Category Archives: India

‘Aphrodisiac’ of the ocean: how sea cucumbers became gold for organised crime

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Overfishing and smuggling of this crucial animal are affecting biodiversity and the livelihood of local fishers in Sri Lanka

It’s after sunset in Jaffna when Anthony Vigrado dives into the waters of Palk Bay, scanning the seafloor to collect what seems to be prized treasure. What he comes back with are sea cucumbers – long, leathery-skinned creatures that are increasingly valuable and the source of his income for the past 12 years.

But after a 10-hour search, his harvest is only a fraction of what it used to be, as the shores of northern Sri Lanka and southern India have become a prime spot for exploitation.

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Coronavirus live news: India’s cases surging as deadly second wave spreads, Iran imposes 10-day lockdown

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India records 145,384 new Covid-19 cases and 794 deaths, the highest number of fatalities in more than five months; lockdown ordered in Iran

The British Retail Consortium estimated that lockdowns in 2020 cost non-essential retail £22bn in lost sales. So with non-essential shops allowed to open again on Monday after nearly four months, retailers have concocted plans to make real-life shopping trips a pastime once again.

Lauren Cochrane looks at how different shops are adapting:

Related: Lockdowns have cost £22bn in lost sales, say British retailers

According to a tally compiled by AFP, at least 2,917,316 people have died from Covid-19 worldwide since the virus first emerged in December 2019.

The US is the worst-affected country with 561,074 deaths, followed by Brazil at 348,718, Mexico with 207,020, India with 168,436 and Britain with 127,040.

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New Zealand suspension of travel from India questioned amid fears of racist backlash

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Community leader says: ‘We don’t feel like a part of the “team of 5 million” when Indians are singled out like this’

Community leaders have questioned the New Zealand government’s decision to temporarily close the border to people travelling from India, and say they fear the move could prompt racism and stigma.

“The question of ‘Why India?’ must be asked, and a clear answer should be given,” said Sunil Kaushal, president of the Waitakere Indian Association. He asked why the ruling applied only to India, when other nations including the United States, Brazil, France and the UK had also experienced soaring infection rates, especially when compared per-capita.

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India carries out record 4.3m daily Covid jabs as cases continue to rise

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Country reports 115,000 fresh infections in 24 hours, the highest single-day total anywhere in world

India has carried out a record 4.3m daily vaccinations as its second wave of coronavirus continued its rapid spread, with 115,000 fresh infections in 24 hours – the highest single-day total anywhere in the world.

While the vaccination rate, which had been been hovering at between 2-3m a day, was a triumph it was not enough to quell the sense of despondency over the sharp increase in cases.

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Best served chilled: green tech keeps the cool on India’s dairy farms – photo essay

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Photographer Prashanth Vishwanathan captured a network of community dairies helping off-grid farmers in Maharashtra keep milk fresh as temperatures rise. All pictures are from Climate Visuals

As global temperatures climb, a lack of refrigeration makes a big impact on people trying to make a living from farming. Especially dairy farms.

There are more than 75 million smallholder dairy farmers in India. Most are in off-grid areas without refrigeration, or reliant on expensive and polluting diesel generators. This locks people out of national supply chains, and farmers have to spend hours transporting milk to markets, or sell at a lower price to middlemen. In Maharashtra, western India, a network of community dairies has been set up, using sustainable refrigeration technology, where people can bring their milk to be tested, chilled, and sold on.

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UK faces difficult path as it resumes courtship with India

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Boris Johnson is hoping to improve relations with rising superpower but many roadblocks stand in his way

George Osborne, the former British chancellor, tells the story of how, soon after Narendra Modi had been elected prime minister of India in 2014, he and the then foreign secretary, William Hague, alighted on a plan to fly immediately to India to make sure they were the first through the door to congratulate the new leader of the world’s largest democracy.

They decided to take the only British politician who seemed to know Modi well, Priti Patel, now home secretary, then recently appointed the government’s “India diaspora champion”. There was a pushback in the Whitehall system due to Modi’s record of stirring up inter-community violence in Gujarat – a Republican president in 2005 even banned him from travelling to the US – but the pair decided that the Anglo-Indian relationship was finally ready to shed the layers of imperial legacy. “If we are not going to engage with India, who are we going to engage with?” Osborne asked.

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Desperate Burmese refugees flee to Thailand and India to escape crisis

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Tensions rise on borders as thousands seek safe haven from military crackdown

Myanmar’s escalating crisis is spilling across its borders, as thousands of refugees seek safe haven in India and Thailand in the wake of the military coup and bloody crackdowns on anti-coup protesters.

Authorities in both countries have tried to block new arrivals, fearing that a steady flow may become a flood, if unrest spreading through Myanmar worsens. A top UN official warned last week that the country is “on the verge of spiralling into a failed state” if action is not taken soon to stem the bloodshed.

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Net gains: how India trawlers’ plastic catch is helping to rebuild roads

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The waste caught by fishing boats used to be thrown back into the sea but in Kerala it is now turned into black gold

For years, plastic caught by fishing communities on the Kollam coast in India’s southern state of Kerala was thrown back into the water, damaging aquatic ecosystems and killing fish.

But fishers are spearheading an innovative initiative to clean up the ocean – along with their daily hauls of fish, they pull in and collect the waste that gets enmeshed in their nets.

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‘Vaccine prince’: the Indian billionaire set to make Covid jabs for the UK

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Serum Institute boss Adar Poonawalla has rented a Mayfair mansion for £50,000 a week

The AstraZeneca vaccine has made Prof Sarah Gilbert – who led the Oxford team that created it – one of the UK’s most famous modern scientists and turned the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company into a household name.

