ASIA

[kmaherali]

Why voters in southern India are more resistant to Modi’s Hindu-centric politics

CHENNAI, India (AP) — Prime Minister Narendra Modi has wielded near-total control over Indian politics since coming to power 10 years ago, with one exception: He has failed to win over the country’s wealthier southern region.

Five states across southern India account for roughly 20% of the country’s population and 30% of its economy. They are the heartbeat of India’s manufacturing and high-tech sectors. They are ethnically diverse and proudly multilingual. They empower women with educational and employment opportunities and have a long history of progressive politics.

Not one of them is controlled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — a stark rejection of its Hindu-nationalist agenda that enjoys wide support in northern India.

The BJP is expected to win India’s election when results are announced in June, delivering Modi another five years as prime minister. But the odds are also high of strong resistance in the south. That would deny Modi his ambition of uniting all of India behind him and limit how far he can push the BJP agenda of promoting one religion and language over others.


A boy holds a placard at a rally for Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party leader and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu state, M. K. Stalin, in the southern Indian city of Chennai, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)


Pinarayi Vijayan, Chief Minister of the southern Indian state of Kerala, speaks during a protest against the federal government in New Delhi, India, Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)


Supporters rest by a large cut out of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu state, M. K. Stalin, following an election rally in the southern Indian city of Chennai, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

“If you conceive of a Hindi-speaking, unified civilization as the reason you exist, then that becomes a significant barrier for you to cross,” data scientist and political analyst Neelakantan R.S. said.

Voters and leaders of India’s southern states have different needs than their counterparts in the north, which is more rural and populous. One thing they want is greater recognition from the Modi government of the key role their region plays in advancing the country’s economy.

They feel their outsized contribution to India’s tax base is betrayed by Modi’s preferential treatment for poorer northern states, which receive a disproportionate amount of government funds for development projects and social welfare programs.

INDIA ELECTION 2024
FILE- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sandalwood paste and vermilion applied on his forehead during the inauguration of Kashi Vishwanath Dham Corridor, a promenade that connects the Ganges River with the centuries-old temple dedicated to Hindu god Shiva in Varanasi, India, Dec. 13, 2021. Hindu nationalism, once a fringe ideology in India, is now mainstream. Nobody has done more to advance this cause than Modi, one of India’s most beloved and polarizing political leaders. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh, File)
Once a fringe Indian ideology, Hindu nationalism is now mainstream, thanks to Modi’s decade in power
This combo photograph shows Indian voters, top row left to right, Raj Sud, 94, Niranjan Kapasi, 89 , Kuldip Chadha, 79, Ajay Sud, 63, Dhiren Singh, 58, and in second row, left to right, Ajay Jasra, 56, Retha Singh, 49, Shruti Sud, 34, Manya Sachdev, 22 and Anita Jasra, 18, as they talk to the Associated Press about the national elections, in New Delhi, India, March 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
What’s on the voters’ minds as India heads into a 6-week national election
Polling officials and security personnel headed to a remote polling booth travel on a boat to cross the river Brahmaputra on the eve of parliament election at Baghmora Chapori (small island) of Majuli, northeastern Assam, India, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Ferrying voting machines to mountains and tropical areas in Indian elections is a Herculean task
Modi’s injection of religion into politics only exacerbates tensions with many southern voters.

Despite the strong opposition, Modi is campaigning aggressively in the south. His goal is for the BJP to win enough seats in the lower house of parliament to secure a two-thirds majority. That much power could embolden the party to try changing the constitution to serve its Hindu-centric goals, political analyst Kavitha Muralidharan said.

“A super majority is what they need to launch a full-scale, pan-India, Hindutva experiment,” Muralidharan said, referring to the century-old ideology guiding Modi.

MODI’S SOUTHERN STRATEGY


FILE- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi displays the Bharatiya Janata Party symbol during an election road show in the southern Indian city of Chennai, India, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. (AP Photo/File)

Modi has made some 20 trips this year to five southern states: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. They control roughly a quarter of the 543 seats in the lower house of parliament — and if the BJP can win just a few more than the 29 seats it won from these states in 2019, its super majority is within reach.

But experts are skeptical this will happen because southern voters have deep connections to regional political parties that have dominated for decades and are the BJP’s toughest electoral opponents nationwide.

Modi is heavily focused on the southernmost state, Tamil Nadu, where the BJP did not win any of its 39 seats up for grabs in the 2019 election.

On a recent visit there, Modi wore the region’s traditional white silk garment -- a veshti -- wrapped around his lower body, and he used artificial intelligence software to have his speeches translated in real-time from Hindi to Tamil.

“As the world’s oldest language, Tamil fills us with immense pride,” Modi said recently, making an apparent effort to tamp down rumors that the BJP wants to impose the Hindi language on the state.

Still, Dileep Kumar, a computer engineer in Bengaluru, said voters in Tamil Nadu are wary. “I can’t go and say to a Hindi guy, brother, please quit your Hindi and start talking in Tamil. That’s not going to work, will it?” he said.

One BJP candidate running for parliament in the state’s capital of Chennai believes the party has its best shot in years at gaining support.


Supporters welcome Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party candidate Thamizhachi Thangapandian, riding an open-roofed tuk-tuk, during an election roadshow in Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, April 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)


India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Tamilisai Soundararajan, center, holds up a sword during an election campaign rally in Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, April 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

“His frequent visits are helping us,” Tamilisai Soundararajan said. “People here were electrified when they saw the prime minister.”

But the incumbent she’s up against is doubtful. Hindu-centric politics won’t resonate in a place with a long history of social justice and equal rights movements, said Thamizhachi Thangapandian, a retired college professor who is a member of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, the BJP’s strongest rival in Tamil Nadu.

The beat of drums and firecrackers welcomed Thangapandian as she greeted voters recently riding an open-roofed tuk-tuk through Chennai’s alleyways. The achievements of her party blared through a set of speakers, including a reference to keeping out the “religion crazy” BJP.

Modi routinely mentions on the campaign trail the recent construction of a Hindu temple atop a razed mosque, but the issue doesn’t animate voters in southern India like it does elsewhere.

Southern India is home to some of the country’s most visited temples and has millions of Hindu devotees. What sets it apart, experts say, is that religion hasn’t been weaponized for political gain.

“People are religious here,” said Muralidharan, the political analyst. “But it doesn’t convert into a frenzy.”

Devotees perform rituals inside Mylapore temple in the southern Indian city of Chennai, April 15, 2024. Southern India is home to some of the country's most visited temples and has millions of Hindu devotees. What sets it apart, experts say, is that religion hasn't been weaponized for political gain. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Devotees perform rituals inside Mylapore temple in the southern Indian city of Chennai, April 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Flower vendors set up their shops as devotees walk outside Mylapore temple in the southern Indian city of Chennai, April 15, 2024. Southern India is home to some of the country's most visited temples and has millions of Hindu devotees. What sets it apart, experts say, is that religion hasn't been weaponized for political gain. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)


Flower vendors set up their shops as devotees walk outside Mylapore temple in the southern Indian city of Chennai, April 15, 2024. AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

The BJP’s religious zealotry makes leaders in the region nervous because of its potential to create a “disturbance to the peace” in a place with a global reputation as a good place to do business, said G Sundarrajan, a robotics entrepreneur in Chennai, where Hyundai and Foxconn (the maker of Apple iPhones) have located factories.

