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Category: India

  • India – not satisfied with its ranking – planning to develop own democracy index

    The New Indian Express of 22 March 2024 reports (based on Al Jazeera) that Prime Minister Narendra Modi government has approached a major Indian think tank to develop its own democracy ratings index that could help it counter recent downgrades in rankings issued by international groups that New Delhi fears could affect the country’s credit rating. The Observer Research Foundation (ORF), which works closely with the Indian government on multiple initiatives, is preparing the ratings framework,

    On June 2023, The Guardian reported that the Indian government has been secretly working to keep its reputation as the “world’s largest democracy” alive after being called out by researchers for serious democratic backsliding under the nationalist rule of the Narendra Modi government, according to internal reports seen by The Guardian.

    Despite publicly dismissing several global rankings that suggest the country is on a dangerous downward trajectory, officials from government ministries have been quietly assigned to monitor India’s performance, minutes from meetings show, The Guardian said. Al Jazeera revealed that the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), which works closely with the Indian government on multiple initiatives, is preparing the ratings framework. The new rankings system could be released soon, an official was quoted as saying.

    Global human rights NGO Amnesty International has continued to highlight the erosion of civil rights and religious freedom under the Narendra Modi regime.

    Amnesty in its India 2022 report noted that arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions, unlawful attacks and killings, internet shutdowns and intimidation using digital technologies, including unlawful surveillance as major concerns faced by minority groups, human rights defenders, dissenters and critics of the Union government. [see also: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/03/india-crackdown-on-opposition-reaches-a-crisis-point-ahead-of-national-elections/]

    Similarly, Human Rights Watch has also continued to highlight the crackdown on civil society and media under the Modi government citing persecution of activists, journalists, protesters and critics on fabricated counterterrorism and hate speech laws. The vilification of Muslims and other minorities by some BJP leaders and police inaction against government supporters who commit violence are also among HRW’s concerns in India.

    Notably, the ‘Democracy Index’, prepared by The Economist Group’s Economist Intelligence Unit, had downgraded India to a “flawed democracy” in its 2022 report due to the serious backsliding of democratic freedom under the Modi government.

    Similarly, the US-based non-profit organization Freedom House had lowered India’s standing from a free democracy to a “partly free” democracy in its global freedom and internet freedom ratings, while V-Dem Institute, a Sweden-based independent research institute, had classified India as an “electoral autocracy”, as part of its 2022 Democracy report. for more on ranking, see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/ranking/

    https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2024/Mar/22/centre-planning-its-own-democracy-index-amid-global-rankings-downgrade

  • Haroon Siddiqui’s My Name is NOT Harry

    Haroon Siddiqui’s 2023 memoir, My Name is Not Harry, is a dazzling journey through Indian Sufism, pre-partition Muslim-Hindu harmony, the horrors of partition, a leap across the ocean to the middle of nowhere (sorry, Brandon Manitoba), finally finding his home at the Toronto Star, from whence, back to central Asia (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India during the tumultuous 1979+), hobnobbing with media and political stars, stopping for heart surgery, all the time building and defending his new multicultural faith, adding his own distinct, Muslim flavour to what it means to be a Canadian. A whirlwind tour of the 20th-21st centuries, as if by a latter day Muslim Christopher Columbus, one meant to try to undo the five centuries of imperialist horror that Columbus unleashed.

    He relishes slaying the dragons of bigotry he encounters, starting with

    *Winston Churchill, the racist. He who had labelled Indians ‘a barbarous people’, ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion’, ‘the beastliest people in the world next to Germans’. Who exacerbated the 1943 Bengal famine that had killed millions by insisting that Indian rice exports for the allied war effort not be interrupted. He who had called Gandhi ‘a naked fakir’ whom he wanted ‘bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and then trampled by an enormous elephant with a new viceroy seated on its back.’

    *Even the Toronto Star‘s iconic Gordon Sinclair, who won fame in the 1930s with his dispatches form India – ‘the pagan peninsula’ with its ‘wild and woolly Hindus’, Brahmins, the supreme high hooper-doopers of this impossible land’, ‘scrawny, underfed untouchables’, impossible-looking beggars’ and ‘yowling idiots’. In tune with those times, [the Star] still going ga-ga over Sinclair well into my own time.

    *On Iran, the only Muslim ‘experts’ and commentators on TV and in print were anti-revolution or anti-Khomeini, authenticating the worst of western prejudices. Anything different, such as mine, must have been a welcome novelty, brought to them by Canada’s largest newspaper.

    *On 9//11, Rushdie see below.

    One of those should-haves of his life as dragonslayer was at the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa, where he hosted Solicitor General Robert Kaplan. When they were walking to dinner, Kaplan started waxing eloquently about his love for India and yoga but his dislike of Muslims! He assumed that being from India I could only be a Hindu. What a testament to power the Zionist Jewish mindset had/has over even a proud Muslim like Siddiqui. But bravo, Harry (sorry, Haroon) for owning up. That’s the great thing about him. He lives his multiculturalism, which means meeting the other on his/her grounds, looking for the middle ground, not stoking enmity.

    Iranian Ayatollahs, Afghan communists

    He shines on the thorniest issue, one of which confronted him soon after arriving at the Star, when he was sent off to Iran in 1979. Speaking Urdu (close to Persian) and fully versed in Sunni and Shia Islam, he was able to make sense of the chaos, making his way to Qom to visit Ayatollah Madari, Khomeini’s rival, who lived just down the maze of alleys from Khomeini, who was already commanding the revolution from his modest home there, rather than Tehran.

    He was told it was impossible to meet with Madari, even for a Canadian Muslim, but when he revealed that he’d just come from Tabriz, where Madari’s People’s Republican Party followers had risen up against Khomeini, rejecting the Islamic state constitution, Madari relented. Madari wanted a secular state and ‘the sovereignty of the people’ not a person. He answered every question patiently for nearly two hours. That was his only interview in the wake of the revolt. It would be his last. He was placed under house arrest until his death six years later.

    He also met with Morteza Pasandideh, 82, Khomeini’s older brother, who was quite jovial. Siddiqui admired them all for their stress-free lives, their inner peace all, living productive lives into their 80s or 90s. Qom is famous for sohan halwa (sweet sweet) made with pistachios, almonds and butter. Back in Toronto, he asked John Ralston Saul to taste and guess which enemy country it was from. Whatever it is, it could only have been made by a great civilization.

    He toured the now-occupied US embassy and chatted amiably (sympathetically?) with the students about how they had pulled off the siege, overpowering the bulky Marines. They said their resolve got strengthened after seeing a large-size picture of Khomeini on a dartboard and several crude cartoons of Khomeini from American and British newspapers in the embassy. At Christmas they made cookies for their captives. An American priest who had come to perform the Christmas Mass said: We should be grateful that we are in a Muslim country and there are not drunk guards. Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor told him: There are no anti-Canadian feelings here. No one has indicated any inclination to leave Tehran. There’s no panic. When he met Taylor later, he said: Mr Taylor, you’re a great liar. Taylor: That’s what I got paid for.

    After an exhausting year in Tehran, the Soviets invaded (came to the assistance of) secular revolutionary Kabul and he was ordered to get there asap. But first he flew to the Iranian border and crossed into Afghanistan to meet a local tribal chieftain, who told him, ‘We’ll kick the bastards out.’ How to get there legitimately? Pakistan? Better India, which had good relations with the communists in Moscow and Kabul, so off to New Delhi and the Afghan embassy. Indira Gandhi never condemned the Soviet invasion. (How wise in retrospect.) In Kabul he was told not to go anywhere and only communicate through an official guide. Ha, ha! He snuck out the back door of his hotel, spoke to a soldier in Urdu, said ‘Canada’ and quickly found a local driver.

    He credits Canada’s reputation for peaceful relations, a well-known eye clinic in Kabul. Off to (Shia) Herat where he heard Long live Islam, Long live Iran! He bought a Russian fur cap but was told never to wear it in public or he might be shot. He left via Pushtunistan to Jalalabad, Pakistan, where he met the legendary 91-year-old frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who like the Siddiquis had protested the division of India. He was ailing but contemptuous of Soviet attempts to appease religious Afghans. Everything in Afghanistan is done in the name of religion. But this is a political religion, not the religion of Islam and Allah and Muhammad. Communism has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with the stomach. The Russians knew this and tried to convince the Afghans that they could keep their religion, but it was too little, too late. The Russians refused to try to treat their Gandhi, fearing if he died, they would be accused of killing him.

    He pressed on to the Khyber Pass, the route for a stream of invaders – Cyrus, Darius, Genghis Khan, Alexander, the Mughals. Tribal chief Mohammed Gul told him: if the Iranians can knock off the Shah and the Americans, we certainly can kick out the Russians. He saw that resistance was beginning to jell within weeks of the Soviet occupation. It took a decade for the Soviets to depart, the US and allies, including Canada, taking double the time to conclude that Afghans have both the courage and patience to bleed any occupier dry.

    This being the days before internet, getting copy out required ingenuity. Siddiqui would go to the airport on the days Indian Airlines came to Kabul, meet the crew and cajole/tip them into taking copy and dropping it off at the Reuters news agency in Delhi for forwarding to Toronto. He also went on the day Pakistan International Airlines came just in case. Later he was told everything came, sometimes twice. He met Brzezinski in Peshawar (!) but he wouldn’t give Siddiqui the time of day.

    Following the Iraq-Iran war, he was disgusted that western media ignored the poison gas supplied to Iraq by American, German, French, Dutch, Swiss and Belgian companies. On the Iranian front line he hid from Iraqi snipers and marveled at how soldiers dying from gassing were rushed from the front to Tehran hospitals. He was appalled by Khomeini’s hitman, a sadistic prosecutor Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, the hanging judge. Later in Paris, he met Bani Sadr, the first president, who had been impeached and fled the country disguised as a woman in a chador, in an Iran Air Force jet piloted by a sympathizer. He laments that US hostility prompted Khomeini to restart the nuclear program begun under the Shah, after ending it as unIslamic.

    Siddiqui’s credo

    I must admit, I’ve become jaded about multiculturalism. Toronto is now mostly first or second generation immigrants. Our culture feels shallow and American now. I find the turban-wearing Uber electric scooters grazing me unawares on bike paths frightening, and pointless, as they ferry onion rings to lazy people with too much money. I bemoan the lack of interest in Canadian history, our struggle to define an identity that’s not American. Most immigrants really would prefer big, rich, warm America to Canada and would have no problem if the US decided to invade. What has happened to Canadian culture?

    But then I’ve become equally jaded about our heroic history. We are all immigrants, in the case of the paleface, mostly riff-raff, having decimated our poor brown natives. The post-WWII immigrants from brown countries like Siddiqui’s India/ Pakistan are mostly university-educated, the elites of their countries, so they really are a step up from my Irish-English-Swedish peasant ancestors.

    But then, I find that equally disturbing. We stole the land from the real Canadians. Now we steal the intellectual wealth from poor countries. Sure we’re richer; the imperialist ‘centre’ is always richer. Our Canadianism was and is still a fraud. So, white flag, hello multiculturalism, for better or worse. But one that should give first place to our natives as the real owners, spiritually, of the land. And no more stealing, whether it be minds from ‘over there’, or land here or ‘over there’. That means Israel, our ‘best friend’, according to PM Harper in 2013 and PM Trudeau in 2015.

    Siddiqui is unapologetically for mass immigration and has no time for the ecological problems that mass migration entails. He boasts having visited India 50 times in 40 years, not to mention his other peregrinations. That grates. Yes, brown/black is just as good as white, but what’s holding us together anymore? I don’t know, but I’m happy for Siddiqui, who at least has helped Canada transform from a country of bigotry and chauvinism to … a nice, tame, bland cosmopolis.

    His journey through the swinging ’60s into the terrible ’20s is an upbeat panorama of not only Canada at its peak of popularity and feel-goodness, but, reading between the lines, also the decline of Canada, its loss of feel-good innocence transformation into an unapologetic toady of US empire. He took pride in being Canadian when Ambassador Taylor helped US hostages escape Tehran in 1980, when Chretien refused to go along with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but it’s been downhill since then, with Harper’s disastrous commitment of Canadian troops to Afghanistan, his open Islamo- and Russophobia, his worship of Israel. While Trudeau has welcomed Syrian refugees (and now Afghans, fall out from Harper’s war), he did not fulfill his pledge to renew relations with Iran, despite the Iranian exile community’s pleas. His Russophobia is pathetic. Multiculturalism is looking mighty threadbare.

    Yes, following Trudeau senior, Siddiqui’s credo is that all cultural communities have ‘the right to preserve and develop their own cultures within Canadian society’, which he notes is the ethos of India, best articulated by Indian novelist Shivaram Karanth: There’s no such thing as Indian culture. Indian culture is so varied as to be called cultures. But what has happened to India’s multiculturalism under arch-Hindu nationalist Modi?


    Star Foreign Editor Jimmy Atkins (R) with Star chair John Honderich, South African President Nelson Mandela & first lady Graca Machel, Star editorial board editor Haroon Siddiqui.

    Free trade, Sikhs, Laïcité

    Siddiqui gets along with everyone, doesn’t drink or smoke (anymore), a model Muslim in the House of War.1 He traces his ancestors to the first caliph Abu-bakr Siddiq, and second caliph Umar al-Khattab al-Faruq. A worthy disciple of the Prophet Muhammad, the multiculturalist par excellence.2 The fearsome Bee (Star editor-in-chief Beland Honderich) famously got along with Haroon. Siddiqui started from scratch in Brandon (no halal, no yogurt in 1968), then the Star, rising quickly through the ranks to foreign correspondent, front page editor, editorial page editor, and finally columnist, all the time the only Muslim in mainstream Canadian media.

    He and the Star were against Mulroney’s ‘free’ trade pact with the yankee devil, realizing it was only good for fat cats. He has acted as a public spokesman explaining the problems of all immigrants and BIPOC,3 an acronym he promotes. He highlights the racism which feeds on the changing demographics from white to nonwhite, recountiing a Tanzanian immigrant pushed onto Toronto’s subway tracks, crippling him, and the existence of a KKK chapter operating openly in Toronto.

    The case of Sikhs is thorny. Sikh Canadians were mostly quietist, but when Sikh separatists were ejected from the Golden Temple by Indira Gandhi in 1984, she was assassinated, and Sikh separatists blew up an Indian Airlines plane full of Hindu Canadians in 1985. This still ranks as Canada’s worst such tragedy, but was downplayed by the Canadian government with the investigation bungled by the RCMP, as anti-Sikh/ Hindu racism grew. And it continues, the latest being a hit job on a (Sikh separatist) Canadian, openly, by India’s militant Hindu nationalist government. Multiculturalism is easily abused and hard to defend.

