government to take an offensive strategy against these groups.”

The Pakistani government has periodically accused RAW of involvement in bombings and targeted killings inside Pakistan, including attacks against Chinese nationals working in the country and bombings targeting militant leaders wanted by India. These attacks have often been claimed publicly by separatist or extremist groups at war with the Pakistani state, including in the restive provinces of Balochistan and Sindh, that Pakistan accuses of being supported by India. The Indian government, for its part, has denied involvement in these operations or patronage of Pakistan-based militant groups, while accusing Pakistan of supporting Sikh and Kashmiri militants who have fought against it in the past.

This March, the Atlantic Council, an American think tank, published an anonymous article titled, “Who is Behind the Killings of Kashmiri Militants in Pakistan?” The article pointed to the recent killings of several former Kashmiri insurgents living in Pakistan whom the author claimed had been murdered by Indian intelligence in attacks that were left unsolved, attributed to Pakistan-based separatist groups, or deemed by the police to have been robberies gone wrong. Many of the killings targeted people who had been involved in fighting during the peak of the 1990s-era insurgency in Kashmir, but had later settled down to live and work inside Pakistan. 

The article warned that the killings by Indian intelligence may torpedo attempts at rapprochement between India and Pakistan by inviting reprisals from militant groups themselves, stating, “While militant groups that have operated in Kashmir are not as strong as they used to be, they still possess significant capabilities to strike back. The assassination of their former comrades, whether perceived or real, may trigger an angry response, thus endangering peace and stability in the region.” The article also cited a former militant criticizing Pakistan’s military establishment for turning a blind eye to the killing of ex-militants on its soil as the Kashmir dispute has lost priority in Pakistan’s foreign policy.

The anonymously authored article was subsequently pulled from the Atlantic Council website. The article was replaced with a note stating it had been removed “because it did not go through the Atlantic Council’s standard editorial process prior to publication.” 

Members of Pakistan’s Sikh community take part in a protest in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Sept. 20, 2023, following the killing in Canada of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Rode, the individual named as a target in Pakistani intelligence documents, is the nephew of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Sikh militant leader of the 1980s separatist insurrection. That family connection has kept him on the radar of Indian authorities, who announced the confiscation of land belonging to Rode in India this fall amid a broader crackdown on diaspora Sikh dissidents and their families.

Rode, who is living in Lahore, was described in a Pakistani intelligence document as having already been surveilled by Indian intelligence agents at a housing complex and gurdwara in the city. Information about his place of residence and the gurdwara that he frequents are included in the report, which suggests that he and another Sikh activist are at imminent risk from Indian agents or locals acting under Indian instruction. The documents warn Pakistani officials to use “heightened vigilance” and “foolproof security measures” to guard them. 

According to family members, threats to Rode have increased in recent years, forcing him to go deeper into seclusion. His son, Bhagat Singh, says that surveillance photographs of his father’s car and residence had previously been sent to Pakistani authorities by Indian intelligence, as part of a demand by India to Pakistan to turn him over.

Singh said that he himself had been placed on Canada’s no-fly list after the Indian government accused him of involvement in planning terrorist attacks in India. Singh, who is seeking legal means to remove himself from the list, strongly rejects these accusations, saying that they are part of an international campaign by the Indian government to silence dissidents in its diaspora.

“The Sikh diaspora holds protests and lobbies Western governments to speak up against the Indian government, and it is for this that we are being targeted,” Singh said. “They don’t have to prove anything in court when they make these accusations. They simply label anyone as a terrorist who fights for their rights or says that they don’t want to live under their rule anymore after what has been done to them.”

“They don’t have to prove anything in court when they make these accusations. They simply label anyone as a terrorist who fights for their rights.”

Though the Khalistan movement has been mostly suppressed in Indian Punjab, supporters have continued to rally for the cause in the diaspora, including from Pakistan and Western countries. As a result of recent protests in Western countries, some of which have resulted in vandalism and threats to Indian consular staff, the Indian government has angrily accused foreign states of nurturing the Khalistan movement in exile. Many Sikhs themselves reject what they say is an attempt by the Indian government to extend its political authority over them even as they live and gain citizenship in foreign countries.

“The diaspora is an extension of people from Punjab,” said Harinder Singh, senior fellow at the Sikh-related public education organization the Sikh Research Institute. “When dissent is being crushed, even at the level of using extrajudicial killings inside Punjab, the people who manage to escape will of course find ways to talk about these issues from abroad.”

In addition to high-profile suspected murders in Western countries, recent years have also seen at least two killings of supporters of the Khalistan movement in Pakistan. In May, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, the leader of a Pakistan-based Sikh militant organization was shot to death by an assailant on a motorcycle while out for a walk near his home in Lahore. His killing came two years after the murder of another Sikh activist in Pakistan named Harmeet Singh, who was also shot to death in Lahore near the same gurdwara frequented by Rode.

“India has been carrying out activities like this in South Asia for years. The only difference is that today they have been discovered doing it in a Western democracy,” said Harinder Singh. “Despite many hypocrisies among Western democracies, one thing that they still do take very seriously is a foreign power taking the lives of their own citizens.”

Following the assassination of Nijjar in Canada this summer, Pakistan again publicly alleged that India was running a “network of extra-territorial killings” that had now gone global. The Indian government has responded angrily to accusations from Canada and other Five Eyes countries that it is running a transnational assassination program. 

But as more details on the scope and nature of its operations come to light, the crisis over the killing of Nijjar, and potentially other Sikh dissidents, seems unlikely to disappear. The targeting of Rode and other Sikhs in foreign countries suggest that India is taking a more aggressive stance in targeting perceived enemies across borders, including through violent means.

“These killings show that India feels emboldened and that it has the geopolitical space to take these kinds of risks. There has never been an instance where it has been held to account for its excesses,” said Middle East Institute’s Rafiq. “Frankly, nobody would care if they were only killing people in Pakistan. It’s only until something happens on the other side of the world that people start paying attention.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

The mainstream narrative is that Swaminathan’s collaborative scientific efforts with Norman Borlaug helped save India from famine in the 1960s. Following his death, tributes from high-ranking officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and commentators have poured in praising his part in (supposedly) saving India from Malthusian catastrophe.

However, there is another side to the story of the Green Revolution, which seldom emerges in the mainstream.

For example, farmer Bhaskar Save wrote an open letter to M.S. Swaminathan in 2006. He was scathing about the impact of the Green Revolution and Swaminathan’s role in it:

“You, M S Swaminathan, are considered the ‘father’ of India’s so-called ‘Green Revolution’ that flung open the floodgates of toxic ‘agro’ chemicals – ravaging the lands and lives of many millions of Indian farmers over the past 50 years. More than any other individual in our long history, it is you I hold responsible for the tragic condition of our soils and our debt-burdened farmers, driven to suicide in increasing numbers every year.”

We will return to this letter later.

To his credit, though, Swaminathan came out against genetically modified organisms in Indian agriculture. In a 2018 paper in the journal Current Science, along with his colleague P C Kesavan, he provided a wide-ranging critique of genetically modified crops to date, questioning their efficacy and need. Perhaps he had become aware that the introduction of technology without proper economic, social, health and environmental impact assessments would produce a domino effect, like the Green Revolution. Of course, he came under attack from industry mouthpieces and industry-backed scientists in the media for his stance.

In the paper “New Histories of the Green Revolution” (2019), Professor Glenn Stone debunks the claim that the Green Revolution boosted productivity and saved India from famine. Indeed, although the media in the mid-1960s carried stories about a famine in India, Stone sees no evidence of famine or an impending famine. Stone argues that all the Green Revolution actually ‘succeeded’ in doing was put more wheat in the Indian diet (displacing other foodstuffs). He argues that food productivity per capita showed no increase or even actually decreased.

Renowned campaigner and environmentalist Vandana Shiva says that the Green Revolution saw 768,576 accessions of indigenous seeds taken from farmers in Mexico alone. She regards the Green Revolution as a form of colonisation:

The ‘civilising mission’ of Seed Colonisation is the declaration that farmers are ‘primitive’ and the varieties they have bred are ‘primitive’, ‘inferior’, ‘low yielding’ and have to be ‘substituted’ and ‘replaced’ with superior seeds from a superior race of breeders, so called ‘modern varieties’ and ‘improved varieties’ bred for chemicals.

This is one aspect of the Green Revolution that is too often overlooked: capitalist penetration of (intact, self-sufficient) peasant economies.

Stone says:

The legend of the Green Revolution in India has always been about more than wheat imports and short‐stalked grains. It is about Malthusianism, with post‐war India supposedly proving the dangers of population growth outpacing food production. It is also about the Neo-Malthusian conviction that technological innovation is our only hope, capable of saving a billion lives when conditions are right.

He says that beneficiaries of the legend have bolstered it and kept it alive and well in our historical imagination. According to recent studies and literature, however, a coherent reinterpretation is emerging that, Stone says, knocks out virtually all of the pillars of this narrative.