“Investors prefer Tamil Nadu precisely because its peaceful, has a large educated labor force and support from local government,” he said.

Modi tempers his Hindu-nationalist rhetoric while visiting the south, focusing his speeches instead on economics. For example, he has promised to build a high-speed rail line that would run through southern India and to help develop fisheries and auto manufacturing.

TENSION OVER REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH

The economy of southern India is more industrialized than the north, its cities are more urbanized, and its youth are more educated.

Southern Indian cities have also become a magnet for global technology companies seeking to diversify beyond China, including Apple and Google. The vast potential for India’s economy, now the world’s fifth-largest, is a point of pride for Modi.

But political leaders in southern India feel short-changed by Modi.

Tamil Nadu, India’s second-wealthiest state, receives far less in return for every rupee in taxes it pays compared with poorer northern states like Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, which receive government investments equal to two or three times the amount they pay in taxes.

This tension over the redistribution of wealth from south to north existed long before Modi came to power. But the BJP has made it worse.

Southern leaders believe Modi’s priorities lie in the north, where he derives the bulk of his support. They worry that the BJP government will snatch away even more decision-making power from states if their majority grows, said Muralidharan.

Southern leaders have protested against the Modi government for holding up development funding, for misusing federal agencies to target political opponents in the region, and for not sending enough emergency relief after natural disasters.

And they believe their fight against the BJP and Modi is existential.

“In southern India, the threat of being reduced to a vassal state is a serious problem,” said Neelakantan, the political analyst.


Giant cutouts of opposition political party leaders tower over supporters during a rally, on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Chennai, April 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

[kmaherali]

Global Tensions and a Hostile Neighbor Await Taiwan’s New Leader

President Lai Ching-te has pledged to stay on his predecessor’s narrow path of resisting Beijing without provoking it. It won’t be easy.


President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan taking his oath during the inauguration ceremony in Taipei on Monday.Credit...Chi Chih-Hsiang/Taipei News Photographer Association, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, was sworn into office on Monday, vowing to keep the island democracy safe in the face of Chinese pressure and wars raging abroad that have fed uncertainty over Western staying power.

In his inaugural address, Mr. Lai was by turns conciliatory and unyielding on how the island should preserve its brittle peace with China, which claims Taiwan as its territory. He said he hoped to hold talks with Beijing. But he set out broad conditions that China’s leaders were unlikely to accept and vowed that Taiwan would keep building ties with fellow democracies as it fortified against China’s military buildup.

Taiwan must not “harbor any delusions,” Mr. Lai said.

“Even if we were to accept China’s proposals in their entirety and forsake sovereignty, China’s attempts to swallow up Taiwan would not disappear,” he said. “In the face of the many threats and attempts of infiltration from China, we must demonstrate our resolution to defend our nation.”

The Chinese government’s office for Taiwanese affairs quickly denounced Mr. Lai’s speech, accusing him of “inciting antagonism and confrontation across the strait.”

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The image of a man in a suit is projected on two screens before a giant crowd of people, many wearing white bucket hats.

Mr. Lai waving to the inauguration crowd on Monday. China denounced his inaugural speech as “inciting antagonism” amid continued tensions between Beijing and Taipei.Credit...Ritchie B Tongo/EPA, via Shutterstock

Many Taiwanese people want stable relations with Beijing, and want Mr. Lai’s government to focus on fixing Taiwan’s economic and social ills. But even with strong bipartisan support from Washington, Taiwan faces a more perilous world, and a more powerful China, than when Mr. Lai’s predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, took office in 2016.

Back then, the hard-line policies of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, were starting to galvanize Western opposition. Now Western nations are also weighed down by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East; Mr. Xi has been seeking to weaken American-led alliances forged against China; and the United States’ looming elections are adding to uncertainty about the direction of its foreign policy.

“It’s a much more fraught international environment for Lai in 2024 than Tsai in 2016,” said Kharis Templeman, a research fellow who studies Taiwanese politics at the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University. “The war in Ukraine, China’s turn toward even greater domestic repression, the deterioration in U.S.-China relations, and the last eight years of cross-strait hostility put Lai in a more difficult position.”

A woman in a gray suit and a man in a blue suit wave from behind a row of flowers. A man in military dress stands between them.

Tsai Ing-wen, the former president of Taiwan, and Mr. Lai during his inauguration on Monday. Mr. Lai ascends to office amid a far different geopolitical mood than during Ms. Tsai’s time.Credit...Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Long before Mr. Lai took office, Beijing made plain that it dislikes him even more than it did Ms. Tsai. Chinese officials often cite a remark he made in 2017 in which he called himself a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence.” Mr. Lai’s supporters say that he meant Taiwan should exercise self-rule without seeking formal independence. That qualification does not mollify China, and it again called him a “worker for Taiwanese independence” on Monday.

In his speech, Mr. Lai called for dialogue with leaders in Beijing — based on accepting Taiwan as a sovereign equal, still officially called the Republic of China. He also urged both sides to agree on reviving tourism between them, and allowing Chinese students to attend Taiwanese universities.

But Mr. Xi was unlikely to accept Mr. Lai’s conditions for talks, said Amanda Hsiao, the senior analyst for China with the International Crisis Group, which seeks to defuse conflicts. China froze high-level contacts with Taiwan after Ms. Tsai took office in 2016, accusing her of failing to endorse a “consensus” that Taiwan and the mainland are part of one China, Beijing’s condition for talks.

“The two sides are far away from a basis for dialogue that both sides can accept,” Ms. Hsiao said. “The utility of these formulations lies in their very ambiguity, but Lai seems to be saying that without more gestures of sincerity from Beijing, the cost of accepting such ambiguity is too high.”

In the coming weeks and months, China may step up military and trade pressure on Taiwan to try to weaken Mr. Lai’s presidency. It has maintained a steady presence of fighter jets near the island and more recently has sent coast guard ships near Kinmen, a Taiwanese-controlled island near the Chinese mainland, moves aimed at intimidating while stopping short of a conflict that could draw in Washington.

But Mr. Xi’s desire to stabilize relations with Washington and focus on repairing China’s economy has reduced his willingness to risk a crisis. And Beijing is also likely to wait for the result of the U.S. presidential election late this year before considering big steps on Taiwan.

“Lai’s speech isn’t going to launch a P.R.C. amphibious invasion of Taiwan, but it’s not going to change Xi Jinping’s conviction that Lai is a dangerous ‘worker for independence’,” Daniel Russel, a former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said of the likely reaction from the People’s Republic of China, or P.R.C.

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Two people, one carrying a small child, walk along a sidewalk past a wall with a large sign that reads, “American Institute in Taiwan.”

The American Institute in Taiwan.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

American support remains vital for Taiwan’s ability to counter China’s military pressure. Mr. Lai used his speech to promote Taiwan’s global significance — as a frontline in countering China, as a trade and technology power, and as an exemplary democracy.