    To their credit, the Sikhs in Canada have bounced back, entering politics (Justin Trudeau boasted more Sikhs in his cabinet than Modi), joining the RCMP, police, army, working hard, being good citizens. The bad apples didn’t spoil the whole barrel, though Sikhs have no use for India, and they really did capture the lackluster leadership convention of the NDP out of nowhere in 2017. The unlikely NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has been earnest, if not inspiring.

    How does this multiculturalism pan out? Quebec separatists don’t like immigrants much, as they are not interested in living in a parochial, xenophobic province, and have enough trouble learning passable English, let alone Quebecois. They voted en masse against independence, and the pesky Muslim women want to wear hijab or worse, niqab. Vive la laïcité. Quebec has chosen to copy France’s punitive banning hijab and other restrictions. Still, English and French get along.

    Tribalism, French vs English, Sikhs vs Hindus, Buddhists remains strong. That contrasts with Muslims, who quickly drop their ethnic identity for universal Islam and Canadianism (84% cite being Muslim and 81% cite being Canadian as their primary identity),4 as I’ve noticed at Muslim conferences, where a truly united nations reigns. That brings us to Jewish Canadians vs Muslim Canadians, the most tragic stand-off of the past century. Siddiqui doesn’t go to this forbidding territory. On the contrary, (wisely) he has spoken to Bnai Brith and Canadian Jewish Congress gatherings and kept a low profile as a Muslim Canadian. As the sole prominent Muslim journalist here, he was operating in enemy territory, as his encounter with Kaplan confirmed.

    Enlightening Canadians on things Islamic

    More important, he wrote engagingly about Muslims in Toronto, which hosts the largest Iranian emigre community after the US, mostly in ‘Tehronto’, a mix of pro- and anti-Khomeini, but able to live peacefully, all agreeing that the Canadian government nonrecognition of Iran and boycott is bad politics for everyone. His appreciation for this ‘great civilization’ contrasts with the negative press that Iran uniformly gets here.

    Siddiqui realized quickly that Canadian media coverage and commentary ‘smelled of American propaganda’ and the US and allies were inflicting too many horrors on Muslims and Muslims lands. In 1988, the US warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner killing 290, prompting Bush I to boast: I will never apologize for the US. I don’t care what the facts are. Instead, Washington awarded medals to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. Did any other mainstream journalist note this then or now? He refused to blacken Islam after 9/11. Now a columnist he wrote his third post-9/11 column ‘It’s the US foreign policy, stupid,’ causing a storm of letters to the editor, a majority ‘thank you for saying it’.

    Ismailis came in 1972, expelled by Idi Amin of Uganda, joined later by Ismailis from Kenya and Tanzania. Self-reliant, educated, entrepreneurial, they inspired the Aga Khan to build a museum of Islamic culture in Toronto in 2014, the only such museum in the West. Ironically it was officially opened by arch-Islamophobe PM Harper. We celebrate today not only the harmonious meeting of green gardens and glass galleries. We rejoice above all in the special spirit which fills this place and gives it its soul. But then, to Islamophobe Harper, Ismailis are Islam-lite, not considered real Muslims by most.

    There are two chapters dealing with the ummah: Cultural Warfare on Muslims, and Harper and Muslims (In his ugliness, he was well ahead of Trump – and more effective). Some particularly painful episodes he covered:

    *Harper invited (till then terrorist) Modi to Canada in 2014 when first elected, accompanying him to Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver,

    *He established an office of religious freedom, which he unveiled at a Mississauga Coptic church. He announced the position of a new ambassador of religious freedom at the Ahmadiyya mosque in Vaughan, defending Christian and other minorities in Muslim nations, doing nothing for Uighurs, Rohingyas, Shia in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

    I could go on – I haven’t even got to the Rushdie circus – but I urge all Muslim Canadians, no, all Canadians, to read for yourselves. Siddiqui provides an excellent survey of all the post-9/11 Islamophobic nonsense, especially in Euroland.

    The West has discredited democracy by allowing anti-Islam and anti-Muslim discourse to be one of our last acceptable forms of racism and bigotry. It’s in this milieu that Rushdie and the Rushdie affair have thrived. Has Rushdie been exploiting western prejudices or has the West been using him as a shield for its own prejudices? Or is this a case of mutual convenience?

    Having rid ourselves of Harper, how quickly we forget the pain when it stops. As it has under Trudeau Jr. For all his silliness and US-Israel fawning, Justin Trudeau is true to his father’s legacy, and undid much of Harper’s bigotry, especially relating to Muslims.

    We should be wary of letting the unrepentant Conservatives take back Parliament Hill. However, I don’t think it’s possible to relaunch the Harper take-no-hostages Crusade. 9/11 (whoever did it) is what motivated me and many more to become a Muslim, and October 7 is now rapidly expanding the Muslim ummah, especially in the West, the heart of the beast. The trouble for the Harpers is that the more Islam and Muslims are reviled, the more Muslims (re)turn to their religion. But then that’s the way of imperialism, creating its enemies, stoking them, as Israel did with Hamas, thinking they can then pick off the ‘terrorists’, ‘mow the grass’.

    Siddiqui draws from his experience surviving partition in India, adhering to Shaykh Madani’s view that ‘there is too much diversity within Islam for democracy to work, that an Islamic state would inevitably be authoritarian.’ Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran are the leading examples. The best protection for peoples of faith was a democratic state that stayed neutral between faiths and advanced mutual respect.5

    The Harpers accuse Muslims of being unwilling to integrate. Canada, Britain and the US are shining examples of the opposite.

    *In the 2021 federal election 12 Muslims won seats. Two hold senior Cabinet portfolios: Omar Alghabra and Ahmed Hussen.

    *In Britain, in 2019, 19 were elected. Sadiq Khan has been mayor of London since 2016.

    *Humza Yousaf became first minister in Scotland in 2023, the first Muslim to lead a western nation. When Khan was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council at Bukhingham Palace in 2009, it was discovered there was no Quran in the palace, so he brought his own and left it as a present to the Queen.

    *In the US 57 Muslims were elected in 2020. Keith Ellison, the first member of the House was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by President Jefferson, who had bought an English translation out of the ‘desire to understand Islam on its own terms.’

    *Arab and Muslim entertainers, stand-up comedians, writers, actors, Little Mosque on the Prairie …

    *To welcome Syrian refugees arriving in Canada, Ottawa French public schools joined to sing Talaʽ al-Badru ʽAlaynā,6 which went viral on YouTube.

    Siddiqui’s openmindedness and lack of prejudice are his not-so-secret weapon, able to find common humanity where western propaganda serves up bile. To no small degree, thanks to Haroon and other new (brown) Canadians, Marshall McLuhan’s global village is a reality at home, the most successful heterogeneous experiment in human history.

    ENDNOTES

    The post Haroon Siddiqui’s My Name is NOT Harry first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Dar al-harb vs Dar al-Salam, House of Peace, referring to the Muslim world.
    2    Quran16:13 And all the [beauty of] many hues-which He has created for you on earth: in this, behold, there is a message for people who [are willing to] take it to heart.
    3    Black, indigenous, people of colour.
    4    Half of Muslim Canadians consider their ethnic identity as very important. Statistics Canada, ‘The Canadian Census: A rich portrait of the country’s religious and ethnocultural diversity,’ 2022.
    5    Siddiqui, My name is not Harry: A memoir, 392.
    6    (طلع البدر) nasheed that the Ansar sang for the Islamic prophet Muhammad upon his arrival at Medina from the (non)battle of Tabuk.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Modi Government Cracks Down on Opposition Before Indian Election

    As India’s right-wing government cracks down on opposition ahead of next month’s general elections, Amnesty International on Friday urged authorities to “stop weaponizing the criminal justice system to intimidate and harass” political candidates, activists, and others. Protests broke out in the capital New Delhi and other Indian cities after police on Thursday arrested Delhi Chief Minister Arvind…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pakistan Threatens To Close Vital Afghan Trade Corridor With India

    Many parts of Ukraine were experiencing blackouts after a massive wave of Russian strikes on March 22 targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, killing at least four people, hitting the country’s largest dam, and temporarily severing a power line at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant.

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the assault involved 150 drones and missiles and appealed again to Ukraine’s allies to speed up deliveries of critically needed ammunition and weapons systems.

    As the full-scale invasion neared the 25-month mark, Zelenskiy aide Mykhailo Podolyak denied recent reports that the United States had demanded that its ally Kyiv stop any attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure as “fictitious information.”

    “After two years of full-scale war, no one will dictate to Ukraine the conditions for conducting this war,” Podolyak told the Dozhd TV channel. “Within the framework of international law, Ukraine can ‘degrease’ Russian instruments of war. Fuel is the main tool of warfare. Ukraine will destroy the [Russian] fuel infrastructure.”

    The Financial Times quoted anonymous sources as saying that Washington had given “repeated warnings” to Ukraine’s state security service and its military intelligence agency to stop attacking Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure. It said officials cited such attacks’ effect on global oil prices and the risk of retaliation.

    The southern Zaporizhzhya region bore the brunt of the Russian assault that hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure particularly hard on March 22, with at least three people killed, including a man and his 8-year-old daughter. There were at least 20 dead and injured, in all.

    Ukraine’s state hydropower company, Ukrhydroenerho, said the DniproHES hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper in Zaporizhzhya was hit by two Russian missiles that damaged HPP-2, one of the plant’s two power stations, although there was no immediate risk of a breach.

    “There is currently a fire at the dam. Emergency services are working at the site, eliminating the consequences of numerous air strikes,” Ukrhydroenerho said in a statement, adding that the situation at the dam “is under control.”

    However, Ihor Syrota, the director of national grid operator Ukrenerho, told RFE/RL that currently it was not known if power station HPP-2 could be repaired.

    Transport across the dam has been suspended after a missile struck a trolleybus, killing the 62-year-old driver. The vehicle was not carrying any passengers.

    “This night, Russia launched over 60 ‘Shahed’ drones and nearly 90 missiles of various types at Ukraine,” Zelenskiy wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

    “The world sees the Russian terrorists’ targets as clearly as possible: power plants and energy supply lines, a hydroelectric dam, ordinary residential buildings, and even a trolleybus,” Zelenskiy wrote.

    Devastation In Zaporizhzhya Following Russian Missile Attack
    Photo Gallery:

    Devastation In Zaporizhzhya Following Russian Missile Attack

    Ukrainian rescuers were combing the wreckage of homes in Zaporizhzhya following a deadly Russian missile strike on March 22.

    Ukraine’s power generating company Enerhoatom later said it has repaired a power line at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, Europe’s largest.

    “Currently, the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhya NPP is connected to the unified energy system of Ukraine by two power transmission lines, thanks to which the plant’s own needs are fulfilled,” the state’s nuclear-energy operator wrote on Telegram.

    Besides Zaporizhzhya, strikes were also reported in the Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsya, Khmelnytskiy, Kryviy Rih, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava, Odesa, and Lviv regions.

    Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has been left completely without electricity by intense Russian strikes that also caused water shortages.

    “The occupiers carried out more than 15 strikes on energy facilities. The city is virtually completely without light,” Oleh Synyehubov, the head of Kharkiv regional military administration, wrote on Telegram.

    In the Odesa region, more than 50,000 households have been left without electricity, regional officials reported. Odesa, Ukraine’s largest Black Sea port, has been frequently attacked by Russia in recent months.

    In the Khmelnitskiy region, the local administration reported that one person had been killed and several wounded during the Russian strikes, without giving details.

    Scenes Of Destruction After Russian Strike Hits Ukrainian Residential Area
    Photo Gallery:

    Scenes Of Destruction After Russian Strike Hits Ukrainian Residential Area

    Local authorities reported one person had been killed and several wounded during Russian strikes on a residential area in Khmelnitskiy in central Ukraine. RFE/RL journalists were on the scene and captured the aftermath.

    Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko called it “the largest attack on the Ukrainian energy industry in recent times.”

    Despite the widespread damage, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the situation remained under control, and there was no need to switch off electricity throughout the country.

    “There are problems with the electricity supply in some areas, but in general, the situation in the energy sector is under control, there is no need for blackouts throughout the country,” Shmyhal wrote on Telegram.

    Ukrenerho also said that it was receiving emergency assistance from its European Union neighbors Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. Ukraine linked its power grid with that of the EU in March 2022, shortly after the start of Russia’s invasion.

    Ukraine’s air force said its air defenses downed 92 of 151 missiles and drones fired at Ukraine by Russia in the overnight attack.

    “Russian missiles have no delays, unlike aid packages for Ukraine. ‘Shahed’ drones have no indecision, unlike some politicians. It is critical to understand the cost of delays and postponed decisions,” Zelenskiy wrote, appealing to the West to do more for his country.

    “Our partners know exactly what is needed. They can definitely support us. These are necessary decisions. Life must be protected from these savages from Moscow.”

    Zelenskiy’s message came as EU leaders were wrapping up a summit in Brussels where they discussed ways to speed up ammunition and weapons deliveries for the embattled Ukrainian forces struggling to stave off an increasingly intense assault by more numerous and better-equipped Russian troops.

    A critical $60 billion military aid package from the United States, Ukraine’s main backer, remains stuck in the House of Representatives due to Republican opposition, prompting Kyiv to rely more on aid from its European allies.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • India’s Modi is having opposition politicians ARRESTED in a ‘witch hunt’ ahead of April elections

    A top Indian opposition politician, Arvind Kejriwal, was remanded in custody on Friday 22 March following his overnight arrest. Supporters say the case shows prime minister Narendra Modi trying to sideline challengers before next month’s election.

    Modi: locking up his opposition?

    Kejriwal, chief minister of the capital Delhi and a key leader in an opposition alliance formed to compete against Modi in the polls, was detained late on Thursday 21 March in connection with a long-running corruption probe.

    He is among several leaders of the bloc under criminal investigation and one of his colleagues described his arrest as a “political conspiracy” orchestrated by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    Kejriwal was brought before a New Delhi court on 22 March which ruled he should stay remanded in the custody of the Enforcement Directorate, India’s main financial crimes investigation agency, until at least 28 March:

    “My life is dedicated to the country, whether I am inside or outside,” Kejriwal told reporters while being led into the courtroom before the hearing began.

    Shadan Farasat, a member of Kejriwal’s legal team, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that colleagues were considering their next course of action after the ruling.

    Other political parties in India have issued statements:

    Protests

    Kejriwal’s centre-left Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man Party, AAP), maintains that Kejriwal has not resigned his office as chief minister despite his arrest. Delhi education minister Atishi Marlena Singh said:

    We made it clear from the beginning that if needed, Arvind Kejriwal will run the government from jail.