We must also consider counterfactual scenarios. What would have happened if India had taken a different route? Stone notes that the influential Planning Commission (PC) was trying simultaneously to create a functional state (after centuries of colonial rule), to avoid becoming a prized Cold War client, and to shape the country’s agricultural destiny. India had plenty of rural labour and organic manures and the PC wanted to capitalise on these resources.

The PC was not opposed to chemical fertilisers but regarded them as highly expensive both to the state and to the farmer. It also believed that concentrated fertiliser use had ecological problems too: chemicals should only be used in combination with bulky organic manures to preserve tilth. What if organic ways of farming had received the funding and research and had been prioritised to the extent the Green Revolution had been?

For instance, in the paper “Lessons From the Aftermaths of Green Revolution on Food System and Health” (in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2021) agriculture techniques, such as intercropping, Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) – with essential principles involving the enhancement of nature’s processes – and the elimination of external inputs, can be practised with excellent results. The state government of Andhra Pradesh plans to convert six million farmers and eight million hectares of land under the initiative of Climate Resilient Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) because of the impressive outputs obtained in the ZBNF impact assessments in the states of Karnataka and AP.

Moreover, the Green Revolution deliberately sidelined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding and climate appropriate. Also, in a 2019 paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences, the authors note that native wheat varieties in India have higher nutrition content than the Green Revolution varieties.

Instead, we are left with a certain model of agriculture that was pushed for geopolitical and commercial reasons and are trying to deal with various deleterious aftermaths.

For example, according to Stone, post-war hand-to-mouth shipments of wheat from the US to India resulted not from Malthusian imbalance but from policy decisions. The ‘triumphs’ of the Green Revolution came from financial incentives, irrigation and the return of the rains after periods of drought, and they came at the expense of more important food crops. Long‐term growth trends in food production and food production per capita did not change in India. Stone concludes that the Green Revolution years, when separated out, actually marked a slowdown.

Much more can be said and has been written about the wider politics of the Green Revolution and how it became and remains enmeshed in modern geopolitics: the Rockefeller Chase Manhattan bank, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization have facilitated the structural adjustment of national economies and agrarian systems, intentionally creating food insecure areas and dependency for the benefit of Western financial, agricultural trade, seed, fertiliser and agrochemical interests.

For instance, many countries have been placed on commodity crop export-oriented production treadmills to earn foreign currency (US dollars – boosting the strength of and demand for the dollar and US hegemony) to buy oil and food on the global market (benefitting global commodity traders like Cargill, which helped write the WTO trade regime – the Agreement on Agriculture), entrenching the need to increase cash crop cultivation for exports.

In effect, what we have seen emerge is a model of agriculture that requires hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidies annually to sustain the bottom line of big agribusiness. One of the not-so-hidden costs of the Green Revolution, of which there are many: degraded soils, polluted water, rising rates of illness, micro-nutrient deficiencies, less nutrient-dense food crops, unnecessary food insecurity, the sidelining of more appropriate indigenous seeds, the narrower range of crops that humanity now depends on due to changed cropping systems, the corporate commodification and pirating of seeds and knowledge, the erosion of farmers’ environmental learning, the devastation of rural communities, farmers’ debt, corporate-market dependency, etc.

So, with the passing of M.S. Swaminathan, let us return to Bhaskar Save (1922-2015) and his open letter, which touches on many of these issues. Save was not a scholar or an academic. He was a farmer, and his letter was a heartfelt call to action.

M.S. Swaminathan was at the time the chair of the National Commission on Farmers at the Ministry of Agriculture. Save wanted to bring attention to the devastating impacts of the Green Revolution and to encourage policy makers to abandon their policies of importing and promoting the use of toxic chemicals that the Green Revolution had encouraged.

Below is an abridged version of Bhaskar Save’s open letter.

To: Shri M.S. Swaminathan,
The Chairperson, National Commission on Farmers,
Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India

I am an 84-year-old natural/organic farmer with more than six decades of personal experience in growing a wide range of food crops. I have, over the years, practised several systems of farming, including the chemical method in the fifties – until I soon saw its pitfalls. I say with conviction that it is only by organic farming in harmony with Nature, that India can sustainably provide her people abundant, wholesome food.

You, M.S. Swaminathan, are considered the ‘father’ of India’s so-called ‘Green Revolution’ that flung open the floodgates of toxic ‘agro’ chemicals – ravaging the lands and lives of many millions of Indian farmers over the past 50 years. More than any other individual in our long history, it is you I hold responsible for the tragic condition of our soils and our debt-burdened farmers, driven to suicide in increasing numbers every year.

I am sad that our (now greyed) generation of Indian farmers, allowed itself to be duped into adopting the short-sighted and ecologically devastating way of farming, imported into this country. By those like you, with virtually zero farming experience!

For generations beyond count, this land sustained one of the highest densities of population on earth. Without any chemical ‘fertilizers’, pesticides, exotic dwarf strains of grain, or the new, fancy ‘biotech’ inputs that you now seem to champion. The fertility of our land remained unaffected.

In our forests, the trees like ber (jujube), jambul (jambolan), mango, umbar (wild fig), mahua (Madhuca indica), imli (tamarind) yield so abundantly in their season that the branches sag under the weight of the fruit. The annual yield per tree is commonly over a tonne – year after year. But the earth around remains whole and undiminished. There is no gaping hole in the ground!

From where do the trees – including those on rocky mountains – get their water, their NPK, etc? Though stationary, Nature provides their needs right where they stand. But ‘scientists’ and technocrats like you – with a blinkered, meddling itch – seem blind to this. On what basis do you prescribe what a tree or plant requires, and how much, and when.?

It is said: where there is lack of knowledge, ignorance masquerades as ‘science’! Such is the ‘science’ you have espoused, leading our farmers astray – down the pits of misery.

This country has more than 150 agricultural universities. But every year, each churns out several hundred ‘educated’ unemployables, trained only in misguiding farmers and spreading ecological degradation.

Trying to increase Nature’s ‘productivity,’ is the fundamental blunder that highlights the ignorance of ‘agricultural scientists’ like you. When a grain of rice can reproduce a thousand-fold within months, where arises the need to increase its productivity?

The mindset of servitude to ‘commerce and industry,’ ignoring all else, is the root of the problem.

Modern technology, wedded to commerce… has proved disastrous at all levels… We have despoiled and polluted the soil, water and air. We have wiped out most of our forests and killed its creatures. And relentlessly, modern farmers spray deadly poisons on their fields. These massacre Nature’s jeev srushti – the unpretentious but tireless little workers that maintain the ventilated quality of the soil and recycle all life-ebbed biomass into nourishment for plants. The noxious chemicals also inevitably poison the water, and Nature’s prani srushti, which includes humans.

Is it not a stark fact that the chemical-intensive and irrigation-intensive way of growing monoculture cash-crops has been primarily responsible for spreading ecological devastation far and wide in this country? Within the lifetime of a single generation!

This country boasted an immense diversity of crops, adapted over millennia to local conditions and needs. Our numerous tall, indigenous varieties of grain provided more biomass, shaded the soil from the sun and protected against its erosion under heavy monsoon rains. But in the guise of increasing crop production, exotic dwarf varieties were introduced and promoted through your efforts. This led to more vigorous growth of weeds, which were now able to compete successfully with the new stunted crops for sunlight. The farmer had to spend more labour and money in weeding, or spraying herbicides.

The straw growth with the dwarf grain crops fell drastically to one-third of that with most native species! In Punjab and Haryana, even this was burned, as it was said to harbour ‘pathogens’. (It was too toxic to feed farm cattle that were progressively displaced by tractors.) Consequently, much less organic matter was locally available to recycle the fertility of the soil, leading to an artificial need for externally procured inputs. Inevitably, the farmers resorted to use more chemicals, and relentlessly, soil degradation and erosion set in.

The exotic varieties, grown with chemical ‘fertiliser’, were more susceptible to ‘pests and diseases’, leading to yet more poison (insecticides, etc.) being poured. But the attacked insect species developed resistance and reproduced prolifically. Their predators – spiders, frogs, etc. – that fed on these insects and ‘biologically controlled’ their population, were exterminated. So were many beneficial species like the earthworms and bees.

Agribusiness and technocrats recommended stronger doses, and newer, more toxic (and more expensive) chemicals. But the problems of ‘pests’ and ‘diseases’ only worsened. The spiral of ecological, financial and human costs mounted!

With the use of synthetic fertilizer and increased cash-cropping, irrigation needs rose enormously. In 1952, the Bhakra dam was built in Punjab, a water-rich state fed by 5 Himalayan rivers. Several thousand more big and medium dams followed all over the country, culminating in the massive Sardar Sarovar.

India, next to South America, receives the highest rainfall in the world. The annual average is almost 4 feet. Where thick vegetation covers the ground, and the soil is alive and porous, at least half of this rain is soaked and stored in the soil and sub-soil strata. A good amount then percolates deeper to recharge aquifers, or ‘groundwater tables’.

The living soil and its underlying aquifers thus serve as gigantic, ready-made reservoirs gifted free by Nature. Particularly efficient in soaking rain are the lands under forests and trees. And so, half a century ago, most parts of India had enough fresh water all-round the year, long after the rains had stopped and gone. But clear the forests, and the capacity of the earth to soak the rain, drops drastically. Streams and wells run dry. It has happened in too many places already.