“The future of cross-strait relations will have a decisive impact on the world,” he said. “This means that we, who have inherited a democratic Taiwan, are pilots for peace.”

Congress recently approved a supplemental spending package that released $8.1 billion of military aid for Taiwan and for enhancing the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Vessels from the U.S. and Taiwanese navies also held a joint military exercise in the Pacific last month, Taiwan’s ministry of defense said last week.

“Peace through strength is going to be his main posture on cross-strait relations,” Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub who analyzes Taiwanese politics, said of Mr. Lai.

There is increasingly sharp debate in Taiwan about how much the United States can help build up the island’s military in the next few years while still addressing Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s offensive in Gaza, neither of which is expected to end soon.

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Armored vehicles full of soldiers in camouflage drive through a dusty area with trees in the background.

Anti-landing military drills in the Bali district of Taiwan last year.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Taiwan’s backlog of undelivered orders of arms and military equipment from the United States had grown to nearly $20 billion by late April, according to estimates from Eric Gomez and Benjamin Giltner of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank. The additional funds that Congress recently approved for Taiwan would be “helpful, but not a silver bullet,” Mr. Gomez said in an email.

Mr. Lai’s opponents in Taiwan say that he risks driving the island down a security dead end — unable to talk with Beijing and yet ill prepared for any confrontation. Fu Kun-chi, a Nationalist Party member of Taiwan’s legislature who recently visited China, pointed to Ukraine as a warning.

“Since ancient times, people from a small country or region have not gone up against the biggest country next door for a fight,” Mr. Fu said in an interview. “Would it really be in the interest of Americans to have a war across the Taiwan Strait? I really don’t think so, and for the United States to face three battlefields at the same time, is it possible?”

The political divisions that could drag on Mr. Lai’s administration were on raucous display last week in the chamber, called the Legislative Yuan. Lawmakers from the rival parties shoved, shouted and brawled over proposed new rules about scrutinizing government officials. Opponents of the rules have called for demonstrations on Tuesday.

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A confused scene of many people, some in matching blue vests, milling around and pushing or shoving one another.

Taiwan lawmakers arguing during a parliamentary session in Taipei on Friday.Credit...Ann Wang/Reuters

Mr. Lai won a three-way race for the presidency in January with a little over 40 percent of the vote. A former doctor with a humble background, Mr. Lai also pledged to take on domestic problems such as a growing wealth gap and rising costs for housing.

But Mr. Lai could find it hard to push through his agenda, with the two main opposition parties holding the majority of seats in the legislature. In his speech, he called for the rival parties to work together.

“There is nothing he can do as president if the Legislative Yuan is stuck in brawls,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “He has to find a way to get them to cooperate. If he cannot, then nothing else matters.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

China Has a Plan for Its Housing Crisis. Here’s Why It’s Not Enough.

A new approach by China’s top leaders is bold but pales against the problem: a vast number of empty apartments no one wants to buy.


The abandoned shells of several unfinished apartment towers with weeds growing in a path between them.

An abandoned construction site in Weifang, China, last October.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
Alexandra Stevenson
By Alexandra Stevenson
Reporting from Hong Kong

China has a housing problem. A very big one. It has nearly four million apartments that no one wants to buy, a combined expanse of unwanted living space roughly the area of Philadelphia.

Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, and his deputies have called on the government to buy them.

The plan, announced last week, is the boldest move yet by Beijing to stop the tailspin of a housing crisis that threatens one of the world’s biggest economies. It was also not nearly enough.

China has a bigger problem lurking behind all those empty apartments: even more homes that developers already sold but have not finished building. By one conservative estimate, that figure is around 10 million apartments.

The scale of China’s real estate boom was breathtaking. The extent of its unrelenting bust, which began nearly four years ago, remains vast and unclear.

China’s leaders were already managing a slowdown after three decades of double-digit growth before the housing crisis created a downturn that is spiraling out of their control. Few experts believe that Beijing can transition to more sustainable growth without confronting all those empty apartments and the developers that overextended to build them. All told, trillions of dollars are owed to builders, painters, real estate agents, small companies and banks around the country.

After decades of promoting the biggest real estate boom the world has ever seen, and allowing it to become nearly one-third of China’s economic growth, Beijing stepped in suddenly in 2020 to cut off the easy money that fueled the expansion, setting off a chain of bankruptcies that shocked a nation of home buyers.

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People looking at a map on a wall showing a planned housing construction project.

A map of a construction project in Nantong, China.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

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A man wearing a cap with his back to a series of apartment towers, some of them with construction cranes on top.

A new residential development in Wuhan, China.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

It was the first test of Beijing’s determination to wean China’s economy off its decades-long dependence on building and construction to sustain the economy.

Now the government is confronting another test of its resolve. To stop the excesses of the past, it signaled over the last few years that no real estate company was too big to fail. But as dozens of big developers have gone bust, they have obliterated any confidence that remained in the housing market. Officials have since tried everything to restore optimism among buyers. Nothing has worked.


With few buyers, developers that are still standing are also on the brink of default. And they are intricately connected to local banks and the financial system that underpins the government in every village, town and city. One recent estimate, from the research firm Rhodium Group, put the real estate sector’s entire domestic borrowings, including loans and bonds, at more than $10 trillion, of which only a tiny portion have been recognized.

“Right now, not being able to sell homes looks like a risk, but it isn’t. More developers going bankrupt is,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank. The first big developers to default, like China Evergrande, were problems hiding in plain sight.

Evergrande’s initial default in December 2021 set off fears of China’s own “Lehman moment,” a reference to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, which set off a global financial meltdown. The fallout, however, was carefully and quietly managed through policy support that let Evergrande finish building many apartments. By the time a judge ordered the company to be liquidated five months ago, Evergrande had effectively ceased being a viable business.

But China has tens of thousands of smaller developers around the country. The only way for officials to stop the free fall in the market, Ms. Wang said, is to bail out some midsize developers in cities where the crisis is more acute.

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A person in a sales office looking down at a model of a construction project.

A sales office of a residential project in Nantong.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

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A police officer wearing dark pants and a light blue shirt and cap addressing a group of people gathered in front of an office building while a group of offices look on.

A police officer talking to people gathered outside China Evergrande’s office building in Shenzhen in 2021.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

China’s top leaders are instead refocusing the lens to address the millions of apartments that no one wants to buy, pledging to turn them into social housing at lower rents. They have committed $41.5 billion to help fund loans for state-owned companies to start buying unwanted property — altogether equivalent to eight billion square feet, of which a little more than four billion square feet is unsold apartments, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

When Beijing’s response was announced last week, shares in developers initially rallied. But some critics said the initiative had come too late. And most speculated that it would take a lot more money. Estimates ranged from $280 billion to $560 billion.

Officials in Beijing began softening their approach last year. They directed banks to funnel loans and other financing to dozens of real estate companies they deemed good enough to be on a government “white list.”

The support was not enough to stop housing prices from crashing.

Policymakers pulled other levers. They made their biggest cut ever to mortgage rates. They tried pilot programs to get residents to trade in old apartments and buy new ones. They even offered cheap loans to some cities to test out the idea of buying unsold apartments.