    Hundreds of supporters from Kejriwal’s AAP took to the streets to condemn the leader’s arrest. Police broke up one crowd of protesters who attempted to block a busy traffic intersection. Several demonstrators were detained, including Singh and health minister Saurabh Bhardwaj:

    Rallies in support of Kejriwal were held in numerous other big cities around India.

    Kejriwal’s government was accused of corruption when it implemented a policy to liberalise the sale of liquor in 2021 and give up a lucrative government stake in the sector. The policy was withdrawn the following year. However, the resulting probe into the alleged corrupt allocation of licences has since seen the jailing of two top Kejriwal allies.

    Kejriwal has been chief minister for nearly a decade. He first came to office as a staunch anti-corruption crusader. He had resisted multiple summons from the Enforcement Directorate to be interrogated as part of the probe.

    The ‘decay of democracy’

    Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin, a fellow member of the opposition bloc, said Kejriwal’s arrest “smacks of a desperate witch-hunt”:

    Not a single BJP leader faces scrutiny or arrest, laying bare their abuse of power and the decay of democracy.

    But Rajeev Chandrashekhar, a minister in Modi’s government, said the opposition’s reaction to Kejriwal’s arrest had been “extremely mystifying”:

    Arvind Kejriwal should understand… that the law and the consequences of violating the law don’t stop just because you are a political leader.

    Modi’s political opponents and international rights groups have long sounded the alarm on India’s shrinking democratic space. US think-tank Freedom House said this year that the BJP had “increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents”.

    Rahul Gandhi, the most prominent member of the opposition Congress party and scion of a dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades, was convicted of criminal libel last year after a complaint by a member of Modi’s party.

    His two-year prison sentence saw him disqualified from parliament for a time until the verdict was suspended by a higher court, but raised further concerns over democratic norms in the world’s most populous country.

    Modi: ‘undermining and sabotaging’

    Kejriwal and Gandhi are both members of an opposition alliance composed of more than two dozen parties that is jointly contesting India’s national election, which is running from April to June.

    A delegation from the bloc met with India’s election commission on 22 March to condemn what they said were deliberate efforts to undermine the opposition’s campaign. Congress politician Abhishek Manu Singhvi said:

    It is a larger issue of impairing, undermining and sabotaging the basic structure of the Indian constitution.

    But even without the criminal investigations targeting its most prominent leaders, few expect the bloc to make inroads against Modi, who remains popular a decade after first taking office.

    Many analysts see Modi’s reelection as a foregone conclusion, partly due to the resonance of his assertive Hindu-nationalist politics with members of the country’s majority faith.

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    Featured image via DB Live – YouTube

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Pure Veg U-Turn: The Zomato Debacle That Divided the World’s Largest Vegetarian Minority

    zomato pure veg
    8 Mins Read

    This week, Indian food delivery service Zomato launched a Pure Veg Mode in its app for people to order from 100% vegetarian restaurants – but it has sparked intense debate about casteism and religious discrimination after announcing a separate Pure Veg Fleet of drivers wearing green uniforms.

    In 2019, Zomato took a stand. Responding to a Hindu man who refused a takeaway because the food delivery app’s driver happened to be Muslim, it tweeted: “Food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion.”

    Its founder Deepinder Goyal further explained that stance in a separate tweet. “We are proud of the idea of India – and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values,” he said.

    But this week, Zomato was on the receiving end of pushback from the same customers who praised it five years ago. Goyal had announced a new Pure Veg Mode on the delivery service’s app in an attempt to appeal to the millions of vegetarian Indians who don’t eat from restaurants that also serve meat or eggs.

    The real bit of controversy, though, stemmed from the announcement that orders made through this new mode would be delivered by a Pure Veg Fleet, which involved drivers wearing green uniforms – instead of the usual red – to signal that they are only delivering from exclusively vegetarian restaurants and tell them apart from drivers who were delivering food from all restaurants. (In India, vegetarian products are labelled with a green dot, while non-vegetarian foods – including anything containing eggs – are marked with a red one).

    Less than 24 hours later after the first announcement, Zomato backtracked on the green uniforms after facing intense backlash from consumers online. Here’s what happened, and why.

    Why Zomato rolled out its Pure Veg Mode

    On Tuesday, Goyal announced on Twitter/X that given the prevalence of vegetarianism in India – while estimates vary, it has the higher number of vegetarians in absolute numbers globally – one of the most important pieces of feedback Zomato had received was that these customers are “very particular” about how their food is cooked and handled.

    Zomato was launching the Pure Veg Mode and Fleet to “solve for their dietary preferences”, he said. “Pure Veg Mode will consist of a curation of restaurants that serve only pure vegetarian food, and will exclude all restaurants which serve any non-veg food item,” he explained. “Our dedicated Pure Veg Fleet will only serve orders from these pure veg restaurants. This means that a non-veg meal, or even a veg meal served by a non-veg restaurant will never go inside the green delivery box meant for our Pure Veg Fleet.”

    He went on to explain that the company will introduce a phased rollout in the next few weeks, and plans to add more specialised fleets – such as cake deliveries with hydraulic balancers to prevent cakes from getting smudged – in the future. “We remain committed to listening to our customers, and serving our community in the best possible way,” he said.

    Perhaps Goyal had anticipated the pushback that was to come his way, noting that the new initiative “doesn’t serve or alienate any religious, or political preference”.

    A few hours later, the Zomato CEO tweeted that he “received an overwhelmingly positive response” on the launch. “A lot of comments from young people who eat non-veg food saying: ‘Now my parents can also use Zomato,’” he explained.

    “I would like to repeat that this feature strictly serves a dietary preference. And I know there are a lot of customers who would never order food from a restaurant which serves meat, irrespective of their religion/caste,” he reiterated.

    Explaining the rationale behind the launch, he wrote: “But why did we need to separate the fleets? Because despite everyone’s best efforts, sometimes the food spills into the delivery boxes. In those cases, the smell of the previous order travels to the next order, and may lead to the next order smelling of the previous order. For this reason, we had to separate the fleet for veg orders.

    “Please note that participation in our Veg delivery fleet will not discriminate on the basis of our delivery partner’s dietary preferences.”

    What was wrong with Zomato’s Pure Veg Fleet?

    zomato pure veg fleet
    Courtesy: Zomato

    Goyal’s second thread of tweets had come after many online users had expressed their dissatisfaction with the new service, and he acknowledged that by saying: “There’s an opinion that some societies and RWAs will now not let our regular fleet in. We will stay alert for any such cases and work with these RWAs [resident welfare associations] to not let this happen. We understand our social responsibility due to this change, and we will not back down from solving it when the need arises.”

    He added: “And I promise, that if we see any significant negative social repercussions of this change, we will roll it back in a heartbeat.”

    And that’s exactly what Zomato ended up having to do. Customers had raised concerns that the move was regressive, had undertones of purity and casteism, and posed a threat to the safety of delivery drivers. Despite the large vegetarian population, the majority of Indians still eat meat, and the practice has a long history in the country.

    But over the last decade, during the rule of prime minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, there have been instances of meat-eaters and meat sellers – especially Muslims – being targeted by Hindu right-wing extremist groups promoting a vegetarian agenda. Cows are considered sacred in Hinduism, and beef has been banned in several states in India since 2005, but in May 2022, a school principal in the eastern state of Assam (where nearly 80% of people eat meat) was arrested for bringing beef for lunch, despite the state not banning this form of meat.

    And last year, IIT Bombay introduced a separate area for vegetarians in its campus dining hall, but faced retaliation from students who believed it was a prejudiced move that buttressed the discomfort associated with eating meat. In protest, one student began eating meat on a vegetarian table, and was fined ₹10,000 ($120) by the university authorities.

    These are just a couple of examples, but illustrate the potential issues Zomato’s drivers – many of whom come from minority religion or caste backgrounds – may need to contend with. As one Twitter user noted: “If Zomato uses different colored boxes to deliver veg food, bigoted landlords can harass tenants if they see non-green colors. Whatever assurance of veg fleet, if needed, must be kept inside the app only.”

    Many RWAs across the country have unofficial rules around meat consumption within their developments, and customers argued that the green uniforms could reinforce caste norms and subject them to discriminatory behaviour. “It wasn’t enough that our food is considered a sin to eat, us filthy for eating it, and to be discriminated for cooking or ordering it at home,” one user explained.

    Zomato cancels green uniforms, but keeps its Pure Veg Fleet

    deepinder goyal
    Zomato food delivery CEO Rakesh Ranjan (left) with founder and company CEO Deepinder Goyal (right) | Courtesy: Zomato

    Speaking to national daily The Hindu, AF Mathew, an IIM Kozhikode professor who lectures on contentious social issues, noted: “One of the most important aspects of caste is food pollution.” He believed that Zomato’s Pure Veg initiative was fuelled by caste motivations, and its logical conclusion as beyond just green uniforms and lack of contact with meat. “It will have to extend to whoever will deliver. What if there is a Muslim driver bringing in a customer’s vegetarian food? … Where is this going? Will Jains deliver for Jains, and Brahmins for Brahmins?” he asked.

    Karti P Chidambaram, a Congress MP, called the move “socially regressive and discriminatory”, alleging that there was a “hidden agenda” behind the move.

    On Wednesday, Goyal tweeted that the company had rolled back the green uniform part of its Pure Veg Fleet plan. “While we are going to continue to have a fleet for vegetarians, we have decided to remove the on-ground segregation of this fleet on the ground using the colour green. All our riders — both our regular fleet, and our fleet for vegetarians, will wear the colour red,” he wrote. “This means that the fleet meant for vegetarian orders will not be identifiable on the ground (but will show on the app that your veg orders will be served by the veg-only fleet).”

    He added that this will ensure its “red uniform delivery partners” aren’t incorrectly associated with non-vegetarian food and blocked by RWAs or societies during special religious days. “Our riders’ physical safety is of paramount importance to us. We now realise that even some of our customers could get into trouble with their landlords, and that would not be a nice thing if that happened because of us,” Goyal said.

    The controversy came just nine months after Zomato sparked a furore over an ad campaign that portrayed a Dalit character from the 2001 film Lagaan being ‘recycled’ and used as different inanimate objects. Dalits are historically a disadvantaged group at the bottom of India’s caste hierarchy. Zomato apologised for the ad and said it was reviewing its marketing policy, but it also defended the “noble intention” behind the concept, claiming that it was “twisted so much by certain sections of the media giving it a colour that we didn’t even remotely conceive”.

    All this highlights just how differently meat-eating is seen in the world’s most populous country. It would be unwise to draw parallels with instances like Burger King’s, which was sued by customers for cooking its plant-based patties on the same grill as its beef burgers, as they didn’t want any byproducts of meat in their food. In India, though, this argument – like every other – is led by religion and an outdated caste system.

    Of course we need to eat less meat. Of course there needs to be a conversation about dietary shifts. But that discourse needs to be modernised, well-informed, and devoid of any threats to people’s safety.

    Sheikh Salauddin, national general secretary of delivery drivers’ union the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers, harked back to Goyal’s 2019 “food has no religion” statement. “Today, he seems to have gone back on this,” he said. “I ask him directly: is he now going to categorise delivery partners on the lines of caste, community and religion?”

    Zomato declined Green Queen’s request for a comment on the story.

    The post The Pure Veg U-Turn: The Zomato Debacle That Divided the World’s Largest Vegetarian Minority appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • [Joint Statement] India: Irfan Mehraj – A call from civil society on the first anniversary of his continuing arbitrary detention

    We, the undersigned civil society organisations, call for the immediate and unconditional release of Kashmiri journalist and human rights defender Irfan Mehraj. While on a professional assignment on 20 March 2023, Mehraj was summoned for questioning and arbitrarily detained by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Srinagar under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. 

    Mehraj is a well-regarded Srinagar-based independent journalist. He is the founding editor of Wande Magazine and a senior editor at TwoCircles.net.  He was a frequent contributor to leading news publications in Kashmir, India and internationally (including Deutsche Welle and TRT World).  Mehraj also previously worked as a researcher at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), an internationally recognized leading civil society organisation in Indian-administered Kashmir that has done ground-breaking and extensive human rights documentation work in the region.

    Mehraj is facing multiple politically motivated charges including ‘sedition’ and ‘funding terror activities’ along with internationally renowned human rights defender Khurram Parvez, the Program Coordinator for JKCCS.  Parvez has been arbitrarily detained for over two and a half years. The NIA targeted Mehraj for being ‘a close associate of Khurram Parvez.’ Both Mehraj and Parvez are presently in pre-trial detention in the maximum-security Rohini prison in New Delhi, India. 

    In June 2023, United Nations experts expressed serious concerns regarding the charges against and arrest of Mehraj and Parvez, stating that their continued detention is ‘designed to delegitimize their human rights work and obstruct monitoring of the human rights situation in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.’ On 7 March 2024, UN experts sounded the alarm on the “harassment and prolonged detention of human rights defenders and journalists” in the country. The cases against Mehraj and Parvez seek to criminalize human rights work in Indian-administered Kashmir and the support for any such work under the guise of countering financing of ‘terrorism.’

    The UAPA is a counter-terrorism law often used against human rights defenders by the Indian authorities to target, harass, intimidate, and detain them on bogus and politically motivated charges. In May 2020, UN experts expressed concerns over the non-conformity of various UAPA provisions with international human rights standards. In October 2023, they reiterated their concerns, stating that the pre-trial detention period of 180 days–which can subsequently be increased–is beyond reasonable. They called for a review of the UAPA in line with international human rights standards and with recommendations made by the Financial Action Task Force.

    Irfan Mehraj’s detention is part of a growing crackdown against journalists and human rights defenders in Indian-administered Kashmir. 

    Since August 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was arbitrarily revoked, there has been increasing harassment against the media. Journalists have been arrested, media outlets shut down, and self-censorship has become pervasive. In another emblematic case, on 29 February 2024, journalist Asif Sultan was re-arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir police shortly after being released and having spent five years in detention under the UAPA and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act. Kashmiri journalists also face travel bans and revocation of their passports by Indian authorities. Consequently, information flow from Kashmir–especially on human rights violations–has been severely restricted.  

    Mehraj’s continuing arbitrary detention is emblematic of the Indian authorities’ escalating crackdown on human rights including the rights to freedom of expression and association in Indian-administered Kashmir. The detention of Mehraj and Parvez creates a chilling effect among other human rights defenders and journalists, thereby allowing grave and systemic human rights violations to continue with impunity and minimal transparency. 

    Our organisations, therefore, call for the immediate release of Irfan Mehraj and Khurram Parvez. 

    End all reprisals against Kashmiri human rights defenders and journalists. We urge Indian authorities to repeal or amend the UAPA and to bring it in conformity with international human rights standards. End the criminalisation of human rights defenders, journalists, and their invaluable work. 