While the recharge of groundwater has greatly reduced, its extraction has been mounting. India is presently mining over 20 times more groundwater each day than it did in 1950. Much of this is mindless wastage by a minority. But most of India’s people – living on hand-drawn or hand-pumped water in villages and practising only rain-fed farming – continue to use the same amount of ground water per person, as they did generations ago.

More than 80% of India’s water consumption is for irrigation, with the largest share hogged by chemically cultivated cash crops. Maharashtra, for example, has the maximum number of big and medium dams in this country. But sugarcane alone, grown on barely 3-4% of its cultivable land, guzzles about 70% of its irrigation waters!

One acre of chemically grown sugarcane requires as much water as would suffice 25 acres of jowar, bajra or maize. The sugar factories too consume huge quantities. From cultivation to processing, each kilo of refined sugar needs 2 to 3 tonnes of water. This could be used to grow, by the traditional, organic way, about 150 to 200 kg of nutritious jowar or bajra (native millets).

While rice is suitable for rain-fed farming, its extensive multiple cropping with irrigation in winter and summer as well, is similarly hogging our water resources, and depleting aquifers. As with sugarcane, it is also irreversibly ruining the land through salinisation.

Soil salinisation is the greatest scourge of irrigation-intensive agriculture, as a progressively thicker crust of salts is formed on the land. Many million hectares of cropland have been ruined by it. The most serious problems are caused where water-guzzling crops like sugarcane or basmati rice are grown round the year, abandoning the traditional mixed-cropping and rotation systems of the past, which required minimal or no watering.

Efficient organic farming requires very little irrigation – much less than what is commonly used in modern agriculture. The yields of the crops are best when the soil is just damp. Rice is the only exception that grows even where water accumulates and is thus preferred as a monsoon crop in low-lying areas naturally prone to inundation. Excess irrigation in the case of all other crops expels the air contained in the soil’s inter-particulate spaces – vitally needed for root respiration – and prolonged flooding causes root rot.

The irrigation on my farm is a small fraction of that provided in most modern farms today. Moreover, the porous soil under the thick vegetation of the orchard is like a sponge that soaks and percolates to the aquifer, or ground-water table, an enormous quantity of rain each monsoon. The amount of water thus stored in the ground at Kalpavruksha, is far more than the total amount withdrawn from the well for irrigation in the months when there is no rain.

Clearly, the way to ensure the water security and food security of this nation, is by organically growing mixed, locally suitable crops, plants and trees, following the laws of Nature.

We should restore at least 30% ground cover of mixed, indigenous trees and forests within the next decade or two. This is the core task of ecological water harvesting – the key to restoring the natural abundance of groundwater. Outstanding benefits can be achieved within a decade at comparatively little cost. We sadly fail to realise that the potential for natural water storage in the ground is many times greater than the combined capacity of all the major and medium irrigation projects in India – complete, incomplete, or still on paper! Such decentralized underground storage is more efficient, as it is protected from the high evaporation of surface storage. The planting of trees will also make available a variety of useful produce to enhance the well-being of a larger number of people.

Even barren wastelands can be restored to health in less than a decade. By inter-planting short lifespan, medium life-span, and long life-span crops and trees, it is possible to have planned continuity of food yield to sustain a farmer through the transition period till the long-life fruit trees mature and yield. The higher availability of biomass and complete ground cover round the year will also hasten the regeneration of soil fertility.

The actual reason for pushing the ‘Green Revolution’ was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively fewer perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government.

The new, parasitical way of farming you vigorously promoted, benefited only the industrialists, traders and the powers-that-be. The farmers’ costs rose massively and margins dipped. Combined with the eroding natural fertility of their land, they were left with little in their hands, if not mounting debts and dead soils. Many gave up farming. Many more want to do so, squeezed by the ever-rising costs. Nature has generously gifted us with all that is needed for organic farming – which also produces wholesome, rather than poisoned food!

The maximum number of people can become self-reliant through farming only if the necessary inputs are a bare minimum. Thus, farming should require a minimum of financial capital and purchased inputs, minimum farming equipment (plough, tools, etc.), minimum necessary labour, and minimum external technology. Then, agricultural production will increase, without costs increasing. Poverty will decline, and the rise in population will be spontaneously checked.

Self-reliant farming – with minimal or zero external inputs – was the way we actually farmed, very successfully, in the past. Our farmers were largely self-sufficient, and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so, the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

The post Fighting the Diaspora: India’s Campaign Against Khalistan appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Of late, that lack of conspicuousness has been challenged.  On September 18, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed that there were “credible allegations” that agents in the pay of the Indian government had murdered Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a vocal supporter for an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan and deemed by Indian authorities since 2020 to be a terrorist.  He was alone in his truck when he was shot to death on June 18 outside the Surrey temple, Guru Nanak Gurdwara.

While the death remains under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Trudeau was convinced enough time had lapsed to warrant open mention.  After all, Pavan Kumar Rai, the Canadian head of New Delhi’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), had been expelled by Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly as a direct consequence of the acts.

In his statement to the House, Trudeau revealed that Canadian security agencies had been pursuing such links between New Delhi and the Nijjar’s death. “Our top priorities have therefore been 1) that our law enforcement and security agencies ensure the continued safety of all Canadians, and 2) that all steps be taken to hold the perpetrators of this murder to account.”  The matter had also been raised with Indian President Narendra Modi at the G20 summit.

Trudeau went on to reiterate the standard protocols that had been outraged in such matters.  “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.  It is contrary to the fundamental rules by which free, open and democratic societies conduct themselves.”  Canada’s “position on extra-judicial operations in another country is clearly and unequivocally in line with international law.”

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc also added further detail on the contact between Ottawa and New Delhi.  “The national security and intelligence adviser to the prime minister and the director of CSIS have travelled on a number of occasions in recent weeks also to India to meet their counterparts in India to confront the intelligence agencies with these allegations.”

The Indian response was predictably sharp, with New Delhi also expelling a “senior Canadian diplomat,” asking the individual to leave within five days.  Prior to that, the Canadian high commissioner to India, Cameron MacKay, was summoned for a bit of an ear-bashing, while the Indian Ministry of External Affairs expressed the “Government of India’s growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities.”

For its part the MEA rebuked Canada for its sympathies for what it called Khalistani terrorists.  “Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”  It was also a “matter of deep concern” that “Canadian political figures [had] openly expressed sympathy for such elements”.

The interest by New Delhi in the tetchier elements of the Khalistan movement would have been sparked by a smattering of reports that seem to add weight that a resurgence was in the offing.  The Conversation, for instance, thought it significant enough to note acts of vandalism against the Indian consulate in San Francisco in March, and discuss the activities of a “group of separatists” who had “blocked the entrance to the Indian consulate in Brisbane, forcing it to close temporarily.” And just to note the gravity of these acts, the publication went on to document attacks on three Hindu temples in Australia, a point that gave Prime Minister Modi the chance to moralise and vent to his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, in a visit in May this year.

That same month, Sydney’s Blacktown City Council cancelled a June 4 booking that would have featured a purely ceremonial, symbolic “Khalistan Referendum”.  A similar event had taken place in Melbourne’s Federation Square earlier in the year, an initiative of the US-based Sikhs for Justice.  A Blacktown City Council spokesperson called the booking “in conflict with adopted Council policy,” posing “risks to Council staff, Council assets and members of the public”.

A frontline against the Khalistan movement has become violently visible.  While Indian authorities maintain a watch on Sikh activists at home and initiate arrests (this, along with keeping a tight rein on other dissident movements in line with Modi’s all suffocating notion of Hindutva), killings have taken place in other countries.

Paramjit Singh Panjwar, designated the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) chief, was gunned down in Lahore in May.  Indian reports on the killing took a certain glee in the brutal demise of Panjwar, who had “fled to Pakistan in 1990 with the help of its spy agency ISIS, which allegedly provided him a safe house in Lahore and a new identity: Malik Sardar Singh.”

Another, Harmeet Singh, leader of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), suffered the same fate in January 2020, also on Pakistani soil.  His death was put down to either the tawdry business of a love affair with a married Muslim woman from Pakistan, or a dispute over drug money.

Not to be outdone, certain members of the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom have also expressed concern that the death of Birmingham-based Avtar Sigh Khanda remains suspicious.   Khanda is said by Indian security sources to be responsible for grooming the prominent Khalistani separatist Amritpal Singh, who was arrested in April.  West Midlands police, however, found nothing to warrant opening an investigation into Khanda’s death.  The same, it would seem, cannot be said about Nijjar, whose assassination has taken some of the shine off Modi’s garish publicity machine.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

As the G20 met in India this weekend, invitations to dinners during the G20 used the name Bharat instead of India. Bharat is a Sanskrit term which is already India’s second official name but is not widely used internationally. Economics professor Jayati Ghosh speculates Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to be moving toward the name Bharat as a “knee-jerk reaction” to a coalition of 26 opposition political parties called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.) ahead of 2024 elections. “It would be funny if it weren’t also so expensively ridiculous,” says Ghosh, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for 35 years. “The immediate bringing in of this measure is really a panicky response to the fact that the opposition parties are coming together.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

But the claim is false. India refers to nylon kite string as “Chinese kite string” since their key materials are mostly imported from China. The string is produced in India and was banned due to concerns over safety and its negative impact on the environment.