In all, local authorities tried out more than 300 measures to increase sales and bolster real estate companies, according to Caixin, a Chinese economic news outlet.

Still, the number of unsold homes continued to reach new levels. Prices of new homes kept falling. So at the end of April, Mr. Xi and his 23 top policymakers began to discuss the idea of taking some of those unwanted apartments off the market in a program not unlike the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which the U.S. government set up in the wake of the American housing market crash.

Last week, China’s most senior official in charge of the economy, Vice Premier He Lifeng, convened an online gathering of officials from across the country and delivered the news: It was time to start buying apartments. Not long after, the central bank loosened rules for mortgages and the central bank promised to make billions of dollars available to help state-owned companies buy apartments.

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A group of towers at a residential property development.

A residential development in Wuhan.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

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He Lifeng sitting at a desk flanked by two other men, all wearing dark suits, white shirts and ties.

Vice Premier He Lifeng, China’s most senior official in charge of the economy, convened a gathering of officials last week to announce the new approach.Credit...Tingshu Wang/Reuters

The move underscored just how worried the government had become about the dysfunctions in the housing market.

Yet almost as soon as state media reported Mr. He’s call on local governments to buy unsold apartments, economists started asking questions.

Would local governments be expected to buy all the unsold apartments? What if they, in turn, could not find buyers? And there was the price tag: Economists calculated that such a program should be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, not tens of billions.

More worryingly, to some, the central bank had already quietly started an apartment buyback program for eight hard-hit cities, committing $14 billion in cheap loans, of which only $280 million had been used. Those governments did not appear to be interested in using the loans for the same reason that consumers did not want to buy houses in smaller cities.

One big difference now, said John Lam, the head of China property research at UBS, the Swiss bank, is political will. The country’s most powerful leaders have said they stand behind a buyback plan. That will put political pressure on officials to act.

“The local government can acquire the apartments at a loss,” Mr. Lam said.

Yet in places where the population is shrinking, which are some of the same cities and towns where developers expanded most aggressively, there will be little need for social housing projects.

The optimistic view is that Beijing has more planned.

“Beijing is headed in the right direction with regard to ending the epic housing crisis,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at the Japanese bank Nomura, wrote in an email to clients.

The task, he added, was a daunting one that required “more patience when awaiting more draconian measures.”

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A wide and dark corridor between unfinished apartment towers.

An abandoned Evergrande commercial complex in Beijing.Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/busi ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Modi Struggles to Stay on Top: 4 Takeaways From India’s Election

The prime minister will keep his job, but his aura has been diminished and his leadership has fundamentally changed as the country’s multiparty democracy springs back to life.


Narendra Modi addressed his supporters at the B.J.P. headquarters after his third-term victory in New Delhi.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

Narendra Modi’s first decade as India’s prime minister came with its fair share of surprises. None, however, looked anything like what happened on Tuesday morning when he won his second re-election, but lost his party’s majority in Parliament.

With that loss, Mr. Modi’s air of invincibility also appeared to be fading for the first time since he took office in 2014.

The election results were especially shocking because, after nearly seven sweaty weeks of voting across the country, exit polls released just days before the final tally showed that Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party would win in a landslide, as it had twice before.

Instead, the Bharatiya Janata Party won only 240 seats, well short of the 272 needed to form a government. The opposition alliance, led by the Indian National Congress Party, took 235 seats.

With the 52 seats won by B.J.P. allies, Mr. Modi will remain on top. But his allure has been diminished, and his leadership has fundamentally changed.

Modi’s air of invincibility was punctured.

When Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, he promised economic progress, an end to corruption and to promote Hinduism as being central to India’s identity. Through it all, he presented himself as a uniquely strong leader, capable of marshaling his followers to work for the nation.

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A crowed of mostly men inside of a room. A small TV his hanging in the back.

Supporters of the Congress Party during a vote count.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

This was in contrast to the previous government. Before Mr. Modi was first elected, India spent 25 years being governed by coalitions. Prime ministers from the Congress Party, the B.J.P. and smaller third parties took turns running India by committee. Mr. Modi broke with that tradition, leading a new single-party system dominated by the B.J.P.

As leader, Mr. Modi showed little interest in sharing power. When he invalidated most of India’s paper currency in 2016, not even his finance minister knew about the decision in advance. When he decided to impose de facto martial law on Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, he presented the plan to Parliament as a done deal, without seeking approval.

But those days are over.

The two biggest parties that have emerged as the B.J.P.’s new coalition partners are led by N. Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar, veteran lawmakers who are known as technocratic moderates. Both are likely to demand greater authority in Parliament. In fact, both have been eyed as possible candidates for prime minister, if there were to be another coalition led by neither the B.J.P. nor the Congress.

India’s political map was remade overnight.

When the first nationwide electoral maps showing the number of seats gained and lost in Parliament were revealed on Tuesday, they showed a striking new pattern.

The maps showed that Mr. Modi’s party lost swaths of territory across states in the Hindi-speaking north that were considered B.J.P. strongholds.

At the same time, the B.J.P. made inroads in regions that had resisted Mr. Modi in the past. He lost dozens of seats in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, but he gained plenty in the eastern state of Odisha and the southern state of Telangana.

The only part of the country that now looks unified by one party is the “tribal belt,” which weaves across the central states. Its relatively poor communities have been skillfully targeted by the B.J.P.’s Hindu-first politics and welfare benefits.

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A motorbike blurs by a line of campaign posters.

Maps showed that Mr. Modi’s party lost swaths of territory across states in the Hindi-speaking north that were considered B.J.P. strongholds.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

India’s Wall Street twisted and turned.

Investors in India’s stock markets in Mumbai responded eagerly to the early exit polls. On Monday, they went on a buying spree, driving up the prices of so-called Modi stocks, those associated with the prime minister’s spending priorities or thought to benefit from his fiscal policies.

When the actual vote results were counted, those stocks came crashing down. Shares in the Adani Group’s flagship stock lost about 19 percent of their value in one day of trading. The blue-chip index lost about 6 percent, nearly wiping out its gains from the first five months of the year.

Mr. Modi remains popular with India’s business tycoons, but investors need to find out which companies will stand to benefit from a new government.

Chris Wood, the global head of equity strategy at Jefferies, an investment bank, warned last year that if Mr. Modi were to lose he “would expect a 25 percent correction, if not more” in the Indian stock market. Historically, Indian companies have done just as well during periods of coalition government. So, Mr. Wood said, even without Mr. Modi in power, he expects stocks to “bounce back sharply” based on the strength of the country’s economy as a whole.

Coalition politics are back — expect a game of musical chairs.

This new era in Parliament is sure to begin with a few rounds of political retribution. Politicians who failed to deliver seats for their bosses will be shown the door. Smaller parties are likely to demand cabinet positions, which will mean replacing members of the B.J.P.

Image
A man sitting with his arms raised is surrounded by a band that includes brass players and percussionists.

B.J.P. supporters celebrated outside party headquarters after seeing early results. Mr. Modi called the election a “celebration of democracy.”Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

Policies will need to be revised. Will India lean into export manufacturing, aiming to replace China as the world’s factory? Will it move to protect local industries that fear foreign competition?

Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, cautioned that India cannot exactly return to the coalition politics that preceded Mr. Modi. His new partners are likely to make demands that match the authoritarian style Mr. Modi exercises from New Delhi.

The kind of state leaders he now needs as coalition partners “are just as absolutist as the national government,” Mr. Vaishnav said. They could, for instance, call for federal police agencies to arrest opponents, as Mr. Modi has done.

India’s election was the biggest conducted in the history of democracy, with more than 600 million voters casting ballots in six phases. This time, there were no complaints about the electronic voting machines, or fears that India had become a dictatorship under Mr. Modi.

In a difficult speech delivered on Tuesday night from the B.J.P. headquarters, Mr. Modi called the election a “celebration of democracy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/04/worl ... 778d3e6de3

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She Thought Her Grip Was Unbreakable. Bangladeshis Would Prove Otherwise.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who once brought democratic hope to Bangladesh, turned increasingly autocratic and met her downfall in a crackdown on protesters.


Sheikh Hasina, who grew more authoritarian as prime minister over the years, fled into exile to India after widespread protests.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s life, as well as her politics, had been defined by an early trauma at once personal in its pain and national in its imprint.

In 1975, her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s charismatic founding leader, and most of their family were massacred in a military coup. Ms. Hasina, who was abroad at the time, was forced into exile in India.

Her eventual return and elevation to prime minister embodied Bangladesh’s hopes of a better, more democratic future. She was celebrated as a secular Muslim woman who tried to rein in a coup-prone military, stood up to Islamist militancy and reformed the impoverished country’s economy.

But in time, she changed. She grew more authoritarian, crushing dissent and exuding an entitlement that treated Bangladesh as her rightful inheritance. Then, on Monday, the years of repressive rule finally caught up with Ms. Hasina, and her story came full circle: She resigned under intense pressure from a vast protest movement and fled once again into exile.

Student-led protesters enraged at her deadly crackdown on their initially peaceful movement stormed her official residence and plundered nearly everything inside. They defaced her portraits and tore down statues of her father around the city, and attacked the homes and offices of her party officials.

Image
A man with a rope climbs a tall gold-colored statue of a man with one hand in his pocket as others congregate at the base and further below on the ground.

Protesters in Dhaka, Bangladesh, trying to pull down a statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Ms. Hasina’s father, on Monday.Credit...Rajib Dhar/Associated Press

Ms. Hasina’s hasty exit comes just months after she had secured a fourth consecutive five-year term in office and thought her grip on power was unbreakable. In her wake she leaves a Bangladesh plunged back into the chaos and violence that have marked the country from the beginning, when her father helped bring the nation into being.

Beyond the immediate jubilation among the protesters over her departure are more worrisome questions.

For now, this country of 170 million appears leaderless. Law enforcement agencies that killed at least 300 protesters have been discredited. The animosities between Ms. Hasina’s party and the opposition are unlikely to fade soon, and revenge for years of harsh suppression under her will be on the minds of many. There is also fear that a streak of Islamist militancy in Bangladesh society could resurface in the political vacuum.

“We are finally free of a dictatorial regime,” said Shahdeen Malik, a prominent constitutional lawyer and legal activist in Dhaka, the capital. “Earlier, we had military dictators. But this civilian dictator was more dictatorial than previous military dictators.”

Mr. Malik said that Ms. Hasina, during an initial term as prime minister in the late 1990s, was a breath of fresh air. Bangladesh’s politics had been marked by coups, counter-coups and assassinations. Ms. Hasina was democratic, and her party was trying to act with more accountability.

But after her return to power in 2009 — following electoral defeat, exile and an attempt on her life that left more than 20 dead — she appeared driven by darker instincts. In her opponents she saw an extension of the forces that had caused her lasting trauma.

She embarked on a mission to shape Bangladesh in the vision of her father, who had been accused before his assassination of trying to turn the country into a one-party state. Ms. Hasina cast seemingly everything in that light, in that vocabulary, as if the country had never gotten over those long-ago days.

Image
Amid shards of glass on the ground and walls with torn wallpaper, a person takes cellphone photos as others mill about.

People searching for items in the prime minister’s residence in Dhaka on Monday.Credit...Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

Her father’s image was everywhere. She lauded her supporters as the inheritors of the legacy of the country’s liberation from Pakistan — when Bangladesh gained independence — and demonized her opponents as traitors from that old war.

“It is undeniable that she suffered almost the highest degree of trauma, the death of her whole family,” Mr. Malik said. “We have always felt that her personal trauma reflected in her political actions and activity.”

In recent years, Ms. Hasina’s power relied on two pillars: a relentless crushing of the opposition to the point that it could not mobilize and an entrenching of an all-encompassing patronage network that would protect her to protect its own interests in turn.

When asked about her tactics, she would reply that the political opposition had in the past done even worse to her, and public sympathy for her traditional opponents remained limited. But what was clear was that the true test of her power would come over a bread-and-butter issue beyond power politics.

Last year, ahead of the election, the opposition showed some signs of regrouping around the stagnating economy. Ms. Hasina’s image as the architect of the country’s economic transformation had long dissolved, as its overreliance on the garment industry became clear and inequality deepened. Food prices were shooting up, and the country’s foreign reserves were dwindling to a dangerous low.

But her government had enough money to scrape by, and she turned to China and India diplomatically and economically as friends in time of need. She used her control over the security forces to break the opposition’s momentum, bogging her opponents down in dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of court cases in front of judges beholden to her.

Image
A helicopter soars amid thick clouds.

A helicopter believed to be carrying Ms. Hasina flew above Dhaka on Monday.Credit...Reuters TV/Reuters

The student protest that began last month was over a seemingly small issue: a quota system that gave preferential treatment in government jobs. But the anger was a manifestation of the wider economic stress.

In response to the demonstrations, Ms. Hasina, 76, turned to the repressive playbook that had thwarted all previous challenges. This time, though, it would lead to her downfall.

At first, she dismissed the students, describing them as the descendants of those who had betrayed Bangladesh in the war of independence that her father had won. When that angered the students, she resorted to a crackdown.

She sent her party’s aggressive youth wing to target what had been peaceful protesters. When clashes broke out, she sent more force into the streets — the police, the army and even the Rapid Action Battalion, an antiterrorism unit that has been accused of torture and disappearances.

Her situation turned precarious once the streets turned to carnage late in July, with more than 200 people, most of them students and other young people, killed. She deepened the crackdown — declaring a curfew, cutting off the internet, rounding up 10,000 people into jails and accusing tens of thousands more of crimes. The protest movement appeared dispersed.

“Ultimately, of course people will be silenced if this goes on forever,” Naomi Hossain, a scholar of Bangladesh at the School of Oriental and African Studies, said as the crackdown intensified. “How long can you keep protesting when your friends are being gunned down? But the cost may be so high that, you know, all support” for Ms. Hasina is lost.

When the curfew and the communications blackout eased, it quickly became clear that the protest movement had not been snuffed out and that it had expanded to seeking accountability for the earlier bloodshed.

Image
An aerial view of throngs of people spread out on wide steps leading to a building complex.