    We also call upon Indian authorities to comply with their international human rights obligations by respecting, protecting, promoting, and fulfilling the human rights of everyone as well as by allowing civil society and the media to freely operate in Indian-administered Kashmir and India.

    In addition, the authorities must cease their longstanding targeting, harassment, and forced closure of international civil society. Likewise, the authorities must refrain from attacking inter-governmental organisations, including UN Special Rapporteurs and other human rights mechanisms. These entities should have unfettered access to Indian-administered Kashmir and Kashmiri detainees.

     

     

    Signed:  

    • Amnesty International 
    • Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
    • Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD)
    • CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
    • Front Line Defenders 
    • FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
    • Human Rights Watch
    • International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
    • Kashmir Law and Justice Project
    • Martin Ennals Foundation
    • World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

     

    This post was originally published on FORUM ASIA.

  • India Working on Regulatory Framework for Cultivated Meat & Seafood: Report

    cultivated meat india
    6 Mins Read

    India is joining the ranks of other southeast Asian companies to establish a regulatory framework for cultivated meat and seafood companies, who can then file a dossier to receive approval from its food safety authority to sell their products.

    First it was Japan. Then South Korea. Now, India has joined the bandwagon.

    Policy support for alternative proteins in Asia has been accelerating of late, with new regulatory frameworks soon to launch or already in place in Japan and South Korea this year itself, respectively, and India now exploring its own path for companies to earn regulatory clearance to sell cultivated meat.

    Indian newspaper The Economic Times has reported that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is formulating regulations for cultivated meat, just as a government agency works with a local startup to produce cultivated seafood products.

    “We are working on drafting regulations for cultured meat products,” a senior FSSAI official confirmed to the publication, adding that the scientific panel of the regulatory committee is evaluating regulations from other countries that have approved cultivated meat.

    “Establishing regulations that are rooted in rigorous scientific inquiry and a comprehensive understanding of the technology as well as the choice it seeks to provide to the Indian consumers would be essential to ensure a clear regulatory framework for safe consumption of smart proteins,” Astha Gaur, regulatory policy specialist at alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI) India, told Green Queen.

    “Technological developments are happening in the sector that are simultaneously revolutionising the ingredients and technology that go into the cultivation of meat from animal cells. Moreover, products that come to market in the near future might not rely on one individual technology,” she added.

    “The FSSAI’s guidance on hybrid products and other future innovations in smart proteins, such as low-cost serum-free media, etc. would be critical to determining the scalability and price parity of the category in India. Developing a regulatory framework that adapts to scientific advancements and is not rigid but accommodates the innovations in this sector would be essential to India setting an example for a dynamic and effective regulatory framework on cultivated meat.”

    A more dynamic regulatory framework needed

    fssai cultivated meat
    Courtesy: Langan/Canva

    So far, only three countries have approved the sale of cultivated meat: Singapore, the US and Israel. Australia and New Zealand’s joint regulatory body is being tipped as the next, with Vow Foods’ application currently in advanced stages. Last month, South Korea announced its regulatory framework to invite companies to file dossiers for approval. And next month, Japan will rejig its framework, which will mean companies will liaise with two agencies on regulatory conversations, but prime minister Fumio Kishida will be the the ultimate authority on these matters.

    In India, the FSSAI currently classes cultivated meat as a ‘non-specified food or ingredient’ or ‘novel food’ – much like the EU’s regulations – as there is no history of consumption of these proteins in the country. It means that companies need approval from the food safety regulator to manufacture, produce, import or sell cultivated meat products.

    Despite having a major vegetarian population, India is the world’s largest producer of buffalo meat, ranks second on the production list for goat meat, and is the third-largest seafood consumer. But while the cultivated meat sector is still in its infancy in the country, a number of startups are working to advance the development of these proteins, covering cell lines (Neat Meatt, Klevermeat, Clear Meat), media formulations (Clear Meat), and scaffolds (MyoWorks).

    Chandana Tekkatte, science and technology specialist at GFI India, told Green Queen earlier this year that the country’s nascent cultivated meat and seafood industry will benefit from its thriving pharmaceutical sector (tipped to reach $150B next year). “This sector has a proven track record in affordable, high-quality manufacturing, and cultivated meat companies have the opportunity to tap into its vast infrastructure and resources,” she explained.

    The FSSAI had previously formed a Working Group on Cultured Meat with regulatory and scientific experts to study the possible regulatory pathways for cultivated meat in India, but Tekkatte stated that the framework “needs to be made more dynamic and evolve in tandem with innovations”.

    “Early engagement with cultivated meat companies intending to apply for pre-market approvals under the Non-Specified Foods Regulations during the development process would enable the regulatory body to have oversight of the development process, leading to effective, timely guidance to the companies to ensure regulatory compliance and appropriate data submission to reduce approval timelines,” she said.

    Cultivated meat and seafood’s potential in India

    cultivated fish india
    Courtesy: vm2002/Canva

    As those startups continue to chip away at market entry hurdles, there have been strong signs of government support as well as potential consumer acceptance for cultivated meat in India.

    Within India’s Ministry of Science and Technology, the Science and Engineering Research Board has included cultivated meat research under its Competitive Research Grant Programmes, while the Department of Biotechnology has granted funds to Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the National Research Centre on Meat for cultivated meat research projects.

    And in January, it was announced that the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) signed an MoU with Neat Meatt to develop cultivated seafood, focusing on high-value species popular among India’s coastal belts, such as kingfish, pomfret and seer fish. The project will combine CMFRI’s capabilities into early cell line development – equipped with a cell culture laboratory – and Neat Meatt’s expertise in optimising cell growth media, developing scaffolds or micro-carriers for cell attachment, and scaling up production through bioreactors.

    “This public-private partnership marks a crucial step in bridging the gap between India and other nations like Singapore, Israel, and the USA, who are already advancing cultured seafood research,” said CMFRI director A Gopalakrishnan. “This collaboration leverages CMFRI’s marine research expertise with Neat Meatt’s technological know-how in this field, paving the way for a sustainable and secure future for seafood production in India.”

    Contextualising the partnership, Tekkatte said: “There is a growing recognition that by enabling more large-scale international scientific and industrial collaborations (leveraging our decades-old bioeconomy expertise), India could become a production powerhouse in the emerging cultivated meat industry and pave the way for other emerging economies.”

    In 2019, a three-country study revealed that 56% of Indians are “very or extremely likely” to buy cultivated meat regularly. “Consumer education and perceptions will play an important role in advertising, marketing, and sale of cultivated meat,” she said. Additionally, research conducted by GFI India and Deloitte in 2022 found that by the end of the decade, the country’s cultivated meat industry could have economic benefits worth between ₹1,233 crore ($150M) to ₹3,909 crore ($473M). Meanwhile, the sector could create between 15,590 to 49,420 jobs by 2030 too. But this will depend on production scaling up and costs coming down.

    Formulating regulations for smart protein based on reliable scientific research is pivotal for their effective integration into the market. The dynamic attributes of these proteins require a comprehensive understanding that would best be achieved through rigorous scientific inquiry. Currently, the understanding is that cultivated meat will be regulated under the Approval of Non-Specified Food and Food Ingredients Regulations (NSF Regulations) by the FSSAI, however, there is no specific definition of cultivated meat or guidance provided under the regulations.  

    “The significance of channelling resources into the cultivated meat industry is particularly relevant in India, with our unique vulnerability to climate change and public health crises. With this massive decrease in land use, additional opportunities arise for the diversification of crops towards direct food consumption,” said Tekkatte. “As we funnel more investment towards R&D and infrastructure, there’s no doubt that the cultivated meat sector can grow exponentially in India and help cater to the increasing protein needs of the global population.”

    The post India Working on Regulatory Framework for Cultivated Meat & Seafood: Report appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Saab starts construction of new Carl-Gustaf factory in India

    On 4th March, 2024, Saab performed the groundbreaking for the manufacturing facility for the shoulder-launched weapon system Carl-Gustaf® in India. The facility, run by the new company, Saab FFVO India, will be located in Jhajjhar, Haryana. This will be the first Carl-Gustaf manufacturing facility outside Sweden. Manufacturing for exports The facility will not just manufacture […]

    The post Saab starts construction of new Carl-Gustaf factory in India appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • India Captures Bulgarian-Managed Ship From Pirates, Rescues Crew

    Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.

    Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.

    Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.

    Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.

    Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.

    Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.

    Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.

    While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

    Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.

    “The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”

    The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.

    The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.

    Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.

    In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.

    Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.

    Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.

    The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”

    Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”

    But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”

    The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”

    Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.

    Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.

    Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.

    Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.

    Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.

    On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.

    Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.

    “This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.

    On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.

    On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.

    The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.

    Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.

    “The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.

    Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • India Brings Contentious Law Into Force


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ethnic cleansing and brewing civil war in the case of India’s Manipur

    This blog post contains references to sexual violence. Please be advised that the post may contain allusions and descriptions that could be triggering for some readers. Reader discretion is strongly advised, and we encourage those who may find such content distressing to approach the material with caution or consider skipping this particular entry.

    In the Indian state of Manipur over 140 people have been killed and 54,000 displaced following clashes between Meitei and Kuki Zo tribes. The Supreme Court of India has taken suo motu cognizance following footage of two women being paraded naked and raped. In this blog Himangshu Kalit, dives into the ramifications of ethnic cleansing in an era of mass violence.

    The North Eastern part of India is home to various tribes and is particularly volatile. The majority group in the state of Manipur is Meitei, making up 53% of the population and occupies the Imphal Valley (plains), which is 10% of the state’s area. They are followed by tribal groups like Kuki-Zo and Naga comprising 40% of the population and occupies the hills which cover 90% of Manipur. The Meitei community is predominantly Hindu whereas the Kuki community is mostly Christian. However, the Meitei community holds political power in the state, with them holding 40 seats out of 60 in the state assembly.

    While the conflict was triggered in late April 2023, the build up of such sentiments has been growing for quite some time. The Meitei community has shown concerns over illegal immigration from nearby Myanmar and the consequent high population growth rate of 24.5% in Manipur. The tribal groups have denied any illegal immigration. Demonstrations and protests by the Meitei groups have been reported for implementing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to filter out all illegal immigrants in the state. Another important factor here is ownership of land. As per Section 158 of the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Revenues Act, 1960, non-tribals including Meitei people are restricted from purchasing tribal land. Land and illegal immigration are at the core of this tussle.

    Legal developments and human rights violations 

    An order of Manipur High Court order issued on 20th April directing the state to consider granting the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Meitei community was the tipping point in this conflict. As per Article 366 (25) of the Constitution of India, the Scheduled Tribes are defined as; 

    “Such tribes or tribal communities or part of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to the Scheduled Tribes for the purposes of this [Indian] Constitution.” 

    Article 342 deals with the provisions related to Scheduled Tribes. It states that the President may, with respect to any State or Union territory, and where it is a state, after consultation with the Governor thereof by public notification, specify the tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within tribes or tribal communities which shall, for the purposes of this constitution, is deemed to be scheduled tribes in relation to that State or Union Territory, as the case may be. 

    This ignited a chain of events and the fear of tribal groups that their land would be taken away and their benefits hampered, grew bigger. The Supreme Court criticised the High Court and remarked it as ‘factually wrong’ as it is not within the court’s power to do so. The SC bench had said that there were several judgments of the Supreme Court which held that the High Court cannot direct the grant of Schedules Tribe (ST) status to a community. 

    As the conflict progressed, the state authorities imposed an internet ban in the state from 27 April 2023. The Supreme Court of India denied the urgent listing of a plea challenging the internet shutdown citing duplication of proceedings. Much later, on the 9th of July 2023, the Manipur High Court ordered the state to partially lift ban on the internet. Kris Ruijgrok in the study titled ‘Understanding India’s Troubling Rise in Internet Shutdowns’ finds that a BJP-ruled state is 3.5 times more likely to impose an internet ban. 

    The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in a 2012 resolution affirmed that the “same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular, freedom of expression.” It also condemned all measures to disrupt access to information online, deeming them human rights violations. The disruption of internet connectivity is a serious violation of fundamental human rights as recognised under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). 

    In January 2020, the Supreme Court of India ruled in Anuradha Bhasin vs Union of India, the case concerning the legality of the internet ban in Jammu and Kashmir, that freedom of speech and expression through the medium of the internet attracted protection under the Indian constitution. 

    The situation became really tense as even the Central Government invoked Article 355 of the Indian Constitution on 5th May 2023 taking responsibility of the security of the state. 

    Article 355 states that “It shall be the duty of the Union to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every State is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.” 

    The Manipur Tribal Forum filed an Interlocutory Application (IA) on 15th June 2023 praying for full control by the army for the protection of Kuki and other tribal groups. They alleged ethnic cleansing of the tribals in the state. The Supreme Court yet again denied urgent listing of the plea. The Supreme Court remarked that it cannot run law and order, it is for the elected government to handle. Further, it sought reports on actions taken by the state acting on the court’s directions. 

    The European Parliament passed a resolution on the issue and urged India to safeguard the minorities. The resolution was condemned by India and was termed a ‘colonial mindset’. 

    A video surfaced on 19th July 2023 where two women from the Kuki tribe were paraded naked and were raped. The incident is from 4th May 2023 and sparked massive outrage. The National Commission for Women have written to the state authorities but the commission allegedly ignored previous complaints filed on 12th June 2023. The video prompted PM Narendra Modi to speak on it after being silent on the issue for more than two months. The Supreme Court took suo motu cognizance and warned of actions by the court if the government doesn’t act to prevent human rights violations in the state. Another concerning development is that the tensions are now spreading to nearby states as well as in the case of the neighbouring state of Mizoram. The current situation shows how rape and abuse against women is weaponised in conflict. 

    Sexual violence varies in cases of ethnic and non ethnic conflicts. Since an ethnic conflict involves identities and bring an existential threat, they involve more human rights violations including rape. A very recent example can be witnessed in the case of the Ethiopian civil war where rape is heavily weaponised as reported by the United Nations.

    International conventions such as the Geneva Convention form the backbone of international humanitarian law. It mentions the prohibition of sexual violence in armed conflict. Article 27 of Convention IV states “Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.” Article 3 of all four Geneva Conventions safeguards against violence including those of a sexual nature and deals with non-international armed conflict. India was one of the first countries to ratify the convention and should adhere to it while protecting the human rights of those involved and suffering due to the ongoing conflict. 

    The authorities have not been able to prevent sexual violence and such cases are allegedly numerous. In the recent context, there are even reports of electricity and water supply cuts in the Kuki-dominated areas. Killings and clashes continue to occur with no signs of stoppage. Adding more complexity to it is the fact that now another community, the Nagas have resorted to deploying ‘volunteers’ to keep out armed members of Meitei and Kuki communities from their areas. The silence from the Prime Minister with regard to the conflict is also deeply concerning. It indicates a gross failure of state administrative machinery to protect basic human rights and life of people. 