Multiple official Chinese news outlets, including Huanqiu Wang and Kankan Xinwe, claimed that India's ban on "Chinese-made kite string” was proof India wanted to stir up conflict with China.

The claim began to circulate online after India’s domestic media outlets reported here and here that nylon and other synthetic kite string – often coated with glass powder, making it abrasive and able to cut other kite strings – will likely increase bird deaths during this year’s annual celebration of Indian Independence Day on Aug. 15. 

Both articles noted that the kite-flying string – also called “Chinese manjha” – is still widely used despite an ongoing government ban enacted in 2017. “Manjha” refers to kite-flying string.

Kite-flying is a popular pastime in India and a traditional way to commemorate the county’s emergence as a sovereign state from British rule in 1947.

Responding to the news, some Chinese netizens taunted that the Indian government is adopting Sinophobic policies similar to the United States by illogically banning such everyday items as kite string. 

But the claim is false. Below is what AFCL discovered. 

Did India’s ban against Chinese manjha have anything to do with China? 

No. The string was banned due to safety and environmental concerns. 

Besides being more affordable than conventional cotton string, synthetic kite string has a heightened tension that renders them extremely sharp.

This added sharpness, while favored by kite-fighting enthusiasts, has also harmed numerous birds and individuals.

In response to these concerns, India's National Green Tribunal, or NGT – a body responsible for addressing environmental matters – prohibited the sale and usage of these strings in 2017.

Is Chinese manjha actually made in China?

No. The kite string is locally manufactured in India. 

The NGT notes that “Chinese manjha” is a term used to distinguish generic nylon, synthetic and metal kite string from traditional cotton kite strings.

Separately, it states that such string is neither manufactured, imported, supplied or distributed from China and have “nothing to do” with the country. 

India’s local media outlets also explained here and here the synthetic string is commonly referred to as Chinese manjha because polypropylene – a key ingredient in making them – is mostly imported from Taiwan and China.

Mohit Kartikeyan, a Bangalore manufacturer of kite strings, told Scroll.in that calling the string “Chinese” is  a type of “marketing gimmick” meant to draw in customers looking for imported products.

The Indian kite string manufacturer Manjha Kite Wale told AFCL that in addition to their raw materials, some nylon kite strings are also indeed imported from China.

The term is widely used by domestic media outlets, as seen in reports by The Times of India, The Economic Times of India, Business Today and The Indian Express. 

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang and Malcolm Foster.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) is a new branch of RFA established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. Our journalists publish both daily and special reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of public issues.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Dong Zhe for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Indian Muslims in Haj praying for destruction of India. In Tamil the man is saying “do dua for destruction of our country. Also do due for destruction of RSS and that BJP shouldn’t win”. @HMO pls cancel citizenship of these people.
Video credit: @Mohsinrazabjpup pic.twitter.com/bv0jYPkJ1y

— Stop Hindu Hate Advocacy Network (SHHAN) (@HinduHate) June 21, 2023

Member of the Uttar Pradesh legislative council Mohsin Raza shared the clip with the same claim. He called for the Government of India to investigate the people seen in the video and the organizations behind them. A case of treason should be registered against them and their citizenship should be terminated, he felt. (Archive)

Several users, including journalist Surabhi Tiwari and other verified accounts, have tweeted the viral clip with the same claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3, 4)

Fact Check

The same video was shared on Twitter by the late author and columnist Tarek Fatah on April 30, 2019. He wrote: “Video of Tamil Muslims at the Kaaba in Mecca praying for destruction of the #RSS and @BJP4India. To replace PM Modi’s rule with the rule of Allah in India.” (Archive)

We also found a Deccan Chronicle article from May 2019 which said that Tamils were praying for “the total destruction of the RSS and the complete defeat of the BJP”. Thus, it is safe to say that the video is at least four years old.

As far as the content goes, we found that the viral claims are misleading. The pilgrims, in no way, pray for the destruction of the country, as claimed in the viral posts. They are heard offering dua in Arabic for the first 40 seconds of the viral video. This prayer is offered when a pilgrim sees the Kabaa for the first time. The prayer وَتَعْظِيماً وَتَكْرِيماً وَمَهَابَةً، وَزِدْ مَن شَرَّفَهُ وَكَرَّمَهُ مِمَّنْ حَجَّهُ أَو اعتَمَرَهُ تَشرِيفاً وَتَكرِيماً وَتَعظِيماً وَبِرّاً (Allahumma zid hadha-l-Bayta tashrifan wa ta’ziman wa takriman wa mahabah, wa zid man sharrafahu wa karramahu mimman hajjahu awi- ‘tamarahu tashrifan wa takriman wa ta’ziman wa birra) literally translates to:

“Allah, increase this House in honour, esteem, respect and reverence. And grow those who honour and respect it, those who perform Hajj or Umrah, in distinction, care, affection and purity.”

The pilgrims are then heard offering their prayers in Tamil. The exact translation of this part of the prayer is as follows:

“Please offer dua. Please offer dua, especially seeking the betterment of the prevailing situation in our country. RSS party must be destroyed. Especially offer dua to Allah that BJP must not win again”.

Hence, an old video of Tamil Muslims praying against the BJP’s win and the destruction of RSS is falsely viral with the claim that they are praying for the destruction of the country.

The post Fact check: Hajj pilgrims praying for RSS-BJP’s rout, not India’s destruction appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Shefali Rafiq, Saqib Mugloo.

The post India’s Education Market: The Next Neo-Colonial Frontier appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

A starring outcome of the various discussions was an agreement between Canberra and New Delhi to ensure the mutual recognition of qualifications. On March 3, the Australian Minister for Education, Jason Clare, stated in a media release that the Mechanism for the Mutual Recognition of Qualifications was “India’s most comprehensive education agreement of its type with another country.”

Such a mechanism would ensure that Indian students attaining a degree from an Australian university would have it recognised should they wish to continue higher education in India. The release continues to optimistically extol the merits of the mechanism, which would open “a world of possibilities to develop flexible and innovative partnerships between the two countries.” Minister Clare and his counterpart Shri Dharmendra Pradhan also reaffirmed their wish to establish an Australia India Working Group on Transnational Partnerships.

A number of memoranda of understanding, totalling 11 in all, were also signed, stressing bilateral cooperation between India and Australia in a number of fields, including law and bio-innovation. “The developments today,” announced the Indian Ministry of Education with certain effusion, “will create more opportunities for two-way mobility of students and professionals for the purpose of education and employment, and pave the way for making education the biggest enabler in taking India-Australia bilateral relationship to greater heights and shared aspirations.”

The public relations front was also busy with fanfare. Brian Schmidt, Nobel laureate and vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, met students and officials at Sri Venkateswara College of the University of Delhi. His polite welcome was shaded by the more raucous one given to former Australian test cricketer Adam Gilchrist, who acts as the University of Wollongong’s global brand ambassador. For such institutions, brands come before brains.

Gilchrist’s presence was unsurprising, given the zeal with which the university he represents is pursuing a base in India. (The added point here is that Indians are utterly bonkers for cricket.) The soft power of cricketing appeal has been twinned with the hard corporate agenda. In July 2022, a Letter of Intent was signed between the University of Wollongong and the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City). According to the university, the intention is “to establish a location for teaching, research and industry engagement in GIFT City within a partnership or a stand-alone basis.” This will further supplement pre-existing research collaborations in a number of fields, including 3D bioprinting, transportation and advanced medicine.

These events have served to show how starry-eyed education apparatchiks in Australia are increasingly looking to India as an alternative to China. Earlier this year, applications for student visas from India exceeded those from China.

What will eventuate from this round robin chat fest is hard to tell. The modern university behaves much as a colonial enterprise, with all its failings and brute drawbacks. In certain practices, they resemble the VOC or British East India Company. The guns and ammunition might have been abandoned but the residual ruthless mercantilism remains.

This takes the form of International Branch Campuses (IBCs), a booming neo-colonial favourite of universities from the United States, UK, Australia and a number of EU member states. Between 2002 and 2006, the number of IBCs grew from 18 to 82. By 2009, that number had swollen to 162. In some part, the move into the global education market, with its emphasis on academic capitalism, was encouraged by declines in domestic government funding. But it also betrayed a lazy myopia on the part of university managers.

Vice-chancellors, equipped with the powers of petty despotism, resemble functionaries in the service of capital, and not always good capital at that. They continue to embrace the plundering model of the rich student market, hoping to reap the rewards of the developing world spouting cliches about mutual advantage and “world class” education. If China falls out of favour, another market will take its place.