A drone photo showed people around Bangladesh’s Parliament House. In an address to the nation, the army chief, Gen. Waker-Uz-Zaman, announced that an interim government would be formed to run the country.Credit...Monirul Alam/EPA, via Shutterstock

On Sunday, the protesters gathered in their largest numbers yet. When Ms. Hasina responded once again with force, and nearly 100 people were killed in the deadliest single day of the protests, it became clear that the fear she had long engendered had been broken.

When the protesters on Sunday called for a march on her residence the next day, her response seemed defiant — she called on the nation “to curb anarchists with iron hands.”

In the early hours of Monday, the roads leading to her residence in Dhaka were heavily barricaded. The internet was shut down and public transport halted. The security forces tried to hold back the large crowds at the city gates.

But by midday, it became apparent that those tactics were meant only to buy time for what was happening behind the scenes. Ms. Hasina had resigned and was leaving the country, and the army chief was in consultations with the political parties over an interim government.

Grainy cellphone videos showed Ms. Hasina getting out of a black S.U.V. at a military air base, where a helicopter was waiting. She departed for India, where she is expected to stay before moving on to another destination, most likely London.

The army chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, addressed the nation, announcing the end of her rule. He promised “justice for all the murders and wrongdoings.”

Video: https://nyti.ms/4dwKXqy
Bangladesh Prime Minister Flees Country After Weeks of Protests

1:08

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled Bangladesh under intense pressure from a growing protest movement enraged by her government’s deadly crackdowns.CreditCredit...K M Asad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For the protesters, jubilation was immediate. They poured into the streets and stormed her residence — to take selfies and souvenirs. One protester walked away with a plant, another some chickens and yet another a single plate. One had a giant fish from the prime ministerial pond.

But signs of lingering anger were evident as night fell. Protesters pulled down statues of Ms. Hasina’s father, set fire to the museum erected in his name (at the house where he had been assassinated) and attacked the homes of her ministers and party officials. There were also reports of attacks against the homes and places of worship of minority Hindus, raising fears that the Islamist elements she had contained might be emboldened.

“It will not be enough for Sheikh Hasina to flee,” Nahid Islam, one of the student protest leaders, who was detained twice during the crackdown and tortured, said after the prime minister fled. “We will bring her to justice.”

Saif Hasnat and Shayeza Walid contributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/worl ... 778d3e6de3

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How China Built Tech Prowess: Chemistry Classes and Research Labs

Stressing science education, China is outpacing other countries in research fields like battery chemistry, crucial to its lead in electric vehicles.


CATL, a leading battery maker, showcased its technology at a Shanghai auto trade show last year.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

China’s domination of electric cars, which is threatening to start a trade war, was born decades ago in university laboratories in Texas, when researchers discovered how to make batteries with minerals that were abundant and cheap.

Companies from China have recently built on those early discoveries, figuring out how to make the batteries hold a powerful charge and endure more than a decade of daily recharges. They are inexpensively and reliably manufacturing vast numbers of these batteries, producing most of the world’s electric cars and many other clean energy systems.

Batteries are just one example of how China is catching up with — or passing — advanced industrial democracies in its technological and manufacturing sophistication. It is achieving many breakthroughs in a long list of sectors, from pharmaceuticals to drones to high-efficiency solar panels.

Beijing’s challenge to the technological leadership that the United States has held since World War II is evidenced in China’s classrooms and corporate budgets, as well as in directives from the highest levels of the Communist Party.

A considerably larger share of Chinese students major in science, math and engineering than students in other big countries do. That share is rising further, even as overall higher education enrollment has increased more than tenfold since 2000.

Spending on research and development has surged, tripling in the past decade and moving China into second place after the United States. Researchers in China lead the world in publishing widely cited papers in 52 of 64 critical technologies, recent calculations by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reveal.

Image
Many rows of white and blue electric vehicles packed tightly together.

China’s advances in battery research have helped it gain a dominant position in electric vehicles. Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

Last month, China’s leaders vowed to turn the nation’s research efforts up another notch.

A once-a-decade meeting of China’s Communist Party leadership chose scientific training and education as one of the country’s top economic priorities. That goal received more attention in the meeting’s final resolution than any other policy did, except strengthening the party itself.

China will “make extraordinary arrangements for urgently needed disciplines and majors,” said Huai Jinpeng, the minister of education. “We will implement a national strategy for cultivating top talents.”

A majority of undergraduates in China major in math, science, engineering or agriculture, according to the Education Ministry. And three-quarters of China’s doctoral students do so.

By comparison, only a fifth of American undergraduates and half of doctoral students are in these categories, although American data defines these majors a little more narrowly.

China’s lead is particularly wide in batteries. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 65.5 percent of widely cited technical papers on battery technology come from researchers in China, compared with 12 percent from the United States.

Image
A large cluster of low-slung buildings with blue roofs and red and white walls.

A CATL battery factory in Ningde, China, last year.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

Both of the world’s two largest makers of electric car batteries, CATL and BYD, are Chinese.

China has close to 50 graduate programs that focus on either battery chemistry or the closely related subject of battery metallurgy. By contrast, only a handful of professors in the United States are working on batteries.

Undergraduates in the United States are becoming interested in battery research, said Hillary Smith, a battery physics professor at Swarthmore College. But, she added, “they are going to compete for a very few spots if they want to do battery research, and most will have to choose something else.”

The roots of China’s battery successes are visible at Central South University in Changsha, a city in south-central China and a longtime hub of China’s chemicals industry.

Central South University has nearly 60,000 undergraduate and graduate students on an extensive, modern campus. Its chemistry department, once in a small brick building, has moved to a six-story concrete building with labyrinths of labs and classrooms.

Image
A man standing inside a lab with equipment.

Zhu Fangjun, a doctoral student, shows the equipment in a chemistry lab at Central South University in Changsha.Credit...Keith Bradsher/The New York Times

In one lab, which is filled with glowing red lights, hundreds of batteries with new chemistries are tested at the same time. Electron microscopes and other advanced equipment occupy other rooms.

“For us, the experimental equipment is sufficient to meet everyone’s testing needs,” said Zhu Fangjun, a doctoral student.

Peng Wenjie, a professor, has set up a battery research company nearby that employs more than 100 recent doctoral and master’s program graduates and over 200 assistants. The assistants work in relays for each researcher so that the testing of new chemistries and designs continues 24 hours a day.

“There are many people on site to do the tests, so the efficiency is very high,” Professor Peng said.

China’s broadening expertise in manufacturing has created an active debate in other countries, notably the United States, over whether to invite Chinese companies to build factories or whether to try to duplicate what China has accomplished.

Image
A gray building with motorcycles in front of it.

The College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Central South University in Changsha, China, has extensive laboratories for battery research.Credit...Keith Bradsher/The New York Times

“If the U.S. wants to build up a supply chain quickly, the best way is to invite Chinese companies, and they will set it up very quickly and bring technology,” said Feng An, the founder of the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation, a nonprofit research group in Beijing and Los Angeles.

Manufacturing makes up 28 percent of China’s economy, compared with 11 percent in the United States. China’s hope is that investments in scientific education and research will translate into efficiency gains that will help lift the entire economy, said Liu Qiao, the dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.