    All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE Human Rights, the Department of Sociology, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

    Image credit: Daniel Stuben. on Unsplash

    This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.

  • Embraer partners with ST Engineering for Asia Pacific and South American opportunities

    Brazilian prime Embraer Defense & Security announced on 14 March that it is partnering with Singapore’s ST Engineering to jointly investigate future collaboration in key areas such as engineering, maintenance, and support service activities for the Embraer C-390 Millennium multirole transport aircraft in the Asia Pacific region. The latest announcement – which Embraer stated will […]

    The post Embraer partners with ST Engineering for Asia Pacific and South American opportunities appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Watching the Neighbours

    With political tension rising around the world, airborne special mission aircraft have arguably never been more important. Asia-Pacific states facing Chinese pressure on their South China Sea interests are continuing to enhance their air capabilities. This includes the acquisition of special mission aircraft whose various roles include airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), intelligence, surveillance […]

    The post Watching the Neighbours appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Shielding Armour

    Armour, while useful in attack, needs ways and means to stop it being taken out by the plethora or weapons in now faces. Asia possesses very capable armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) manufacturers, but various systems can improve their survivability, situational awareness, firepower and mobility on modern battlefields. Asia-Pacific militaries are slowly adopting some elements in […]

    The post Shielding Armour appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Tibetans in India march in solidarity with those arrested in dam protest in China

    Tibetans and Buddhist leaders in northern India on Wednesday participated in a march to show their solidarity with Tibetans in southwestern China’s Sichuan province arrested for peacefully protesting the planned construction of a dam. 

    Similar solidarity rallies were held in London and other cities the same day.

    The large Buddhist community in Ladakh – in Jammu and Kashmir – expressed concerns that the dam project will submerge several significant monasteries with ancient murals that date back to the 13th century. 

    The Regional Tibetan Youth Congress, which organized the march and rally, said Buddhists there were concerned about the humanitarian situation and the violation of cultural and religious rights stemming from the expected impact of the dam on several monasteries and villages near the Drichu River.

    On Feb. 23, police arrested more than 1,000 Tibetans, including monks and residents, of Dege county in Sichuan’s Kardze Autonomous Tibetan Prefecture, who had been protesting the construction of the Gangtuo Dam, meant to generate electricity.

    If built, the power station could submerge monasteries in Dege’s Wangbuding township and force residents of at least two villages near the Drichu River to relocate, sources told RFA. 

    Rigzin Dorjey, president of the youth wing of the Ladakh Buddhist Association Leh, said there is an urgent need to address the ongoing human rights abuses and environmental destruction perpetrated by China’s communist government. 

    He underscored the interconnectedness of global Buddhist communities and the shared responsibility to stand in solidarity with Tibetans in their struggle for justice, freedom and dignity.

    ‘Collective commitment’

    Lobsang Tsering, vice president of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of Ladakh, said the rally serves as “an expression of solidarity and support for Tibetans facing challenges and oppression in Dege county.”

    “It symbolizes a collective commitment to standing up against oppression, promoting human rights and preserving Tibetan culture and identity in the face of adversity,” Tsering said. 

    Tenzin Peldon, who participated in the march in Ladakh said while Tibetans everywhere usually gather to raise their voices against China on politically significant dates such as March 10, known as Tibetan Uprising Day – which commemorates the thousands of lives lost in the 1959 uprising against China’s invasion and occupation of their homeland – it is crucial that they come together during dire situations like the one being faced by Tibetans in Dege to collectively speak up against China’s oppression. 

    “I urge all Tibetans in exile not to give up hope and to continue to raise awareness on online platforms about the plight of Tibetans in Dege county,” she said. 

    Other protests were held in Bir village and Clement town in India, and in London, where Tibetans demonstrated outside the Chinese Embassy to show their support for the Dege county protesters, demand the release of the detainees, and call for an immediate halt to the dam construction.

    “Risking arrest and torture, Tibetan residents of Kham Derge [Dege county] have shared images and videos of the protest with the outside world,” the Tibetan Community UK said in a statement. “They want the international community in the free world to know about their plight and to raise their voice.”

    Authorities released about 40 of the arrested monks on Feb. 26 and 27, RFA reported on Tuesday.

    Chinese authorities released about 20 monks each on Monday and Tuesday, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. 

    Also on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch called on Chinese authorities to immediately release the detained Tibetan monks.

    “The Chinese authorities have long been hostile to public protests, but their response is especially brutal when the protests are by Tibetans and other ethnic groups,” said Maya Wang, the group’s acting China director, in a statement. 

    “Other governments should press Beijing to free these protesters, who have been wrongfully detained for exercising their basic rights,” she said.

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


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Addressing OBC exclusion in India’s Women Reservation Bill

    The Women Reservation Bill is a substantial piece of legislation aimed at bolstering gender equality in Indian politics. It has undergone a long and intricate journey to reach its current state. While acknowledging the bill’s intent to promote gender equality, Gurmeet Kaur expresses concern about its timing and lack of provisions for OBC women.

    A survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) reports that the OBC population in India is 40.94%.

    Reading multiple perspectives in the news articles and Op-Eds on the Women Reservation Bill, my thoughts take me back to a lecture delivered by Dr Ameer Sultana on Women and Politics at the Department Cum Centre for Women’s Studies & Development, Panjab University, in 2016. During this lecture, fellow students, both men and women, engaged in a debate on the necessity of such legislation. This legislative initiative was initially introduced in the Lok Sabha by HD Deve Gowda nearly three decades ago (81st Amendment Bill). It was later re-introduced by PM Manmohan Singh’s government through the 108th Amendment Bill in the upper chamber of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha. Now, under the rule of the  Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Women Reservation Bill has finally transformed from an aspiration into a legal enactment through the 128th Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha.

    Feminists all over India have a deep appreciation for the bill’s intent. However, as an engaged citizen and fervent advocate for gender equality, my appreciation is tinged with concern about the timing of its reintroduction and subsequent passage. The promise to foster the well-being of ‘Behen and Beti’ (sisters and daughters) from minority communities has regrettably remained unfulfilled over the past nine years whether it is Hathras Gang Rape and Murder or recent atrocities in Manipur. More concerning is the no particular provision for OBC (Other Backward Classes) women from the bill’s provisions. It is imperative to clarify that this concern transcends the boundaries of any particular government; it is instead indicative of a collective disregard exhibited by those in power, as well as within opposition parties, spanning several decades. This apprehension is compounded by the possible formulation of a sub-quota once the constitution is amended to provide political reservation to OBCs.

    A closer look at the past reveals recommendations made by joint parliamentary committees led by Geeta Mukherjee in 1996 and Jayanthi Natarajan in 2009. These reports strongly recommended that the government should contemplate the possibility of extending reservation benefits to OBCs in due course, thereby ensuring that women from OBC backgrounds can also avail of these reservation benefits.

    This prompts an inquiry into the rationale behind the omission of these recommendations in the legislative process leading to the bill’s passage. Was it driven by haste or a selective exclusion of certain groups? What awaits OBC women in the realm of Indian politics? These questions, I contend, are pivotal to comprehending the multifaceted implications of the Women’s Reservation Bill and the critical mass it may or may not usher into the political landscape.

    It is essential to recognise that this concern is not specific to any single government but represents a more pervasive problem of oversight and inaction that has persisted for decades. The suggestions made by parliamentary committees led by Geeta Mukherjee and Jayanthi Natarajan emphasise the necessity of expanding reservation benefits to include women from OBCs. Unfortunately, these recommendations were disregarded during the legislative process, resulting in a situation where OBC women find themselves in a state of political uncertainty. If the present government continues to foster divisive inclinations, it may undermine the progress achieved by feminists working towards gender equality.

    The Women Reservation Bill’s journey in India has been protracted, marked by promises, delays, and a significant oversight regarding the inclusion of OBC women. To address this issue, the Women Reservation Bill must be amended to explicitly include provisions for the representation of OBC women. This should involve consultations with OBC communities to ensure that their specific needs and challenges are adequately addressed in the legislation. The amendment should aim to provide equitable political representation for women from all backgrounds. Further, to understand the far-reaching implications, the government should conduct a nationwide, inclusive consultative process involving representatives from OBC communities, women’s organisations, and civil society. This process must gather feedback on the Women’s Reservation Bill, especially about the inclusion of OBC women. Engaging in a participatory and democratic dialogue ensures that the legislation reflects the diverse voices and concerns of the population it aims to serve.

    Inclusive Action: A Necessity

    In summary, the Women’s Reservation Bill represents a commendable effort to advance gender equality within the realm of Indian politics. However, its effectiveness in achieving these goals, as mandated by Article 15 of the Constitution of India, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5), hinges on addressing inclusivity. Furthermore, the potential emergence of a sub-quota necessitates thorough examination and proactive measures by policymakers. This holistic approach is imperative to ensure that the legislative agenda aligns with the broader objectives of fostering gender parity and uplifting marginalised groups, particularly OBC women, within the political landscape.

    Note

    *The term “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs) constitutes an official classification within India, encompassing social groups distinct from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Typically, the population encompass Hindu lower castes positioned above the “untouchable” scheduled castes, and may also include analogous lower-caste groups within other religious communities like Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and Buddhists. 

    This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.

  • Farmers’ Protest in India Reignites: A Struggle for the Future of Food and Agriculture

    In 2021, after a year-long protest, India’s farmers brought about the repeal of three farm laws that were intended to ‘liberalise’ the agriculture sector. Now, in 2024, farmers are again protesting. The underlying issues and the facilitation of the neoliberal corporatisation of farming that sparked the previous protest remain and have not been resolved.

    The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, global agribusiness and financial capital are working to corporatise India’s agriculture sector. This plan goes back to the early 1990s and India’s foreign exchange crisis, which was used (and manipulated) to set this plan in motion. This ‘structural adjustment’ policy and process involves displacing the current food production system with contract farming and an industrial model of agriculture and food retail that serves the above interests.

    The aim is to reduce the role of the public sector in agriculture to a facilitator of private capital, which requires industrial commodity-crop farming. The beneficiaries will include Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and India’s retail and agribusiness giants as well as the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations and the big tech companies with their ‘data-driven agriculture’.

    The plan is to displace the peasantry, create a land market and amalgamate landholdings to form larger farms that are more suited to international land investors and industrial farming. As a result, there has been an ongoing strategy to make farming non-viable for many of India’s smallholder farmers and drive hundreds of millions out of farming and into urban centres that have already sprawled to form peri-urban areas, which often tend to contain the most agriculturally fertile land. The loss of such land should be a concern in itself.

    And what will those hundreds of millions do? Driven to the cities because of deliberate impoverishment, they will serve as cheap labour or, more likely, an unemployed or underemployed reserve army of labour for global capital — labour which is being replaced with automation. They will be in search of jobs that are increasingly hard to come by the (World Bank reports that there is more than 23% youth unemployment in India).

    The impoverishment of farmers results from rising input costs, the withdrawal of government assistance, debt and debt repayments and the impacts of cheap, subsidised imports, which depress farmers’ incomes.

    While corporations in India receive massive handouts and have loans written off, the lack of a secure income, exposure to volatile and manipulated international market prices and cheap imports contribute to farmers’ misery of not being able to cover the costs of production and secure a decent standard of living.

    The pressure from the richer nations for the Indian government to further reduce support given to farmers and open up to imports and export-oriented ‘free market’ trade is based on nothing but hypocrisy. For instance, according to policy analyst Devinder Sharma, subsidies provided to US wheat and rice farmers are more than the market worth of these two crops. He also notes that, per day, each cow in Europe receives a subsidy worth more than an Indian farmer’s daily income.

    The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, global institutional investors and transnational agribusiness giants require corporate-dictated contract farming and full-scale neoliberal marketisation for the sale and procurement of produce. They demand that India sacrifice its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of billionaires.

    Farmers are merely regarded as producers of raw materials (crops) to be fleeced by suppliers of chemical and biotech inputs and the food processing and retail conglomerates. The more farmers can be squeezed, the greater the profits these corporations can extract. This entails creating farmer dependency on costly external inputs and corporate-dominated markets and supply chains. Global agrifood corporations have cleverly and cynically weaved a narrative that equates eradicating food sovereignty and creating dependency with ‘food security’.

    Farmers’ demands

    In 2018, a charter was released by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (an umbrella group of around 250 farmers’ organisations). The farmers were concerned about the deepening penetration of predatory corporations and the unbearable burden of indebtedness and the widening disparities between farmers and other sectors.

    They wanted the government to take measures to bring down the input costs of farming, while making purchases of farm produce below the minimum support price (MSP) both illegal and punishable.

    The charter also called for a special discussion on the universalisation of the public distribution system, the withdrawal of pesticides that have been banned elsewhere and the non-approval of genetically engineered seeds without a comprehensive need and impact assessment.

    Other demands included no foreign direct investment in agriculture and food processing, the protection of farmers from corporate plunder in the name of contract farming, investment in farmers’ collectives to create farmer producer organisations and peasant cooperatives and the promotion of agroecology based on suitable cropping patterns and local seed diversity revival.

    These demands remain relevant today due to government inaction. In fact, the three farm laws that were repealed after a year-long protest by farmers in 2021 aimed to do precisely the opposite. They were intended to expose Indian agriculture to a massive dose of neoliberal marketisation and shock therapy. Although the laws were struck down, the corporate interests behind them never went away and are adamant that the Indian government implements the policies they require.

    This would mean India reducing the state procurement and distribution of essential foodstuffs and eradicating its food buffer stocks — so vital to national food security — and purchasing the nation’s needs with its foreign exchange reserves on manipulated global commodity markets. This would make the country wholly dependent on attracting foreign investment and international finance.

    To ensure food sovereignty and national food security, the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE) says that MSPs, through government procurement of essential crops and commodities, should be extended to many major cops such as maize, cotton, oilseed and pulses. At the moment, only farmers in certain states who produce rice and wheat are the main beneficiaries of government procurement at the MSP.

    Since per capita protein consumption in India is abysmally low and has fallen further during the liberalisation era, the provision of pulses in the public distribution system (PDS) is long overdue and desperately needed. The PDS works with central government, via the Food Corporation of India, being responsible for buying food grains from farmers at MSPs at state-run market yards or mandis. It then allocates the grains to each state. State governments then deliver to ‘ration shops’.

    Today, in 2024, farm union leaders are (among other demands) seeking guarantees for a minimum purchase price for crops. Although the government announces support prices for more than 20 crops each year, government agencies buy only rice and wheat at the support level and, even then, in only some states.