Deakin University’s vice-chancellor, Iain Martin, gives us a sense of this attitude. India had “250 million people between the ages of 18 and 26 and an overcrowded, overly stressed domestic education system.” Alas, standalone institutions from the outside were hard to establish as things stood. Thankfully, “the government has realised it needs to work with others outside India to open up educational opportunities.”

As the Australian Financial Review reports, “the sound of billions of dollars in tuition fees from a new generation of Indian students who are not just keen to study here, but to stay on to work and gain permanent residency, is pure happiness to the ears of vice-chancellors.”

The welfare of such students, however, is quite a different thing. Those who tend to represent cash cows are rarely taken seriously, except for their cash. The quality of what they receive is less significant than what they provide to university coffers. This works both ways, whether through the IBCs, or in the metropole where the main university campus is located. The treatment meted out to international students by Australian universities during the pandemic was nothing short of atrocious, characterised by callousness regarding the delivery of courses and uneven support schemes.

Another area of educational importance is also being neglected in these latest negotiations. India’s officials and policy makers have expressed considerable interest in the role of vocational education. (This was touched on in the Australia India Future Skills initiative announced in March 2022 by the previous government.) A number of Australian universities are what are termed “dual sector” entities, straddling both tertiary and vocational. But its conspicuous absence on this occasion suggests that Australian universities, and some of their counterparts, are hoping for the easy cash-filled options.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

“The Indian government’s order to social media platforms to block a BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an attack on the free press that flagrantly contradicts the country’s stated commitment to democratic ideals,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities must immediately restore full and unrestricted access to the documentary and withdraw regulations under the Information Technology Act that imperil press freedom and freedom of expression online.”

On January 20, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting ordered YouTube and Twitter to take down links sharing the first episode of the two-part BBC documentary investigating Modi’s alleged role in 2002 riots in Gujarat, according to news reports.

Clips of the documentary, which did not air in India, have been shared widely on social media.

According to the Times of India, the companies complied and removed about 50 tweets and an unspecified number of YouTube videos.

The ministry issued its order under legislation, updated in 2021, that expanded government’s powers to censor online content, which CPJ criticized at the time. Authorities have also recently proposed legislation that would require intermediaries, including social media platforms, to remove news articles identified as “fake” or “false,” according to news reports.

CPJ emailed Google, Twitter, and the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for comment, but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

He adds:

Since 2005, she has tirelessly pursued a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court of India, in which she has made a case why India should not yield to pressures from mega agri-transnational corporations and certain sections of the Indian agricultural sector who are keen on promoting genetically modified organisms in farming.

India’s apex regulatory body, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, recently sanctioned genetically modified (GM) mustard for cultivation. This would be India’s first GM food crop, despite a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court to prevent cultivation as well as the widespread rejection of GM mustard by farmers’ organisations.

Aruna Rodrigues, the lead petitioner of the PIL, has exposed in her various submissions to court that claims about yield increases through GM mustard to be completely baseless. She indicates how data has been rigged and manipulated and protocols have been severely compromised, and that the government and its regulators are parroting the false claims of the crop developers.

Thanks to the PIL, the Supreme Court put a stay on the commercial release of GM Mustard on 3 November 2022.

Independent experts who have looked at the biosafety data submitted by the crop developer at Delhi University have clearly pointed out that GM mustard has not been tested rigorously and adequately.

India is a centre for diversity for mustard and several high-level official committees have recommended against transgenic technologies in crops for which the country is the centre of origin or centre of diversity.

Various high-level reports have also advised against introducing GM food crops to India per se. These reports conclude that GM crops are unsuitable for India and that biosafety and regulatory procedures are wholly inadequate. 

Rodrigues also played a leading role in preventing commercial cultivation of GM brinjal more than a decade ago. Her tireless efforts have been a thorn in the side of global agritech corporations and seriously compromised regulatory officials who have for the best part of two decades been trying to get GM food crops cultivated in India.

There is much at stake.

India has a lot to lose, not least its food and seed sovereignty and contamination of its crops as well as the risks genetically modified organisms (GMOs) pose to human health.

The industry has much to gain.

Global biotech corporations like Bayer and Corteva are seeking to increase their control over the future of food and farming by extensively patenting plants and developing a new generation of GMOs.

They seek to claim all plants with those genetic traits as their ‘invention’.  Such patents on plants would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and impede breeders from developing new plants as both would have to ask for consent and pay fees to the biotech companies.

According to an October 2022 report, the global GM crop and seed market is projected to reach $46 billion by 2027. That is up from an estimated US$30.6 billion in 2020. The US market is estimated at $8.4 billion, while China is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$10 billion by the year 2027.

Key global players include AgReliant Genetics LLC, BASF SE, Bayer Crop Science, Canterra Seeds Holdings, DLF Seeds & Science and Corteva (Dow/DuPont).

If India succumbs to pressure, that figure of $46 billion by 2027 could be much larger. With 1.4 billion people, India represents a massive financially lucrative cash cow.
For instance, Goldstein Research pushes pro-GM industry talking points and laments about resistance to GM food seeds as it is hindering the growth of India’s GM seed market. Even so, it forecasts that the Indian GM seed market is set to reach US$13.1 billion by 2025 (cotton is the only legally sanctioned GM crop in India at this time).  
GM mustard is regarded as a pioneering food crop in India – it would open the floodgates for many other GM food crops that are in the pipeline under a veil of secrecy, including wheat, rice, brinjal and chickpea.

But – it seems – genuine science stands in the way. GM mustard is unwanted, unneeded and fails to stand up to scientific rigour. 

Maybe that is why, in December 2020, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) prevented serving and former public officials from expressing any opinion or writing any article on the approval to release GM mustard. This is a ‘gag order’ and an attempt to close down debate on the matter and to keep the public in the dark on the issue.

Trade and agriculture policy specialist Devinder Sharma says that silencing scientific voices indicates there is more to hide than reveal. He says that every claim that the ICAR makes about GM mustard can be challenged. And it has been – in court. Sharma adds that the US is placing tremendous pressure on India to embrace GM crops.

In finishing, let us turn to where this article began – with Aruna Rodrigues.

Leo Saldanha, who is mentioned at the start of this article, is forthright on the Change.org website in condemning a recent attack on Rodrigues.   

Due to Rodrigues, Saldanha says the Supreme Court has time and again questioned the enthusiasm with which the Indian government and several public institutions have collaborated, questionably and controversially, in promoting GM foods and crops.

Just before Christmas, however, Aruna Rodrigues was unexpectedly forcibly evicted from her ancestral home by the Indian army. The Defence Estate Office is the custodian of all military properties of India and is required to secure such properties by following the due process of law.

Saldanha notes that Rodrigues’ home has been with her family from 1892 – legally secured via proper sale deeds. But about 27 years ago, the Defence Estate Office made a claim on the house. This claim was challenged, and the matter has been in court since then. Consequently, any action against the occupant should be only through due process of law.   

On 20 December 2022, a court ruled that Aruna Rodrigues has occupation rights to the house. Yet the Defence Estate Officer moved into the house with army personnel – without any court directive – and physically removed her and threw the contents of the house onto the street. Within hours, a court ruled in Rodrigues favour. By then, however, the damage had been done.

As Saldanha says, we can only wonder whether any of this is connected to Rodrigues’ case before the Supreme Court. Given the billions of dollars at stake for the global agritech companies, it would indeed be wise to wonder.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

That’s why four university students thought the food supply chain held the potential to tackle agricultural air pollution and hunger at the same time. After more than a year of effort, the group arrived at a solution that turns agricultural waste into compostable plateware for schools, embedding seeds in disposable dishes so school gardens can produce more food to fight hunger. The solution made the four Ramjas College commerce students finalists in the 2022 Enactus Race to Feed the Planet Challenge. The Challenge aims to find solutions for food insecurity through plant-based agriculture, products, and enterprises. They were one of four teams—selected from 79 entries from 16 countries—to enter a final round of the competition.

The four-some—Navya Garge, Aradhya Bhalla, Divyam Thapliyal, and Vinayak Tiwari—named themselves Team Waraq, which means “golden leaf” in Arabic. They began studying India’s agricultural issues in early 2021, and what they faced was bracing. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, temperatures in India have already increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius, with heat records broken multiple times over the last decade. And as warming accelerates, crop yields are forecast to decline up to 19% in developing Asian countries like India.

Farmers in places like northern India’s Haryana region typically burn their stalks and stubble at the end of the season, believing the waste will decrease next year’s yields. The burning worsens air quality dramatically. New Delhi, which is near Haryana, ranked in 2021 as the world’s most polluted capital city for the fourth consecutive year. IQAir, which studies pollution annually, also found India to be among the top five most polluted countries. The burning of crop residue combines with vehicle exhaust, commercial pollution, and in-home cooking (with fuels like wood and coal) to degrade air quality further. 

The students breathed New Delhi’s significant air pollution themselves, but they knew that trying to re-educate the farmers not to burn crop stubble, or even instituting burn bans would be complicated. So instead, they decided to try a different intervention, incentivizing around 30 farmers to change how they approached their post-harvest waste. The team of students arranged to pick up the waste, and even paid the farmers a few rupees if needed, to persuade them to give it away rather than burn it. 