“If you have a large manufacturing sector,” he said, “it’s easy to improve productivity levels.”

China’s manufacturing prowess has become a geopolitical issue, however. The government subsidies and policies that have helped fuel the factory boom have left many other countries wary of buying more of China’s exports.

The European Union has imposed formidable provisional tariffs on electric vehicles from China. In the United States, which has also used tariffs to effectively block China’s E.V. companies, political and commercial pressure has impeded ventures with Chinese battery makers.

Image
Peng Wenjie, a professor, wearing a white shirts and dark color pants, stands amid testing machinery in a chemistry lab.

Peng Wenjie, a professor at Central South University in Changsha, China, in a chemistry lab with rubber safety gloves used for conducting chemical experiments.Credit...Keith Bradsher/The New York Times

Still, China’s battery companies are looking for ways to produce in the United States for the American market. Building and equipping an electric-car battery factory in the United States costs six times as much as in China, said Robin Zeng, the chairman and founder of CATL.

The work is also slow — “three times longer,” he said in an interview.

The United States still leads China in overall research spending, in terms of dollars spent and also in terms of the share of each country’s economy. Research and development represented 3.4 percent of the American economy last year after several years of increases.

But China is at 2.6 percent and rising.

“What happens when China passes the U.S. in R&D and they have the manufacturing base?” asked Craig Allen, the president of the U.S.-China Business Council, which represents American companies doing business in China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/busi ... 778d3e6de3

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China’s Great Wall of Villages

China has moved thousands of people to new settlements on its frontiers. It calls them “border guardians.”

Qionglin New Village sits deep in the Himalayas, just three miles from a region where a heavy military buildup and confrontations between Chinese and Indian troops have brought fears of a border war.

The land was once an empty valley, more than 10,000 feet above the sea, traversed only by local hunters. Then Chinese officials built Qionglin, a village of cookie-cutter homes and finely paved roads, and paid people to move there from other settlements.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls such people “border guardians.” Qionglin’s villagers are essentially sentries on the front line of China’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh, India’s easternmost state, which Beijing insists is part of Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Many villages like Qionglin have sprung up. In China’s west, they give its sovereignty a new, undeniable permanence along boundaries contested by India, Bhutan and Nepal. In its north, the settlements bolster security and promote trade with Central Asia. In the south, they guard against the flow of drugs and crime from Southeast Asia.


16 miles to border claimed by IndiaJiagang Village

Inside territory claimed by BhutanGyalaphug (Jieluobu) Village

15 miles to TajikistanFumin Village and Aimin Village

<1 mile to Vietnam Shibanzhai New Village


Sources: Jiagang Village – video still from CCTV (state media); Gyalaphug Village – local government of Luozha county, Shannan (Lhoka), Tibet Autonomous Region; Fumin Village and Aimin Village – Tian Shan Wang (state media); Shibanzhai – Hong He Daily (state media)

The buildup is the clearest sign that Mr. Xi is using civilian settlements to quietly solidify China’s control in far-flung frontiers, just as he has with fishing militias and islands in the disputed South China Sea.

The New York Times mapped and analyzed settlements along China’s border to create the first detailed visual representation of how the country has reshaped its frontiers with strategic civilian outposts, in just eight years.

Working with the artificial intelligence company RAIC Labs, which scanned satellite images of China’s entire land border captured by Planet Labs, The Times identified the locations of new villages and checked them against historical images, state media, social media posts and public records.

The mapping reveals that China has put at least one village near every accessible Himalayan pass that borders India, as well as on most of the passes bordering Bhutan and Nepal, according to Matthew Akester, an independent researcher on Tibet, and Robert Barnett, a professor from SOAS University of London. Mr. Akester and Mr. Barnett, who have studied Tibet’s border villages for years, reviewed The Times’s findings.

Inside territory claimed by IndiaDemchok (Dianjiao) Village

Defenders of our nation’s sacred

land, builders of happy homes”

First village in the defense

and security of the border”


Source: China United Front News Network (state media)

The outposts are civilian in nature, but they also provide China’s military with roads, access to the internet and power, should it want to move troops quickly to the border. Villagers serve as eyes and ears in remote areas, discouraging intruders or runaways.

“China does not want outsiders to be able to walk across the border for any distance without being challenged by its security personnel or citizens,” Mr. Akester said.

The buildup of settlements fuels anxiety in the region about Beijing’s ambitions. The threat of conflict is ever present: Deadly clashes have broken out along the border between troops from India and China since 2020, and tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides remain on a war footing.

China’s Eyes and Ears

The first signs of Mr. Xi’s ambitions emerged in 2017, when state media told the story of a letter he wrote to two Tibetan sisters in the remote village of Yume, in a region near Arunachal Pradesh that is blanketed by deep snow for more than half the year.

He praised their family for having protected the area for China for decades, despite the inhospitable terrain: “I hope you continue your spirit as a patriot and border guardian.”

Over the next few years, workers built dozens of new homes in Yume, and officials moved over 200 people there.

Yume, also known as Yumai in Chinese, is among at least 90 new villages and expanded settlements that have sprung up in Tibet since 2016, when China began outlining its border village plan in the region, The Times found. In neighboring Xinjiang and Yunnan, The Times identified six new and 59 expanded border villages. (China says there are hundreds of villages like them, but few details are available and many appear to be mere upgrades of existing villages.)

Of the new villages The Times identified in Tibet, one is on land claimed by India, though within China’s de facto border; 11 other settlements are in areas contested by Bhutan. Some of those 11 villages are near the Doklam region, the site of a standoff between troops from India and China in 2017 over Chinese attempts to extend a road.

A Times investigation found 12 villages in disputed areas
Disputed areas


Villages in disputed areas

Other villages


CHINA

CHINA

TIBET

Arunachal

Pradesh

Controlled by India

Claimed by China

BHUTAN

INDIA

MYANMAR

50 miles


Source: RAIC Labs and The Times analysis of Planet Labs satellite imagery

China makes clear that the villages are there for security. In 2020, a leader of a Tibetan border county told state media that he was relocating more than 3,000 people to frontier areas that were “weakly controlled, disputed or empty.”

Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst based in New Delhi, said that in quietly building militarized villages in disputed borderlands, China is replicating on land an expansionist approach that it has used successfully in the South China Sea.

“What stands out is the speed and stealth with which China is redrawing facts on the ground, with little regard for the geopolitical fallout,” Mr. Chellaney said. “China has been planting settlers in whole new stretches of the Himalayan frontier with India and making them its first line of defense.”

In a written response to The Times, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said that in dealing with border issues with its neighbors, “China always strives to find fair and reasonable solutions through peaceful and friendly consultations.”

India and Bhutan did not respond to requests for comment about the buildup. Indian officials have previously noted “infrastructure construction activity” by China along the border. Local leaders in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh have complained to The Times that China was slowly cutting away small pieces of Indian territory.


9 miles to border claimed by IndiaXingkai Village

April 2021

April 2022

October 2017

January 2022

October 2019

December 2022

January 2024

500 feet


Source: Satellite images from Planet Labs

India has responded with what it calls “Vibrant Villages,” a campaign that aims to revive hundreds of villages along the border.