But almost half of all the AstraZeneca shots, destined for the arms of hundreds of millions of people around the world, are being produced by a 40-year-old Indian billionaire with a penchant for private jets and Picassos.

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‘India’s soul at stake’: West Bengalis vote in divisive election

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Tensions between Muslims and Hindus high as Modi’s BJP shows it could win state for first time

In the sleepy, swampy surroundings of Nandigram, West Bengal, where mango and coconut trees grow in abundance, bicycles meander down dusty lanes and ponds fester with green algae, a vicious political showdown has been brewing.

West Bengal, one of India’s most populous states, will begin voting in its elections on Saturday to elect its state government. The significance of the poll, however, spreads far beyond the state’s borders. “The soul of not just Bengal but India is at stake,” said Malay Tewari, a Bengali social activist.

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Delhi reportedly halts AstraZeneca Covid vaccine exports as cases soar

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Temporary hold put on exports of vaccines by Serum Institute of India to meet demand at home

Delhi has reportedly put a temporary hold on all major exports of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India (SII) to meet demand at home as infections surge.

The move, first reported by Reuters, will affect supplies to the Gavi/WHO-backed Covax vaccine-sharing facility through which more than 180 countries are expected to get doses, one of the sources said.

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Australian minister signs extradition request for man who fled to India after 2018 beach killing

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The body of Toyah Cordingley, 24, was found in sand dunes north of Cairns in October 2018

Australia has taken the first step towards catching a runaway suspect believed to have murdered Toyah Cordingley on a Queensland beach before fleeing to India.

It has been two-and-a-half years since the body of the 24-year-old was found in the dunes of Wangetti beach, north of Cairns, following what police called “a personal and intimate attack”.

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‘The best cops’: Indian state recruits its first transgender police officers

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The 13 new constables have overcome society’s prejudice to win a place at Chhattisgarh’s training academy

The top police officer in Chhattisgarh state, Durgesh Awasthi, has nothing but praise for his new recruits. He suspects, he says, some of them will prove to be “the best cops” the force has ever enlisted.

“They are sensitive, have a high emotional quotient and know not just how the other half lives but what it’s like being on the other side of the law,” said Awasthi.

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Why home-produced Covid vaccine hasn’t helped India, Russia and China rollouts

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Challenge of reaching vast, far-flung populations is combined with a lack of public interest

The day India started coronavirus vaccinations, Amit Mehra’s name was on the priority list. But he never made an appointment. “I’m not inclined to get vaccinated just because it’s available,” says the 47-year-old Delhi hospital worker.

Two and a half thousand miles away, strolling past a popup inoculation centre near Red Square in Moscow, Magomed Zurabov is similarly reluctant. Suspicious that the pandemic was deliberately engineered, he has no intention of being vaccinated, he says. Instead, he is “taking the necessary precautions”: wearing a mask and using disinfectant.

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Why Britain is tilting to the Indo-Pacific region

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Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real

Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.

Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.

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What price a child’s life? India’s quest to make rare disease drugs affordable

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Parents whose only hope was finding foreign sponsorship or a clinical trial are now looking for homegrown breakthroughs

For three years, Vidya tried to find the cause of her son’s recurrent fevers and low cognitive development. When she found out, she was devastated.

Vineeth, 10, has an incurable illness – mucopolysaccharidosis type 2 – that affects his organs. Afflicting just one in a million, the enzyme-replacement medication that can help stop the illness getting any worse costs £100,000 a year, far beyond the reach of even a wealthier Indian parent.

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‘Wolf in watchdog’s clothing’: India’s new digital media laws spark fears for freedoms

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Everything from online news to social media and streaming platforms are captured by the regulations, branded ‘palpably illegal’ by opponents

Not long before he was elected as India’s prime minister in 2014, Narendra Modi spoke of his dreams of a “digital India”, where “access to information knows no barriers”.

But this week, unprecedented barriers on every form of digital content, from online news to social media and films and television on streaming platforms, came into force, making India’s digital realm one of the most heavily regulated of any major democracy.

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Caste aside: hide names to curb Dalit job bias in India, study says

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Concealing candidates’ surnames in the ultra-competitive civil service exam would help to overcome caste prejudice, report urges

The exam is considered to be the country’s toughest – about a million people sit it every year vying for only a thousand or so vacancies in India’s hallowed civil service. Now a report suggests that it would be much fairer if all the candidates’ surnames were kept secret throughout the application process, as about 90% of Indian surnames reveal a person’s caste.

Candidates’ names are currently concealed, along with their religion, when they sit the written tests. But after the exam, the names of those who qualify for the final interview stage are used. And this, according to the report, scuppers the chances of Dalits, the lowest Hindu caste once called “untouchables”, because of the innate bias of interviewers.

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Indian theatre festival forced to close after Hindu vigilantes object to satirical plays

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Bajrang Dal hardliners in Madhya Pradesh threaten violence over plays ‘disrespectful to the Indian flag’

Rightwing Hindu vigilante groups in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have forced the cancellation of an annual theatre festival, after threatening violence over satirical plays they accused of being “anti-national”.

The annual theatre festival organised by the Indian People’s Theatre Association in the small town of Chhatarpur became the object of abuse and violent threats by Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu group linked with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

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Australia urged to back plan to let poor countries make cheap copies of Covid vaccines

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Exclusive: union, health and aid groups plead with the Morrison government to support a WTO proposal to suspend vaccine patents during the pandemic

International aid groups, health organisations and unions are pleading with the Morrison government to support a World Trade Organization proposal designed to allow developing countries to make and sell cheap copies of patented vaccines, to achieve a quicker end to the global pandemic.

The WTO proposal would suspend Covid vaccine patents for successful jab formulas invented by pharmaceutical giants for the duration of the pandemic so poorer countries could acquire more affordable doses faster.

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