    State agencies buy the two staples at government-fixed minimum support prices to build reserves to run the world’s biggest food welfare programme that entitles more than 800 million Indians to free rice and wheat. Currently, that’s more than half the population who per household will receive five kilos per month of these essential foodstuffs for at least the next four years, which would be denied to them by the ‘free market’. As we have seen throughout the world, corporate plunder under the guise of neoliberal marketisation is no friend of the poor and those in need who rely on state support to exist.

    If public procurement of a wider range of crops at the MSP were to occur — and MSPs were guaranteed for rice and wheat across all states — it would help address hunger and malnutrition, encourage crop diversification and ease farmer distress. Indeed, as various commentators have stated, by helping hundreds of millions involved in farming this way, it would give a massive boost to rural spending power and the economy in general.

    Instead of rolling back the role of the public sector and surrendering the system to what constitutes a transnational billionaire class and its corporations, there is a need to further expand official procurement and public distribution.

    The RUPE notes, it would cost around 20% of the current handouts (‘incentives’) received by corporations and their super-rich owners, which do not benefit the bulk of the wider population in any way. It is also worth considering that the loans provided to just five large corporations in India were in 2016 equal to the entire farm debt.

    However, it is clear that the existence of the MSP, the public distribution system and publicly held buffer stocks are an impediment to global agribusiness interests.

    Farmers’ other demands include a complete debt waiver, a pension scheme for farmers and farm labourers, the reintroduction of subsidies scrapped by the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 and the right to fair compensation and transparency concerning land acquisitions.

    In the meantime, the current administration is keen to demonstrate to international finance capital and agricapital that it is being tough on farmers and remains steadfast in its willingness to facilitate the pro-corporate agenda.

    After the recent breakdown in talks between government and farmers’ representatives, the farmers decided to peacefully march to and demonstrate in Delhi. But at the Delhi border, farmers were met with barricades, tear gas and state violence.

    Farmers produce humanities’ most essential need and are not the ‘enemy within’. The spotlight should fall on the ‘enemy beyond’. Instead of depicting farmers as ‘anti-national’, as sections of the media and prominent commentators in India try to, the focus needs to be on challenging those interests that seek to gain from undermining India’s food security and sovereignty and the impoverishment of farmers.

    Note: The issues discussed in the above article are set out in the author’s free-to-read book (2022), which can be accessed at Academia.edu and Global Research

    The post Farmers’ Protest in India Reignites: A Struggle for the Future of Food and Agriculture first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Embraer teams up with Mahindra for Indian Air Force airlifter programme

    Brazil’s Embraer Defense & Security and India’s Mahindra Defence Systems have on 9 February signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly offer the C-390 Millennium multirole tactical airlifter for the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) Medium Transport Aircraft (MTA) acquisition programme. The IAF is understood to be seeking to acquire between 40 and 80 transport […]

    The post Embraer teams up with Mahindra for Indian Air Force airlifter programme appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Is the “NZYQ” verdict a new guiding principle against the indefinite detention of illegal immigrants?

    Following the High Court of Australia’s landmark ruling against indefinite detention of illegal migrants, reversing its 2004 decision, Shaharyaar Shahardar explores the vital role the judiciary must play in scrutinising immigration laws globally, ensuring adherence to human rights despite populist pressures.

    On 9 November 2023, the High Court of Australia delivered a landmark judgement ruling against the indefinite detention of illegal migrants, some of whom have remained in prison for years. The decision overturned an earlier verdict passed in 2004 which justified the indefinite detention as long as the government intended to remove illegal immigrants as soon as reasonably practicable. On one hand, the Australian judiciary attempts to establish a jurisprudence taking into account the misery of migrants. Whereas, some countries have introduced even more stringent laws favouring such indefinite detentions which are violative of their international human rights obligations. 

    Background of the NZYQ case 

    The case of NZYQ v. Minister for Immigration and Anr. centred on a stateless Rohingya refugee, identified as “NZYQ” (hereinafter “Plaintiff”), who faced the prospect of life detention. Born in Myanmar, he arrived in Australia by boat as a teenager in 2012. Since 1992, Australia has implemented a policy of mandatory detention for all illegal immigrants arriving by boat. In 2013, the government intensified this policy, requiring the transfer of boat arrivals to offshore detention or turning back the boats to their country of departure. Although the Plaintiff had initially been granted a temporary visa, it was revoked in 2015 following his conviction for a criminal offence, leading to imprisonment. Upon completing his sentence in 2018, he was transferred to immigration detention. The Australian government rejected his visa application, citing he had committed a “serious crime and was a danger to the community.” As an ethnic Rohingya, the Plaintiff was denied citizenship under Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law. Despite Australia’s efforts to secure resettlement in six other countries, all proposals were rejected. 

    Consequently, NZYQ contested his detention before the Australian High Court. The Australian government in their written submissions opposed overturning the 2004 judgment of Al-Kateb v. Godwin which affirmed the legality of indefinite detention for illegal migrants. While acknowledging the challenge of resettling the Plaintiff, the government argued that the refusal of a third country to accept him did not necessarily preclude future possibilities. However, the court appeared to endorse the plaintiff’s averments which asserted that “there was no real likelihood or prospect of him being removed from Australia in the reasonably foreseeable future.” Following the Court’s order, the plaintiff has been released from detention. Moreover, the Ministry of Immigration has announced that other impacted individuals will be released and any visas granted to those individuals will be subject to appropriate conditions.

    The High Court verdict: a step in the right direction?

    Indefinite detention has been the fate of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants across the world. Despite this large number, there has been little discussion on this topic. The Australian government had placed hundreds of non-citizens in immigration detention for years. The decision will now serve as a pathway for their release from prolonged detention. Furthermore, other countries have introduced even more stringent laws favouring such indefinite detentions which violate their human rights obligations. 

    United Kingdom

    In the United Kingdom, for example, the parliament recently enacted a legislation which removes access to asylum in the UK for anyone who arrives undocumented. It creates sweeping new detention powers, with limited judicial oversight. These new powers are not time-limited. However, according to the UK government, it will be in line with their other existing immigration detention powers wherein detention will be limited to a reasonable time. But what would constitute a reasonable time has been left to the whim of the executive which leaves it prone to being misused and abused.

    United States 

    In 2018, the US Supreme Court in Jennings v. Rodriguez, upheld the statutory authority of the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants indefinitely during the pendency of removal proceedings. Later in 2022, the court in Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez held that immigrants detained in the US are not entitled to bond hearing which meant that thousands of individuals with open immigration cases could be detained indefinitely. The Court however failed to make efforts to delve into the constitutional permissibility of such detention. Critics would argue that such constitutionality was already dealt with in Demore v. Kim back in 2003 but the Court did not decide whether there are any constitutional limits to the duration of this detention. The US Supreme Court has constantly shied away from addressing the duration of such detentions. 

    India

    Similarly, in India, the government has undertaken repressive measures to crack down against illegal immigrants across the country. In 2019, the government started constructing what is touted as Asia’s largest detention centre in Goalpara, located 150 kilometres west of Guwahati in Assam. According to a 2021 press release from the Ministry of Home Affairs, “detention and deportation of illegal migrants after nationality verification is a continuous process.” A critical inquiry raises a serious question concerning individuals who lack any recognised nationality. A notable example is the situation of ethnic Rohingyas, who have been systematically denied citizenship under the Myanmar Citizenship Law. The question then becomes: what is the fate of such stateless individuals?

    Conclusion

    Under international human rights law, immigration detention should be an exceptional measure of last resort, not a punishment. The laws that empower the government to indefinitely detain individuals, especially concerning countries like the UK, US, and India violate their international human rights obligations which they have undertaken conventions like UDHR, ICCPR, and UNCAT among others. Often, governmental actions tend to align with populist sentiments and electoral considerations. However, it is imperative that the constitutional courts of these countries proactively scrutinise the legality and constitutionality of such legislation and actions. The responsibility squarely rests on the judiciary to exercise robust oversight over the exercise of public authority, in consonance with the fundamental tenets of constitutionalism.

    All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE Human Rights, the Department of Sociology, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

    Image credit: Radek Homola

    This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.

  • Feathery Infiltrators: The Case of the Pigeon Spy

    Animals have, at times, been given the same dismissively nasty treatment humans love giving themselves.  Be it detention, torture, trial, and execution, the unwitting creatures can be found in the oddest situations, anthropomorphised with all the characteristics of will, thought and intention.  By way of ghastly example, the Norman city of Falaise hosted the execution of a pig in 1386 for having “indulged in the evil propensity of eating infants on the streets”, and sentenced to maiming in the heat and forelegs prior to hanging.

    A field where such a matter has, and continues to crop up, is espionage.  Espionage, that very human, unsavoury and often dangerous endeavour, has seen a number of animals enlisted in the cause.  Unasked and no doubt unbriefed, various species have been thrown into wars, conflicts and disagreements, all the cause of humankind, to provide advantage or gain for one party or another.

    We know of such programs as the Central Intelligence Agency’s “Project Acoustic Kitty”, which ran for five years in the 1960s and cost $20 million without much to show for it.  The feline android-hybrid, which possessed an antenna under its fur and mic in its ear, failed to perform.  Acoustic Kitty, on being driven to a designated park with the task of capturing the conversation of two men on a bench, proceeded to wander into the street, where it was promptly crushed by a taxi. “Our final examination of trained cats,” concludes a CIA memo on the subject, “convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.”

    Of all the animals featured in the intelligence inventory, one stands out.  The pigeon featured heavily in both World Wars, an inconspicuous, small creature ideal in performing various tasks.  Messages can be delivered surreptitiously in conditions of disrupted communications.  Pictures and images can be taken by cameras affixed to the bird, unbeknownst to human agents on the ground.  “Of the hundreds of thousands of carrier pigeons sent through enemy fire, 95% completed their missions,” the International Spy Museum informs us.  “Pigeons continued brave service worldwide through the 1950s, earning more medals of honor than any other animal.”

    Most recently, the pigeon as spy agent featured again.  Reports on the bird in question imputed a degree of sentience and awareness nothing less than human.  The humans in question, though, seemed positively cloddish.  It began in May, when the bird was captured near a port in Mumbai.  Its legs sported two rings, carrying a chip and supposedly cursive Chinese writing.  Must be a case of espionage, thought the local police.  A spell of detention followed, largely spent with the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

    As things transpired, suspicions of espionage proved unfounded.  The three-month investigation found that the bird had escaped from Taiwan, where it had performed as an open-water racer.  The activist organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was outraged, as well it should have been.  “A pigeon who was detained in a veterinary hospital in India for eight months on suspicion of being used for spying is flying free once more, thanks to help from PETA India.”

    It would have been difficult keeping a straight face on hearing the following from PETA India’s Meet Ashar.  “PETA India handles 1,000 calls a week of animal emergencies, but this was our first case of a suspected spy who needed to be freed of wrongful imprisonment.”

    Despite this finding, a fellow of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, Sana Hashmi, thought a serious reflection was in order.  “This episode underscores India’s increased efforts to counter Chinese espionage attempts.  This suspicion extends to the point where even birds, reminiscent of past experiences with bird spies involving Pakistan, are perceived as potential tools of Chinese espionage.”

    The subcontinental obsession with pigeon espionage is an enduring one.  In October 2016, we find the Pakistani paper, The Frontier Star, reporting that three people were apprehended that month at Vikram chowk in Jammu city in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.  Why?  They were found carrying some 150 pigeons kept in banana boxes.

    Accusations of animal cruelty followed.  The birds were then transferred to an NGO Save Animals Value Environment (SAVE), whose chairman, Rumpy Madan, took a deep interest into why some of the pigeons had special magnetic rings attached to them.  The matter was then taken to the intelligence agencies, where intelligence seemed in short supply.  “We have been told,” stated Madan at the time, “that it is a case of apprehended danger.”  These birds, she went on to say, “can be easily trained for spying or messaging purposes and they have a unique quality of returning to its trainer even after covering huge distances.”

    With such heaped-upon praise, and clumsy reasoning – is the pigeon really spying if ignorant of it? – we should hardly be surprised about absurd reports that same month of a grey pigeon being “arrested” by India’s border security force (BSF) in Indian Punjab.  The feathered intruder was duly accused for allegedly spying for Pakistan.  It had in its possession, allegedly, a small letter in Urdu with a threatening message to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “Modi, we’re not the same people from 1971.  Now each and every child is ready to fight against India.”  The pigeon was duly punished: its wings were clipped to prevent it returning.

    The post Feathery Infiltrators: The Case of the Pigeon Spy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘Dare to dream big,’ says first Sikh to represent NZ at Miss World pageant

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Now the Indian government is being accused of planning a settler-colonial genocide of an entire Indigenous People

    39 international genocide scholars have written to the Indian government warning it that its plans to turn the uncontacted Shompen tribe’s island into a mega-port and city will wipe them out. It accuses the government of planning a genocide – via settler-colonial policies and practices.

    The Shompen People: an uncontacted tribe

    Great Nicobar Island in the Indian Ocean is home to an estimated 300 Shompen hunter-gatherers, around two thirds of whom are uncontacted. They are one of the most isolated tribes on Earth, and live in the dense rainforests that occupy the interior of the island.

    As NGO Survival International wrote:

    For centuries, most Shompen have refused all contact with outsiders, and this has kept them safe from the terrible effects of contact experienced by most other tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

    Living in the rainforests of Great Nicobar Island in the eastern Indian Ocean, the Shompen have guarded and maintained a unique landscape for thousands of years. The Shompen are nomadic hunter-gatherers. They live in small groups, whose territories are identified by the rivers that criss-cross the rainforest. Being nomadic, they typically set up forest camps where they live for a few weeks or months, before moving to another site.

    Now, the Indian government’s plans could amount to a genocide of the Shompen People.

    Indian government: planning a genocide via settler colonialism

    The government’s $9bn plan for Great Nicobar includes a mega-port; a new city; an international airport; a power station; a defense base; an industrial park; and 650,000 settlers – a population increase of nearly 8,000%.

    However, numerous experts including 87 former high level Indian government officials and civil servants have called on the government to abandon the scheme. Since the Shompen cannot give their Free, Prior and Informed Consent to it, it is illegal under international law.

    Now, the open letter from 39 genocide scholars states:

    If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.

    Among them are historians, sociologists, and the former President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

    The experts say that:

    simple contact between the Shompen – who have little to no immunity to infectious outside diseases – and those who come from elsewhere, is certain to result in a precipitous population collapse. The mass death of the entire Shompen tribe will ensue. The only way to avoid the obliteration of the Shompen is for the project to be abandoned.