“As humans there is so much we ask people to do, but they fail to do it,” team member Navya Garg says. “They did not have a good alternative.” Her teammate Vinayak Tiwari adds, “And so that is where we step in.”

The students worked on developing a simple formula, using crop stubble, water, and adhesive to produce durable plateware. They also leveraged personal connections to help develop a couple simple compression machines — not unlike tortilla-making machines used elsewhere in the world — that could be shared among the two villages where they piloted the program.

The concept offered an “extremely exciting three-way benefit,” says Jan Weernink, a global marketing director for biosolutions at ADM, a sponsor of the Enactus Race to Feed the Planet Competition. Weernik became the team’s industry mentor in early 2022. Valuing the farmers’ stubble, saving the air pollution that would’ve been produced by burning, and creating a plate out of what would have been waste all represented leaps forward on climate.

Taking it to another level by embedding seeds in the plateware was “ingenious,” Weernink adds. “After these plates have been used, you can till them easily into the soil.” He explains that the fibrous material in the plate serves as a natural nutrient source for the seeds, helping them grow. 

In northern India, school gardens are often used not just for teaching or demonstration purposes, but also for substantial food production to help supplement students’ diets. Team Waraq took advantage of that by embedding seeds for nutritious crops like lettuce, tomatoes, and okra. They found that with a yield rate of 15-20% from the plates, embedding four seeds worked well, producing about one plant per plate.

A big question for Weernink and the students has been how long it would take the plates to decompose. Team Waraq began testing that in early 2022, and found they broke down quickly, within 15 to 20 days, although the seeds took additional time to germinate and grow. Different climates and seasons may affect the decomposition and yield rates as well.

Other challenges have included persuading cash-strapped schools to pay more for the compostable flatware. “How do you get a municipality to spend a little extra money?” Weernink asks. He advised marketing the sustainable sourcing, and the direct-value proposition. “If you say the total cost of ownership includes $4,000 worth of fruits and vegetables, you are delivering value to the school, because they get free food.”

A significant remaining challenge is scaling up: So far, Team Waraq has bootstrapped the project with minimal funding. They hope to expand to 100 schools in 50 villages, which they estimate would lift 70,000 people from hunger, while preventing 12 metric tons of carbon emissions.

The team hopes to take the idea further, both in concept and execution. “We always want to better it,” Garg says. She is already looking for ways to improve the plates’ texture, and to get more schools interested in joining the program. “When you have years of planning ahead, you want to keep polishing.”

ADM is a sponsor of Enactus’s Race to Feed the Planet Challenge. ADM is the bridge between the producer on the farm and the consumer-facing brands in our daily lives. Consumers around the world have made it clear that they expect the products they purchase to come from sustainable sources, produced by companies that share their values like we do. Sustainability is one of the biggest challenges our world faces, and it’s one ADM is uniquely positioned to solve. We are scaling up our sustainability efforts to meet the ever-expanding needs of global populations, and to give our customers the edge they need to navigate new consumer demands, shifting attitudes, and environmental challenges. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Creatively tackling India’s climate challenges through the food supply chain on Nov 17, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Grist Creative.

The central government has in the past stated commercialisation will not go ahead prior to the court’s decision, but this remains to be seen.

Approval is a significant moment for the agri biotech industry, not least because GM mustard can be regarded as a pioneering crop that could open the doors to a range of other GM food crops that are in the pipeline.

At this point, only one GM crop is legally cultivated in India, Bt cotton – designed to resist certain pests. Prominent policy makers and lobbyists have been claiming that, due to the success of Bt cotton, it should serve as a template for the introduction of GM food crops.

But this claim is not grounded in reality. Bt cotton has been far from successful and has caused immense hardship for cotton farmers (in fact, it is a template for a monumental catastrophe). This is evidentially supported by Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Dr Hans R Herren and Dr Peter E Kenmore, internationally renowned agricultural researchers.

In India, Bt cotton is a failing technology that has severely negatively impacted many farmers. And before anyone says that farmers in India have consciously opted for GM cotton, they should read what researcher and academic Andrew Flachs says.

Flachs conducted fieldwork on cotton cultivation in the South Indian state of Telangana. His book Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India reveals the ugly reality of ‘choice’ and cotton cultivation on the ground.

Consider too that what is happening also goes against the recommendations of four high-level reports that have advised against the adoption of GM crops in India.

The article “Agri Biotech Motivated by Monopoly Control” (25 October 2022) lists these reports and describes how – through deception, scientific fraud, technological sleight of hand and regulatory jugglery – GM mustard is designed (once commercialised) to facilitate the process of (chemical-dependent) GM food crop cultivation in India.

The premise behind GM mustard is to increase yields and reduce the import bill for edible oils. However, as the article mentioned above shows, there is actually no trait for yield and this GM mustard does not outperform conventional varieties. Moreover, the increase in edible oil imports is not due to low productivity of India’s indigenous edible oils sector but the political decision to cut tarrifs on imports at the behest of global agri commodity traders.

Official reports have been scathing about India’s regulatory system for GMOs, highlighting its inadequacies and inherent serious conflicts of interest. One can only assume that given there is no need (the key prerequisite for introducing a GM crop) for GM mustard, there are other motives for its promotion.

The GM project is not about the industry’s much-touted PR slogans of ‘feeding the world’ or helping farmers’. For the sake of brevity, readers can consult the online article “Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture” which dismantles these claims.

Regardless of any claimed benefits, GMOs have first and foremost been about value capture and creating market dependency. They are also about securing ownership of seed germplasm developed over centuries by farmers via acquiring intellectual property rights – corporations claim their genetic manipulation (no matter how fruitless the effect) turns a seed into a patentable product. This would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and place the biotech companies in control of cultivation and breeding.

Where India is concerned, the GM project must also be viewed as forming part of a wider dependency paradigm. There has been a three-decades-long plan to restructure the Indian economy and Indian agriculture. The plan stems from the country’s 1991 foreign exchange crisis which was used to impose IMF-World Bank debt-related ‘structural adjustment’ conditionalities.

The details of this plan appear in a 2021 article by the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy – “Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago in Washington DC“. Although focusing on now-repealed (due to farmer protests) farm legislation, the article locates agricultural ‘reforms’ within a broader process of Western imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy.

We often hear of the need to embrace technology and ‘modern agriculture’. On the surface, all well and good. But what this really means is acquiescing to the needs of global (GM) seed and agrichemical corporations and commodity traders: fitting into global supply chains that siphon value from the food system into the hands of the billionaires who own these conglomerates (we should not forget that Bt cotton enabled Monsanto to suck hundreds of millions of dollars from poor cotton farmers).

To achieve this, where India is concerned, it means destroying self-reliant, indigenous systems of production by deliberately making smallholder farming financially non-viable, dismantling public buffer food stocks and state-backed price support mechanisms and distribution systems.

Having cleared the way for corporate interests to control the policy space left open by the retreat of the public sector and to amalgamate farms to entrench industrial-scale agriculture, the Indian government would then be compelled to attract ‘foreign direct investment’ by implementing further neoliberal reforms. This would build up foreign reserves which would then be used to purchase agricultural commodities on the international market.

The type of ‘food security’ demanded by ‘modern agriculture’ means eradicating self-sufficiency and implementing food-import dependency on unscrupulous global conglomerates and volatile markets vulnerable to manipulation and shocks (as we are currently witnessing in 2022).

And that’s not all. Privately owned but taxpayer subsidised ‘modern agriculture’ imposes certain costs, including nutrient-poor food contaminated by GMOs and chemical additives, the use of toxic pesticides, spiralling rates of ill health, the degradation of soil, the pollution of waterways, the eradication of thriving ecosystems and the destruction of rural communities.

The GMO issue ties into the ‘development’ agenda being pushed on India. Powerful interests are being handed India’s agrifood sector on a plate and both farmers and consumers will pick up the tab.

• The author is an independent writer. For more in-depth insight into what is described in this article, readers can access the free e-book Food, Dispossession and Dependency: Resisting the New World Order by clicking on this link.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

The central government has in the past stated commercialisation will not go ahead prior to the court’s decision, but this remains to be seen.

Approval is a significant moment for the agri biotech industry, not least because GM mustard can be regarded as a pioneering crop that could open the doors to a range of other GM food crops that are in the pipeline.

At this point, only one GM crop is legally cultivated in India, Bt cotton – designed to resist certain pests. Prominent policy makers and lobbyists have been claiming that, due to the success of Bt cotton, it should serve as a template for the introduction of GM food crops.

But this claim is not grounded in reality. Bt cotton has been far from successful and has caused immense hardship for cotton farmers (in fact, it is a template for a monumental catastrophe). This is evidentially supported by Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Dr Hans R Herren and Dr Peter E Kenmore, internationally renowned agricultural researchers.

In India, Bt cotton is a failing technology that has severely negatively impacted many farmers. And before anyone says that farmers in India have consciously opted for GM cotton, they should read what researcher and academic Andrew Flachs says.