    Scrap the project, save the Shompen People

    Survival International is calling for the project to be abandoned, and the Shompen People’s land ownership rights over their ancestral lands to be recognised. More than 7,000 people have emailed the government in support of the call. You can email here.

    Caroline Pearce, director of Survival International, said:

    This is a stark warning which the Indian government must heed – pushing ahead with the Great Nicobar project will destroy the Shompen’s island home and mean the genocide of the Shompen.

    Featured image via Survival International

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Cinnamon Kitchen: Celeb-Favourite Indian Vegan Bakery Lands Shark Tank Deal at $1.4M Valuation

    shark tank india
    5 Mins Read

    Indian vegan bakery The Cinnamon Kitchen secured a ₹60 lakh ($72,000) investment from Aman Gupta on Shark Tank India. Landing the deal at 5% equity, the brand was valued at ₹12 crores ($1.44M), and is among a handful of other plant-based companies to have appeared on the show.

    New Delhi-based bakery The Cinnamon Kitchen has joined a small but growing list of vegan businesses to secure an offer on season three of Shark Tank India, negotiating a successful deal with boAt founder Aman Gupta that puts the brand’s valuation at ₹12 crores ($1.44M).

    The ₹60 lakh ($72,000) investment was the four-year-old brand’s first fundraise, and since the airing of the episode last week, it has already put a call out for chefs and pastry interns to work in its 2,500 sq ft factory in nearby Noida.

    A vegan business fuelled by a PCOS diagnosis

    cinnamon kitchen
    Courtesy: The Cinnamon Kitchen

    The Cinnamon Kitchen was born years after founder Priyasha Saluja was diagnosed with PCOS. Following the news, Saluja began experimenting with healthy treats to manage her condition. She ditched dairy, and swapped out refined flour for millets and white sugar for natural sweeteners.

    Her hobby turned into a business in 2019, which now offers a comprehensive range of gluten-free, plant-based SKUs like cookies, vegan Cheddar chips, granola, cakes, crackers, fudge and even flours. Its popularity has gained it attention from Bollywood celebrities like Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Arjun Kapoor and Malaika Arora.

    Sharing her experience on LinkedIn, Saluja explained that The Cinnamon Kitchen was part of a cohort of eight to 10 businesses – where she was the youngest and only female founder – that were being supported by the Shark Tank India team with polishing pitches, creating setups and revising financials thoroughly.

    She revealed that entrepreneurs on the show enter the tank twice – once for the first shot of entering the tank, and the other when they walk inside to the sharks. The pitch, though, has to be in a single shot. “When it was time for the first shot, the music started playing, all lights were on me, cameras were focused, and as I kept walking towards the tank, it filled me with immense confidence – it was in that moment that I truly felt prepared,” she wrote.

    In another post, she said: “I grew up watching Shark Tank US since I was 13-14, and I had never thought that one day I would be there, but I was here. The dissociation was so huge in that moment that I still felt like I was watching it, except that I was not watching it, I was in it.”

    Saluja shared that she struggled with the pitch initially, before writing the whole thing in one go. “As I started putting my thoughts on paper, I realised I couldn’t do it for two days because I was trying to be someone else: a serious businesswoman with a very strategic sounding number-led pitch,” she explained. “Through writing the pitch, I realised that the only way to go about it was to be who I truly am and have fun during the process.”

    How The Cinnamon Kitchen bagged the Shark Tank India deal

    Saluja’s pitch – asking for ₹60 lakh ($72,000) for a 2% stake in the business – was full of rhymes and humour and garnered a few laughs from the Sharks, who were impressed with the flavour of the samples she produced. However, the brand’s packaging and labelling were criticised by Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal and Sugar Cosmetics founder Vineeta Singh, who called out the unclear colour use and damaged-looking labels. Mittal indicated that the brand had too many focuses, and that she needed to choose between the bakery and the CPG business.

    The Cinnamon Kitchen founder managed to turn it around, though, backed by impressive numbers. Bootstrapping the company with just ₹50,000 ($600), her business grew from strength to strength financially, with sales rising from ₹1.4 lakhs in 2019-20 to ₹82 lakhs in 2022-23. She projected that the business would make ₹6 crores this year, which left the Sharks taken aback, but she explained that the startup had already seen ₹1.3 crores by September (at a 30% profit), and would see a festive season spike for Diwali.

    She received an offer from Singh, who matched the ₹60-lakh ask, but with a 10% stake instead of the original 2%. Mittal proceeded to join her with the same offer. But then, Singh swooped in with an individual offer of ₹10 lakhs ($12,000) for 2% equity, plus a further ₹50 lakhs ($60,000) in debt at 12% interest over two years.

    But Saluja wanted a deal without debt, and countered with a deal of ₹60 lakhs for 4%. Gupta raised this to 5%, before the entrepreneur was advised by a guest Shark (who had opted out of the deal due to a conflict of interest) to counter to both offers on the table with ₹1.2 crores ($144,000) at a 10% stake. When she did so, Singh withdrew her interest, while Gupta expressed that he wouldn’t be interested in investing so much.

    Saluja eventually said yes to Gupta’s 5% deal, which valued The Cinnamon Kitchen at ₹12 crores ($1.4M). Despite the back and forth, she managed to seal an offer that would help propel the vegan bakery business forward, and joined a very exclusive list of plant-based businesses to have gained a Shark Tank deal in India. This includes jackfruit meat maker Wakao Foods and footwear company Ethik (protein powder brand Green Protein and hemp business India Hemp and Co. were also offered deals, but turned them down).

    Brands like The Cinnamon Kitchen play to what Indians want from plant-based foods, a market valued at $42M in 2022. In 2021, a Kerry study found that health was the top motivating factor for Indians switching to vegan food. This is especially true for plant-based dairy products, according to research by the Good Food Institute, with claims like “no added sugar” or “no preservatives” appreciated by consumers.

    With a relatively huge valuation for a plant-based startup in India, The Cinnamon Kitchen will now hope that both the Shark Tank effect and investment will boost its sales in the short- and long-term, respectively.

    The post The Cinnamon Kitchen: Celeb-Favourite Indian Vegan Bakery Lands Shark Tank Deal at $1.4M Valuation appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • K9 User Group Meets in Helsinki

    The user group is to share experience and know-how of operating the K9 Self-Propelled Howitzer operated by key NATO forces and other countries. Hanwha Aerospace unveils a plan to establish a spare parts center in Europe to enhance integrated logistics support for K9 customers in the region. Military representatives from six of the countries operating […]

    The post K9 User Group Meets in Helsinki appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Here’s How the Hindu Supremacist Movement Is Infiltrating US Politics

    At 1:30 am on the bitterly cold night of January 22, around 50 people gathered at New York City’s Times Square. The crowd had assembled to watch a live telecast of the consecration of the Ram Mandir, a temple to the Hindu deity Rama in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Built on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque destroyed by a Hindu supremacist mob in 1992…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Suspected Chinese spy pigeon released after 8-month detention in India

    A pigeon, suspected of being used by China for espionage, has been released after eight months in police custody in Mumbai, according to local media reports. 

    The falsely-accused bird was released from the Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals on Tuesday, said a police officer in India’s most populous city, as cited by the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency on Wednesday. Its current whereabouts are unknown. 

    The pigeon was caught in May, 2023, at a port in the Chembur suburb of Mumbai with two rings tied to its legs featuring words that appeared to be Chinese, which led the police to suspect it was spying for China, PTI reported.

    The bird was taken to the animal hospital for custody, until it emerged in January that it was actually an open-water racing pigeon from Taiwan, which had escaped and flown to India, according to the news agency.

    This was not the first time a pigeon has been detained by the watchful Indian police force.

    In March, 2023, two suspected spy pigeons were caught in the eastern Odisha state. The first one was found on a fishing boat with devices fitted on its leg which appear to be a camera and a microchip. The two birds are believed to still be under investigation. 

    Back in 2020, police in Indian-controlled Kashmir captured a bird that belonged to a Pakistani fisherman, but later found that it had simply flown across the border, admittedly without permission.

    Before that, in 2016, another pigeon was captured after it was found with a note threatening Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

    Flying spies

    Throughout history, pigeons have been used by the militaries in many countries for delivering messages and spying.

    “Today, with all kinds of ways to intercept messages sent by electronic means, terrorists or enemies of a state can use ways that cannot be tapped, such as pigeons,” said Yusuf Unjhawala, an Indian defense analyst as well as a scholar at the Takshashila Institution in Bangalore

    “The use of animals for military purposes is an old thing, from horses to elephants to pigeons,” said Unjhawala. “Dolphins can also be used to detect underwater mines.”

    A Taiwanese defense expert, Shen Ming-Shih from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said racing pigeons have gained such popularity that raising them has become an industry in Taiwan.

    “Taiwan also uses racing pigeons to send intelligence or deliver messages, despite the advancement of various communication technologies,” Shen told Radio Free Asia.

    Edited by Taejun Kang and Elaine Chan.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • GMOs Will Destroy Indian Agriculture, Which is Non-GMO and Will Harm the Health of 1 Billion Indians and Their Animals

    Hybrid Bt cotton, the only commercialised GM crop in India, has failed conclusively. Based on this failure and the evidence on GM crops to date, the Union of India’s proposal to commercialise herbicide-tolerant (HT) mustard will destroy not just Indian mustard agriculture but citizens’ health.

    There have been five days of intense hearings on this matter in the Supreme Court (SC) — the GMO Public Interest Writ filed almost 20 years ago in 2005 by the author, which ended on 18 January 2024.

    In these last 20 years, piecemeal hearings have dealt with submissions relating to individual crops like hybrid Bt cotton, the attempted commercialisation of hybrid Bt brinjal (2010) and now the attempt to commercialise hybrid HT mustard.

    The evidence provided here is a distillation of the critical inputs of those 60+ submissions based on the affidavits and studies of leading, independent scientists and experts of international renown.

    However, there is a serious and proven conflict of interest among our regulators, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Agriculture along with the International Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which promote GMOs in Indian agriculture. This evidence reflects the findings of the TEC Report (Technical Expert Committee) appointed by the Supreme Court (SC) in 2012 and two Parliamentary Standing Committees of 2012 and 2017.

    ‘Modern biotechnology’ or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are products where the genomes of organisms are transformed through laboratory techniques, including genetically engineered DNA (recombinant) and its direct introduction into cells. These are techniques not used in traditional breeding and selection.

    GMOs create organisms in ways that have never existed in 3.8 billion years of evolution and produce ‘unintended effects’ that are not immediately apparent. This is why rigorous, independent protocols for risk and hazard identification are the sine qua non of correct regulation in the public interest. The Indian ‘Rules of 1989’ describe GMOs as “hazardous”.

    Contamination by GMOs of the natural environment is of outstanding concern, recognised by the CBD (Convention on Biodiversity), of which India is a signatory. India is one of 17 listed international hot spots of diversity, which includes mustard, brinjal and rice.  India is the centre of the world’s biological diversity in brinjal with over 2500 varieties grown in the country and as many as 29 wild species.

    India is a secondary centre of origin of rape-seed mustard with over 9000 accessions in our gene bank (National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources). With a commercialised GM crop, contamination is certain. The precautionary principle must apply, is read into the Constitution and is a legal precedent in India.

    Hybrid Bt cotton was introduced in 2002 and remains the only approved commercialised crop in India. It has been an abject failure.

    Failure of Bt cotton

    India is the only country in the world to have introduced the Bt gene into hybrid Bt Cotton.  It was introduced in hybrids as a ‘value-capture mechanism’, according to Dr Kranthi, ex director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR). The hybrid technology disallows seed saving by millions of small farmers. Conservative estimates indicate that Indian farmers may have paid an additional amount of Rs 14,000 crores for Bt cotton seeds during the period 2002-18, of which trait fees amounted to Rs 7337.37 crores, (Dr Kranthi). There was also a phenomenal three-fold increase in labour costs in hybrid cotton cultivation.

    Prof. Andrew Gutierrez (University of California, Berkeley) is among the world’s leading entomologists and cotton scientists and provided the ecological explanation of why hybrid Bt cotton is every bit a disaster that it is in India. Most hybrid cottons are long season (180-200-day duration). This increases the opportunities for pest resurgence and outbreaks because it links into the lifecycle of the pest. The low-density planting also increases the cost of hybrid seeds substantially.

    Hybrids require stable water too (therefore, irrigation, as opposed to rain-fed) and more fertiliser. Some 90% of current Bt cotton hybrids appear susceptible to sap-sucking insects, leaf-curl virus and leaf reddening, adding to input costs and loss of yield. Most telling is that India produces only 3.3 million tonnes from its irrigated area of 4.9 million hectares compared to 6.96 million tonnes from an equivalent area in China.

    Hybrid Bt cotton in India has resulted in a yield plateau, high production costs and low productivity that reduce farmer revenues, correlated with increased farmer distress and suicides. It has stymied the development of economically viable high-density short-season (HD-SS) Non-Bt high-yielding straight-line varieties. The failure of hybrid Bt cotton is an abject lesson for GMO implementation in other crops.

    Yet, the regulators attempted to repeat history in the form of hybrid Bt brinjal and Hybrid HT Mustard.

    Field trial solutions (CICR data) of high-density short-season (HD-SS) NON-GMO pure-line (non-hybrid), rainfed cotton varieties have been developed in India that could more than double yield and nearly triple net income.

    The Central Government admitted in its affidavit in the Delhi High Court (22 Jan 2016), adding, (on 23 January 2017), that Bt “cotton seeds are now unaffordable to farmers due to high royalties charged by MMBL (Mahyco Monsanto Biotech Ltd) which has a near monopoly on Bt cotton seeds and that this has led to a market failure”.

    Moreover, there is no trait for yield enhancement in the Bt technology. Any intrinsic yield increase is properly attributable to its hybridisation in both Bt cotton and Bt brinjal. Lower insecticide use is the reason for introducing the Bt technology worldwide.

    The pink bollworm has developed high levels of resistance against Bollgard-II Bt cotton, leading to increased insecticide usage in India, increases in new induced secondary pests and crop failures. The annual report 2015-16 of the ICAT-CICR confirms that Bt cotton is no longer effective for bollworm control

    Insecticide usage on cotton in 2002 was 0.88 kg per hectare, which increased to 0.97 kg per hectare in 2013 (Srivastav and Kolady 2016).

    Matters were deliberately muddied in India, leading to any hybrid vigour being attributed to the Bt technology! Yields have stagnated despite the deployment of all available latest technologies, including the introduction of new potent GM technologies, a two-fold increase in the use of fertilisers and increased insecticide use and irrigation. And yet, India’s global rank is 30-32nd in terms of yield.

    In 13 years, the cost of cultivation increased 302%. In 15 years, there was 450% increase in labour costs. The costs of hybrid seed, insecticide and fertiliser increased more than 250 to 300%.

    Net profit for farmers was Rs. 5971/ha in 2003 (pre-Bt) but plummeted to net losses of Rs. 6286 in 2015 (Dr Kranthi)

    Regulatory failure: Bt brinjal

    Regulators tried to commercialise Bt brinjal and in hybrids in 2009. The Bt gene is proven to be undeniably toxic (Profs. Schubert of the Salk Institute; Pusztai, Seralini and others have confirmed this).

    In August 2008, the regulators were forced to publish the Developers’ (Monsanto-Mahyco) self-assessed bio-safety dossier on their website, 16 months after the order of the SC to make the safety dossier data public (15 Feb 2007).

    Bt brinjal was the first vegetable food crop in the world to be approved for commercialisation, by the collective regulatory body and their expert committees, virtually without oversight. When the international scientific community examined the raw data, their collective comments were scathing. Prof Jack Heinemann stated that Mahyco has failed at the first, elementary step of the safety study: “I have never seen less professionalism in the presentation and quality assurance of molecular data than in this study”.

    He criticised Mahyco for using outdated studies, testing to below acceptable standards and inappropriate and invalid test methods.

    Prof David Andow, in his comprehensive critique of Monsanto’s Dossier, ‘Bt brinjal Event EE1’, listed 37 studies of which perhaps one had been conducted and reported to a satisfactory level by Monsanto. He concluded: “The GEAC set too narrow a scope for environmental risk assessment (ERA) of hybrid Bt brinjal, and it is because of this overly narrow scope that the EC-II is not an adequate ERA… most of the possible environmental risks of Bt brinjal have not been adequately evaluated; this includes risks to local varieties of brinjal and wild relatives, risks to biological diversity, and risk of resistance evolution in BFSB.”

    The Central Government itself declared an unconditional and indefinite moratorium on Bt brinjal in Feb 2009 based on the collective responses of the scientific community.

    Disaster in the making: GM Hybrid HT Mustard

    Like Bt, HT is a pesticidal crop (to kill weeds). These two GMO technologies represent about 98% of crops planted worldwide, with HT crops accounting for more than 80%. Neither has a trait for yield. In its 2002 Report, the United States Department for Agriculture stated: “currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential… In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars… Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of GE crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.” 

    The developer’s (Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants University of Delhi) bio-safety dossier, in contempt of the SC orders, has never made its data public. A Right to Information (RTI) request was filed in 2016 with the Directorate of Rape-Seed Mustard Research, which conducts protocols of non-GMO mustard trials for crop improvement programmes for our farmers, for varietal stability and performance. The RTI was an eye opener. Virtually all the directorate’s norms were flouted in the field trials, making them invalid. Hybrid mustard HT DMH 11 was out yielded by more than the 10% norm by non-GMO varieties and hybrids, which forced the developers to admit this fact in their formal reply affidavit in the SC.

    Hybrid HT mustard DMH 11 employs three transgenes: the male sterility gene, barnase, the female restorer gene, barstar, and the bar gene that confers tolerance to Bayer’s herbicide glufosinate ammonium or BASTA. Each of the parent lines has the bar gene that makes them both HT crops along with their resulting hybrid DMH 11. The reason for employing barnase and barstar is because mustard is a closed pollinating crop (even though it out crosses pretty well, 18%+) and this technology (a male sterility technology) makes it easier to produce mustard hybrids.  It is not a hybrid technology. Its counterpart in non-GMO male sterility technology is the CMS system (cytoplasmic male sterility). Employing male sterility in mustard allows it to be used more easily in already existing hybridisation technology.

    It is curious the extent to which the regulators have tried to obfuscate the facts and muddy the waters. Their first response was that the acronym HT in mustard DMH 11 means ‘hybrid technology’. When this didn’t work, the next ‘try’ was that DMH 11 isn’t an HT crop!

    This too was easily proved wrong because of the presence of the bar gene. Now, this fact has been admitted.

    Furthermore, the regulators have failed either intentionally, or because they are simply unable to stop, illegal HT cotton being grown on a commercial scale for the last 15 years or so. This is the state of GMO regulation in India.

    Bayer’s own data sheet states that glufosinate causes birth defects and is damaging to most plants that it comes into contact with. Like its counterpart, glyphosate, it is a systemic, broad spectrum, non-selective herbicide (it kills indiscriminately soil organisms, beneficial insects etc) and is damaging to most plants and aquatic life. The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies glufosinate ammonium as “persistent” and “mobile” and is “expected to adversely affect non-target terrestrial plant species”.

    Glufosinate is not permitted in crop plants in India, under the Insecticide Act. Since it is very persistent in the environment, it will certainly contaminate water supplies in addition to food. Surfactants are used to get the active ingredients into the plant, which is engineered to withstand the herbicide, so it doesn’t die when sprayed. The herbicide and surfactant are sprayed directly on the crops and significant quantities are then taken up into the plant.  The weeds die — or used to!

    The US Geological survey noted that while 20 million pounds/year of glyphosate was used prior to GE crops (1992), 280 million pounds/year was used in 2012, largely as a result of glyphosate-resistant crops. In the U.S. alone, glyphosate-resistant weeds were estimated to occupy an area of over 24 million hectares as of 2012. This is a failed and unsustainable technology anywhere, and for India it will be disastrous.

    The stated objective by the regulators themselves for HT mustard is that the two HT parent lines (barnase and barstar each with the bar gene), will be similarly employed in India’s best (non-GMO) varieties to create new crosses resulting in any number of HT hybrid mustard DMH crops. Thus, Indian mustard varieties (non-GMO) in a very short time will be contaminated and Indian mustard agriculture (which is non-GMO) destroyed.

    The regulators claim that GMO HT hybrid DMH 11 will create a significant dent in India’s oilseeds imports. Given that GMO mustard has no gene for yield enhancement, is significantly out yielded by non-GMO mustard hybrids and varieties, this is indeed a magic bean produced from thin air by the regulators, defying all logic and commonsense. Mustard Oil imports are virtually zero (ie rapeseed mustard as distinct from canola rape oil which is also illegal GMO).

    The story of the current steep decline in oilseeds production in Indian farming must be laid at the door of a wrong policy decision that comprehensively ignored national and farmers’ interest to severely slash import duties on oilseeds of around 300% to virtually zero. In 1993-94, India imported just 3% of our oil-seed demand; we were self- sufficient. Then we happily bowed to WTO pressure and now import almost 70% of our demand in edible oils! (Devinder Sharma).  This is the real reason for our heavy import bill.

    The TEC recommend a double bar on GM Mustard — for being an HT crop and also in a centre of mustard diversification and/or origin. It is hoped that our government will recognise the dangers of GMOs, bar HT crops, including GM mustard, and impose a moratorium on all Bt crops.

    Aruna Rodrigues

    Lead Petitioner in the GMO PIL filed in 2005 for a moratorium on GM crops.

    The post GMOs Will Destroy Indian Agriculture, Which is Non-GMO and Will Harm the Health of 1 Billion Indians and Their Animals first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘Immense Potential’: Indian Government Body to Develop Cultivated Fish in Partnership with Neat Meatt

    cultivated fish india
    6 Mins Read

    In a first-of-its-kind partnership, the Indian government is embarking on a project to create cell-cultured seafood with cultivated meat startup Neat Meatt Biotech.

    The ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) has signed an MoU with New Delhi-based biotech company Neat Meatt to develop cultivated fish, in what is a landmark project for the world’s third-largest seafood consumer. The initiative aims to ensure India keeps up with international progress and tackle climate and food security issues.

    The project aims to tackle India’s growing demand for seafood – fish consumption has swelled by 88% in just over a decade – reduce pressure on wild resources, keep up with global progress on alternative proteins, and provide solutions to climate change and food insecurity.

    Proof of concept could be shown within two months

    The partnership will initially focus on developing cell-cultured varieties of high-value fish species – like kingfish, pomfret and seer fish – which are extremely popular in India, especially among the coastal belts. Based in Kochi, CMFRI has entered into a collaborative research agreement with Neat Meatt, a cultivated meat manufacturer and solutions provider, to help develop these seafood products.

    An MoU signed by the two parties reveals that CMFRI will conduct research into early cell line development of high-value marine fish species. This involves isolating and cultivating fish cells for further R&D. Additionally, the marine research organisation will handle genetic, biochemical and analytical work, equipped with a cell culture laboratory with basic facilities, providing a solid foundation for research in cellular biology.

    Meanwhile, the project will leverage Neat Meatt’s expertise in cell culture tech, with the firm leading the optimisation of cell growth media, development of scaffolds or micro-carriers for cell attachment, and scaling up production through bioreactors. The company will be responsible for providing the necessary consumables, manpower and additional equipment required as well.

    lab grown meat india
    Courtesy: CMFRI

    Neat Meatt co-founder and CEO Sandeep Sharma is confident that the partnership’s proof of concept could be established within a couple of months. But Kajal Chakraborty, principal scientist at CMFRI, told the Hindustan Times that the product may take a decade to reach the market. “Just like other meat, we will use cell line cultures to produce fish meat. It’s even more difficult to grow meat of higher vertebrates in laboratory settings,” she explained.

    CMFRI director A Gopalakrishnan added: “This project aims to accelerate development in this field, ensuring India is not left behind in this emerging industry.”

    Why India decided to invest in cultivated seafood

    India’s seafood market is worth $57.15B, according to one estimate, and is set to expand by 7.6% annually. And last year, its seafood exports reached an all-time high, shipping out 1.7 million tonnes worth $8.09B. But with growing awareness about the seafood industry’s climate impact, there have been calls to switch to lower-carbon production methods.

    While estimates suggest that carbon emissions of fish caught in India’s marine fisheries are 17.7% lower than the global average, in terms of overall climate change impact by 2050, the country remains in the medium to high category. The country has a burgeoning alt-protein sector, with 113 companies working across plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-derived meat, dairy, seafood and eggs.

    But even though several alt-seafood startups exist in India (such as Seaspire, Mister Veg, VegetaGold, Veggie Champ and The Mighty Food), only two companies – Klevermeat and Myoworks – are known to be working on cultured seafood. So this collaboration between CMFRI and Neat Meatt holds promise.

    “This public-private partnership [PPP] marks a crucial step in bridging the gap between India and other nations like Singapore, Israel, and the USA, who are already advancing cultured seafood research,” said Gopalakrishnan, who praised cultured fish’s “immense potential for environmental and food security”. He added: “This collaboration leverages CMFRI’s marine research expertise with Neat Meatt’s technological know-how in this field, paving the way for a sustainable and secure future for seafood production in India.”

    lab grown seafood india
    Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons/CC

    Explaining the reason behind this partnership, the Good Food Institute (GFI) India’s science and technology specialist, Chandana Tekkatte, told Green Queen: “There is a growing recognition that by enabling more large-scale international scientific and industrial collaborations (leveraging our decades-old bioeconomy expertise), India could become a production powerhouse in the emerging cultivated meat industry and pave the way for other emerging economies.

    “The DBT-BIRAC is also encouraging such PPP models to help accelerate R&D breakthroughs in cultivated meat and seafood in India, similar to the momentum seen in Singapore, Israel, and the US. The Ministry of Science and Technology has also been working closely to advance research in cultivated meat and other smart protein categories within the nation’s priorities for high-performance biomanufacturing.”

    In another instance of government support for cell-based meat in India, the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Science and Engineering Research Board included cultivated meat research under its Competitive Research Grant Programmes in 2021.

    The rise of cultivated proteins in India

    Tekkatte said India’s cultivated meat and seafood industry is still in its infancy but stands to benefit significantly from India’s thriving pharmaceutical sector, which is set to reach $150B in 2025. “This sector has a proven track record in affordable, high-quality manufacturing, and cultivated meat companies have the opportunity to tap into its vast infrastructure and resources,” she explained.

    She added that key early-stage scientific advancements in cultivated meat and seafood have been led by startups in cell line development (Neat Meatt, Klevermeat, Clear Meat), media formulations (Clear Meat), and scaffolds (Myoworks) over the last five years. These have helped build the foundation of the sector and “continue to inspire future research endeavours”.

    Previous GFI India research has revealed that one in four Indians would consider giving up conventional meat, seafood, dairy or eggs in the future, citing issues like hygiene, smell, ease of cooking and heaviness on the stomach, as well as animal welfare and impact on the climate. Meanwhile, a three-country study from 2019 on consumer acceptance of cultured meat revealed that 56% of Indians are “very or extremely likely” to buy cultivated meat regularly. “Consumer education and perceptions will play an important role in advertising, marketing, and sale of cultivated meat,” said Tekkatte.

    This will also be influenced by prices. “The cost of cultivated meat production will come down with scale — and the scale-up principles of cultivated meat biomanufacturing are sound and have been demonstrated in biopharmaceuticals and vaccine manufacturing industries,” explained Tekkatte.

    cultivated meat india
    Courtesy: Myoworks

    She added that the Food Safety Standards Authority of India’s regulatory framework “needs to be made more dynamic and evolve in tandem with innovations”. Cultivated meat falls under the Food Safety and Standards Regulations (FSSAI) set out in 2017, which rules that if a product or ingredient doesn’t have a history of human consumption – or is obtained using new tech with engineering processes that significantly alter its composition – it’s classed as a non-specified or novel food product.

    In 2020, the FSSAI formed the Working Group on Cultured Meat with regulatory and scientific experts to study the possible regulatory pathways for cultivated meat in India. “Early engagement with cultivated meat companies intending to apply for pre-market approvals under the Non-Specified Foods Regulations during the development process would enable the regulatory body to have oversight of the development process, leading to effective, timely guidance to the companies to ensure regulatory compliance and appropriate data submission to reduce approval timelines,” Tekkatte outlined.

    “The significance of channelling resources into the cultivated meat industry is particularly relevant in India, with our unique vulnerability to climate change and public health crises. With this massive decrease in land use, additional opportunities arise for the diversification of crops towards direct food consumption,” she said. “As we funnel more investment towards R&D and infrastructure, there’s no doubt that the cultivated meat sector can grow exponentially in India and help cater to the increasing protein needs of the global population.”

    The post ‘Immense Potential’: Indian Government Body to Develop Cultivated Fish in Partnership with Neat Meatt appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • BEL, IIT Delhi ink MoU to transform breakthroughs in Deep Tech research into products for Indian Navy

    Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) has joined hands with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT Delhi to translate breakthroughs in Naval Deep Tech research being carried out at CARE – IIT Delhi, into products for Indian Navy. BEL and IIT Delhi today signed an MoU for R&D collaborations in […]

    The post BEL, IIT Delhi ink MoU to transform breakthroughs in Deep Tech research into products for Indian Navy appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.