Flachs conducted fieldwork on cotton cultivation in the South Indian state of Telangana. His book Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India reveals the ugly reality of ‘choice’ and cotton cultivation on the ground.

Consider too that what is happening also goes against the recommendations of four high-level reports that have advised against the adoption of GM crops in India.

The article “Agri Biotech Motivated by Monopoly Control” (25 October 2022) lists these reports and describes how – through deception, scientific fraud, technological sleight of hand and regulatory jugglery – GM mustard is designed (once commercialised) to facilitate the process of (chemical-dependent) GM food crop cultivation in India.

The premise behind GM mustard is to increase yields and reduce the import bill for edible oils. However, as the article mentioned above shows, there is actually no trait for yield and this GM mustard does not outperform conventional varieties. Moreover, the increase in edible oil imports is not due to low productivity of India’s indigenous edible oils sector but the political decision to cut tarrifs on imports at the behest of global agri commodity traders.

Official reports have been scathing about India’s regulatory system for GMOs, highlighting its inadequacies and inherent serious conflicts of interest. One can only assume that given there is no need (the key prerequisite for introducing a GM crop) for GM mustard, there are other motives for its promotion.

The GM project is not about the industry’s much-touted PR slogans of ‘feeding the world’ or helping farmers’. For the sake of brevity, readers can consult the online article “Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture” which dismantles these claims.

Regardless of any claimed benefits, GMOs have first and foremost been about value capture and creating market dependency. They are also about securing ownership of seed germplasm developed over centuries by farmers via acquiring intellectual property rights – corporations claim their genetic manipulation (no matter how fruitless the effect) turns a seed into a patentable product. This would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and place the biotech companies in control of cultivation and breeding.

Where India is concerned, the GM project must also be viewed as forming part of a wider dependency paradigm. There has been a three-decades-long plan to restructure the Indian economy and Indian agriculture. The plan stems from the country’s 1991 foreign exchange crisis which was used to impose IMF-World Bank debt-related ‘structural adjustment’ conditionalities.

The details of this plan appear in a 2021 article by the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy – “Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago in Washington DC“. Although focusing on now-repealed (due to farmer protests) farm legislation, the article locates agricultural ‘reforms’ within a broader process of Western imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy.

We often hear of the need to embrace technology and ‘modern agriculture’. On the surface, all well and good. But what this really means is acquiescing to the needs of global (GM) seed and agrichemical corporations and commodity traders: fitting into global supply chains that siphon value from the food system into the hands of the billionaires who own these conglomerates (we should not forget that Bt cotton enabled Monsanto to suck hundreds of millions of dollars from poor cotton farmers).

To achieve this, where India is concerned, it means destroying self-reliant, indigenous systems of production by deliberately making smallholder farming financially non-viable, dismantling public buffer food stocks and state-backed price support mechanisms and distribution systems.

Having cleared the way for corporate interests to control the policy space left open by the retreat of the public sector and to amalgamate farms to entrench industrial-scale agriculture, the Indian government would then be compelled to attract ‘foreign direct investment’ by implementing further neoliberal reforms. This would build up foreign reserves which would then be used to purchase agricultural commodities on the international market.

The type of ‘food security’ demanded by ‘modern agriculture’ means eradicating self-sufficiency and implementing food-import dependency on unscrupulous global conglomerates and volatile markets vulnerable to manipulation and shocks (as we are currently witnessing in 2022).

And that’s not all. Privately owned but taxpayer subsidised ‘modern agriculture’ imposes certain costs, including nutrient-poor food contaminated by GMOs and chemical additives, the use of toxic pesticides, spiralling rates of ill health, the degradation of soil, the pollution of waterways, the eradication of thriving ecosystems and the destruction of rural communities.

The GMO issue ties into the ‘development’ agenda being pushed on India. Powerful interests are being handed India’s agrifood sector on a plate and both farmers and consumers will pick up the tab.

• The author is an independent writer. For more in-depth insight into what is described in this article, readers can access the free e-book Food, Dispossession and Dependency: Resisting the New World Order by clicking on this link.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

“Earlier it was just one conversation they [authorities] would tap into,” Venu told CPJ in a phone interview. “They wouldn’t see what you would be doing in your bedroom or bathroom. The scale was stunning.”

The Indian journalists were among scores around the world who learned from the Pegasus Project in July 2021 that they, along with human rights activists, lawyers, and politicians, had been targeted for possible surveillance by Pegasus, the spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group. (The company denies any connection with the Project’s list and says that it only sells its product to vetted governments with the goal of preventing crime or terrorism.) 

The Pegasus Project found that the phones of two founding editors of The Wire – Venu and Siddharth Vardarajan – were confirmed by forensic analysis to have been infected with Pegasus. Four other journalists associated with the outlet – diplomatic editor Devirupa Mitra, and contributors Rohini Singh, Prem Shankar Jha, and Swati Chaturvedi – were listed as potential targets.

The Indian government denies that it has engaged in unauthorized surveillance, but has not commented directly on a January New York Times report that Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to buy Pegasus during a 2017 visit to Israel. The Indian government has not cooperated with an ongoing inquiry by an expert committee appointed by the country’s Supreme Court to investigate illegal use of spyware. In late August, the court revealed that the committee had found malware in five out of the 29 devices it examined, but could not confirm that it was Pegasus.

However, Indian journalists interviewed by CPJ had no doubt that it was the government behind any efforts to spy on them. “This government is obsessed with journalists who are not adhering to their cheerleading,” investigative reporter Chaturvedi told CPJ via messaging app. “My journalism has never been personal against anyone. I don’t understand why it is so personal to this government.” For Chaturvedi, the spying was an invasion of privacy “so heinous that how do you put it in words.” 

Read CPJ’s complete special report: When spyware turns phones into weapons

Overall, the Pegasus Project found that at least 40 journalists were among the 174 Indians named as potential targets of surveillance. With six associated with The Wire, the outlet was the country’s most targeted newsroom. The Wire has long been a thorn in the side of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its reporting on allegations of corruption by party officials, the party’s alleged promotion of sectarian violence, and its alleged use of technology to target government critics online. As a result, various BJP-led state governments, BJP officials, and their affiliates have targeted the website’s journalists with police investigations, defamation suits, online doxxing, and threats.

Indian home ministry and BJP spokespeople have not responded to CPJ’s email and text messages requesting comment. However after the last Supreme Court hearing, party spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia criticized the opposition for “trying to create an atmosphere of fear” in India. “They [Congress party] were trying to spread propaganda that citizens’ privacy has been invaded. The Supreme Court has made it clear that no conclusive evidence has been found to show the presence of Pegasus spyware in the 29 phones scanned,” he said.

As in so many other newsrooms around the world, the Pegasus Project revelations have prompted The Wire to introduce stricter security protocols, including the use of encrypted software, to protect its journalists as well as its sources.

Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta, political editor at The Wire, told CPJ in a phone interview that as part of the new procedures, “we would not talk [about sensitive stories] on the phone.” While working on the Pegasus project, the Wire newsroom was extra careful. “When we were meeting, we kept our phones in a separate room. We were also not using our general [office] computers,” he said.

Venu told CPJ that while regular editorial meetings at The Wire are held via video call, sensitive stories are discussed in person. “We take usual precautions like occasional reboot, keep phones away when we meet anyone. What else can we do?” he asks.

Chaturvedi told CPJ via messaging app that she quickly started using a new phone when she learned from local intelligence sources that she might have been under surveillance. As an investigative journalist, her immediate concern following the Pegasus Project disclosures was to avoid compromising her sources. “In Delhi, everyone I know who is in a position of power no longer talks on normal calls,” she said. “The paranoia is not just us who have been targeted with Pegasus.”

“Since the last five years, any important source I’m trying to talk to as a journalist will not speak to me on a normal regular call,” said Arfa Khanum Sherwani, who anchors a popular political show for The Wire and is known as a critic of Hindu right-wing politics. Sherwani told CPJ that her politician sources were the first ones who moved to communicate with her on encrypted messaging platforms even before the revelations as they “understood that something like this was at play.”

Rohini Singh similarly told CPJ that she doesn’t have any conversations related to her stories over the phone and leaves it behind when she meets people out reporting. “It is not about protecting myself. Ultimately it is going to be my story and my byline would be on it. I’m essentially protecting people who might be giving me information,” she said. 

Journalists also say they are concerned about the safety of their family members.

“After Pegasus, even though my name per se was not part of the whole thing, my friends and family members did not feel safe enough to call me or casually say something about the government. Because they feel that they are also being audiographed and videographed [filmed or recorded],” said Sherwani.

Chaturvedi told CPJ that her family has been “terrified” since the revelations. “Both my parents were in the government service. They can’t believe that this is the same country,” she said.

Venu and Sherwani both expressed concerns about how the atmosphere of fear could affect coverage by less-experienced journalists starting out in their careers. “The simple pleasure of doing journalism got affected. This may lead to self-censorship. When someone gets attacked badly, that journalist can start playing safe,” said Venu.

Said Sherwani: “For someone like me with a more established identity and career, I would be able to get people [to talk to me], but for younger journalists it will be much more difficult to contact politicians and speak to them. Whatever they say has to be on record, so you will see less and less source-based stories.”

Ashirwad agreed. “I’m very critical of this government, which is known. My stand now is I shall not say anything in private which I’m not comfortable saying in public,” he said.  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Representative.

Sudarshan News tweeted the clip with a caption in Hindi that read, “Celebrations in Srinagar after India’s defeat in front of Pakistan.” The caption of the tweet also says that the destruction of these “offspring of snakes” is a must. They later deleted the tweet but an archive of it is available in public domain.

Similarly, Sagar Kumar, a journalist affiliated with Sudarshan News, tweeted the clip with the same claim and later deleted the tweet. (Archive link.)

This clip has been shared by various users on Twitter. Users interested in watching the video may do so by clicking on this link. The video has also been shared multiple times on Facebook.

Fact-check

We watched the viral video carefully and noticed a mosque-like structure is visible in the video at the 0:05-second mark. Moreover, at the 0:43-second mark when the fireworks go silent for a few seconds the crowd chants “Naara-e-taqbir, Allahu Akbar”.

Taking note of these clues, we performed a keyword search in Urdu on Facebook and came across multiple videos of fireworks that are claimed to be from Srinagar. Among these, we found a video shared by two different users (user 1 and user 2) in August 2020. In this video, we can again hear people chanting “Nara-e-taqbir”.

The video had a caption in Urdu which, when translated, reads, “Fireworks display on Pakistan’s Independence Day in Nawakdal area of ​​Srinagar…” Based on this, we performed a subsequent search on Facebook using relevant keywords, and came across the viral video. It was shared on Facebook on August 14, 2020, i.e., on the Independence Day of Pakistan.

The caption on the video claimed the location to be Nawakadal, Srinagar. Using Google Earth Pro, we geolocated the video at Nawakadal Chowk, near Masjid Abu Bakr, Srinagar.

We also found tweets by Srinagar Police that claimed the video to be half-a-decade old and that it was was shot at Nawakadal chowk.

While it is difficult to determine exactly when the viral clip was shot, based on all the pieces of evidence it is safe to conclude that the clip is indeed from Srinagar but it was shot way before the September 4 Asia Cup match between India and Pakistan.

To sum it up, Sudarshan News and journalists affiliated with the channel shared old clips from Srinagar as visuals after the India v/s Pakistan match in the 2022 Asia Cup. Sudharshan News and its employees have a history of spreading misinformation that has been documented by Alt News. The readers can find the related reports here.

The post Old video of fireworks from Srinagar shared as celebrations of India’s Asia Cup loss to Pak appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Kalim Ahmed.

The post India’s Media at 75: Shackled by Profit, Politically Imprisoned appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by P. Sainath.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Kimberly Walters, Meera Raghavendra.

Google Maps tells me I am approaching my destination. But the neighbourhood appears a bit altered from what I remember of it. There’s no sign of the crumbling old house by the sea, whose coordinates I had saved on my phone the last time I visited Uppada. “Oh, that house? It is in the sea now – there!” says T. Maramma, casually pointing to a wave gushing in from the Bay of Bengal.

I vividly remember the old structure that had offered a stunning, yet sombre, backdrop as I photographed Maramma and her family members a few weeks before the nationwide lockdown of March 2020. Perched perilously on a narrow beach, it was the only portion remaining of what used to be a large home where Maramma’s joint family lived until the early years of this century.

“It was a building with eight rooms and three sheds [for animals]. Around a hundred people used to live here,” says Maramma, a small-time local politician in her 50s, who once ran a fish business. A cyclone that hit Uppada just before the 2004 tsunami took away a big chunk of the building, forcing the joint family to move into different houses. Maramma continued to use the old structure for a few more years before shifting to a house nearby.

Maramma and her family are not alone; nearly everyone in Uppada seems to have moved home at least once because of the encroaching sea. Their calculations on when to quit a house are based on lived experience and the local community’s instinctive reading of the seas. “We can sense that the house will go into the sea when the waves start to bulge forward. Then we move our utensils and everything to one side [and start searching for a temporary house to rent]. The old house usually goes [into the sea] within a month,” explains O. Siva. At 14, he has already had to leave one house to escape the sea.

T. Maramma and the remains of her large home in Uppada, in January 2020. Her joint family lived there until the early years of this century. Photo: Rahul M.

Maramma’s old family home by the sea in 2019. It was washed away in 2021, in the aftermath of Cyclone Gulab. Photo: Rahul M.

“The coastal erosion at Uppada, a few kilometres north of Kakinada town, is caused mainly by the growth of Hope Island – scientifically known as a ‘spit’ – a 21-kilometre-long linear sand body. That spit grew naturally northward from the mouth of Nilarevu, a distributary of Godavari River,” says Dr. Kakani Nageswara Rao, a retired professor of the department of geo-engineering, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. “The waves refracted by the spit are impinging on the Uppada coast, leading to its erosion. Probably initiated more than a century ago, this sand spit more or less attained its present form in the 1950s,” explains the professor, who has been closely studying the coastal forms and processes along the Andhra coast for several decades.

D. Prasad  grew up in the coastal village, where he remembers collecting shells on the beach to sell for pocket money. With the sand and beach disappearing, the shells and buyers also vanished, he says. Photo: Rahul M.

Remnants of an Uppada house that was destroyed by Cyclone Gulab. Photo: Rahul M.

Maramma’s old house was a building with eight rooms. “Around a hundred people used to live here,” she says. Photo: Rahul M.

The Uppada-Kakinada road became unsafe after it was damaged by Cyclone Jawad in December 2021. A smaller road next to it is being used now. Photo: Rahul M.

“Around 20-30 years ago, most of the villagers were Hindus. The village regularly celebrated festivities for the local goddess,” says Chinnabbai’s son, O. Durgayya. “Now most of the village is Christian.” A neighbourhood that, until the 1990s, used to take its weekly off on Thursdays [to pray to the goddess], now takes Sundays off to go to church. Villagers say there were a handful of Muslims in Uppada a few decades ago, but many of them moved out after the local mosque was submerged.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rahul M.

Soon after, Nitin A Gokhale, whose Twitter bio states that he is a national security analyst, tweeted that Russia “apparently agreed” to a six-hour window for allowing safe passage to all Indians in Kharkiv before an all-out assault.

“Indian government requested for a window, a safe window, during the constant negotiations. And the Russians apparently agreed for a six-hour window saying we will allow Indians to leave. Either they come through a train or other means of transportation…[sic],” Gokhale said while speaking to a media outlet.

A couple of hours after his claim, BJP Maharashtra amplified it while hailing Prime Minister Modi.

Quite expectedly, several journalists and ‘defence panellists’ tweeted the same while gushing about the BJP-led central government. Among them were Aditya Raj Kaul, Amish Devgn, Abhijit Majumdar, Pradeep Bhandari and Abhijit Iyer Mitra.

Media outlets also joined the bandwagon – Asianet News, ABP News, Amar Ujala, Patrika, Punjab Kesari and News18.

BJYM West Bengal member Priyanka Sharma, RSS mouthpiece Organiser Weekly, Postcard News founder Mahesh Vikram Hegde also claimed that Russia “stopped the war for six hours” at India’s behest.

MEA’s denies the claim

During a press conference held by the Ministry of External Affairs, it was clarified that India is in touch with the Russian government at various levels. However, Russia did not “stop the war for six hours” to facilitate the movement of Indian nationals. A spokesperson of the MEA said, “I don’t know what exact rule… I don’t know if I can add anything more. We got this specific input that this is a route that is available. These are the places that Indian citizens should go by this time. We conveyed that to our citizens and I am happy that many could make it… Extrapolating that to say that somebody is holding [pausing] a bombing or that this is something we are coordinating – that I think is absolutely inaccurate. I don’t think… If I could be more facetious then it will extrapolate itself. We would then order a resumption of bombing. I think that is getting a bit much ahead of ourselves.” This part of the MEA’s statement can be watched from 20:20 minutes in the broadcast below.

Diplomatic affairs editor at The Hindu, Suhasini Haider, also tweeted the ministry’s denial.

MEA denies reports that Russia “stopped the war for 6 hours” in order to facilitate Indians escaping Kharkiv, adds that they received inputs from Russia that prompted them to tell citizens to leave the city and choose certain routes, no “coordination” on Russian missile strikes.

— Suhasini Haidar (@suhasinih) March 3, 2022

Several journalists and media outlets thus gave oxygen to a completely false claim. The MEA’s clarification, however, did not prevent Nitin Gokhale, the one who gave birth to the misinformation, from pontificating about how he was ‘correct’.

This. MEA’s own advisory telling the students to get out of Kharkiv by a certain time is the reality. Rest is all smoke & blabber. This is good enough confirmation about the 6-hour window that I mentioned. Those who don’t agree can keep criticising, calling me names. Period. https://t.co/m3FVPNvK0i

— Nitin A. Gokhale (@nitingokhale) March 4, 2022

The post MEA denies Russia “stopped war for 6 hours” at India’s behest appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Pooja Chaudhuri.