But China is outbuilding India, says Brian Hart, an analyst for the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or C.S.I.S., who recently co-authored a report on border villages in Tibet.

Among other findings, the C.S.I.S. report identified what appeared to be a militarized facility in one such village, known as Migyitun, or Zhari in Chinese, an indication of the settlements’ dual-use nature. The Times studied satellite images of the same village and identified military trucks and tents, as well as what appeared to be a shooting range nearby.

Some border villages have military and dual-use infrastructure

6 miles to border claimed by IndiaMigyitun (Zhari) Village

Heavy trucks

Satellite dish

Gated

entrance

Likely military facility

150 feet


C.S.I.S.; Satellite image from Maxar Technologies

The villages also serve as propaganda: a display of Chinese strength and superiority in the region, said Jing Qian, co-founder of the Center for China Analysis at the Asia Society.

“They want the Indians, Central Asians and others to see and think that Chinese villages are so good, that the China model is working very well.”

Uncertain Future, Unforgiving Terrain

The slice of the Himalayas where many Chinese villages have sprung up has been largely uninhabited for good reason. Its rocky, icy terrain is particularly forbidding in winter, with roads buried many months of the year by deep snow. The air is thin and cold. The land is barren, making farming difficult.

To persuade residents to move there, Chinese Communist Party officials promised them their new homes would be cheap. They would receive annual subsidies and get paid extra if they took part in border patrols. Chinese propaganda outlets said the government would provide jobs and help promote local businesses and tourism. The villages would come with paved roads, internet connections, schools and clinics.

The villages are planned with schools, clinics and more

16 miles to border claimed by IndiaGeletang Village

N

Parking

Residences

Gym

Kindergarten

Village office

Flag stand

Clinic

Dance stage

150 feet


Sources: YiHe Landscape; satellite image from Planet Labs

A local government document reviewed by The Times indicated that some villagers may be receiving around 20,000 Chinese yuan a year for relocation, less than $3,000. One resident reached by phone said he earned an extra $250 a month by patrolling the border.

But it is unclear whether the villages make economic sense.

The residents become dependent on the subsidies because there are few other ways to make a living, according to Mr. Akester, the independent expert.

China’s relocation policy is also a form of social engineering, designed to assimilate minority groups like the Tibetans into the mainstream. Tibetans, who are largely Buddhist, have historically resisted the Communist Party’s intrusive controls on their religion and way of life.

Images from the villages suggest that religious life is largely absent. Buddhist monasteries and temples are seemingly nowhere to be found. Instead, national flags and portraits of Mr. Xi are everywhere, on light poles, living room walls and balcony railings.

“They want to transform the landscape and the population,” Mr. Akester said.


Inside territory claimed by BhutanPangda Village


Inside territory claimed by BhutanGyalaphug (Jieluobu) village
Sources: Pangda Village – User Turuisite via Xigua; Gyalaphug Village – local government of Luozha county, Shannan (Lhoka), Tibet Autonomous Region

Over the years, the government has pushed many nomadic Tibetans to sell their yaks and sheep, leave the grasslands and move into houses, but often without clear ways for them to survive. Instead of herding, residents have to work for wages.

Interviews suggest that many nomads who have moved to the new villages are reluctant to adapt. Some herd yaks for half the year in the mountains; others return to their old homes to live for months at a time.

Residents are often not told about the challenges that moving can entail, Mr. Barnett said, including having to spend more to travel to towns and on electricity, water, food and other essentials.

“The major problem is they are moving them from one lifestyle to another,” he said. “They end up with no capital, no usable skills, no sellable skills and no cultural familiarity.”

When money isn’t enough, Chinese officials have applied pressure on residents to relocate, an approach that was evident even in state propaganda reports.

A documentary aired by the state broadcaster, CCTV, showed how a Chinese official went to Dokha, a village in Tibet, to persuade residents to move to a new village called Duolonggang, 10 miles from Arunachal Pradesh.

He encountered some resistance. Tenzin, a lay Buddhist practitioner, insisted that Dokha’s land was fertile, producing oranges and other fruit. “We can feed ourselves without government subsidies,” he said.

The official criticized Tenzin for “using his age and religious status to obstruct relocation,” according to a state media article cited by Human Rights Watch in a report.

In the end, all 143 residents of Dokha moved to the new settlement.

How we identified the villages

The Times first compiled a list of the locations of 10 border villages in China that had been in earlier news reports and shared their coordinates with RAIC Labs. RAIC Labs used artificial intelligence to scan satellite images of China’s land borders, provided by Planet Labs, to look for settlements that had similar features. The area that was scanned extended roughly three miles beyond China’s border and 25 miles within the border.

We manually checked the results from RAIC Labs’ scan to determine whether each site it had detected was a village. Features in satellite images that pointed to civilian settlements included yards, roofs of homes, cars and sports grounds like running tracks and basketball courts. Where possible, using coordinates identified by RAIC Labs, we looked up village names and searched for social media posts and Chinese media reports about the sites. We categorized the sites based on how much had been built around 2016, when China began planning its border village program. We categorized a village as new if no more than 10 structures had existed before 2016. A village was categorized as having expanded if it had more than 10 structures before 2016 but had grown in the years since. We also treated a settlement as a new village if the Chinese government designated it as such, regardless of how many structures it had before 2016.

We found a small number of villages that the algorithm had missed. Our findings still might not be comprehensive. Matthew Akester and Robert Barnett reviewed our analysis and contributed three additional village sites that had not previously been reported.

Sources: In the top sequence, opening videos by Milin Radio and Television Station (state media) via Douyin, satellite image of Qionglin Village by Maxar Technologies; satellite images in the grids by Planet Labs; location data from RAIC Labs and The Times analysis of Planet Labs satellite imagery, and map data from OpenStreetMap.
Note: for village names, we used the original name where available, and included the transliterated Chinese name in parenthesis.

Joy Dong, Christoph Koettl, Sameer Yasir, and Olivia Wang contributed reporting. Additional work by Ishaan Jhaveri and Matthew Bloch.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... 778d3e6de3

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Where Students Run the Streets: Bangladesh in Limbo

The young protesters who felled an autocrat are now cabinet ministers and traffic cops, trying to restore order and chart a new future for a nation of 170 million.


Students managing traffic in Dhaka, Bangladesh. After Bangladesh’s iron-fisted leader, Sheikh Hasina, was toppled last week, almost all of the country’s police officers went into hiding.

The two black V.I.P. vehicles, their hoods adorned with Bangladesh’s national flag according to state protocol, idled late one recent evening in a ground-floor parking lot at the University of Dhaka.

The cars were waiting for two students, both 26. Just a week before, they were hounded leaders of a youth-driven popular uprising against the country’s seemingly unbreakable prime minister. Now, after her astonishing ouster, the two are cabinet ministers in the country’s interim government.

Inside the parking lot, young women and men milled around these unlikeliest of government officials, asking questions and posing for selfies. On a pillar at the entrance, spray-painted graffiti declared the moment: “Revolution is not a dinner party.”

Outside, the streets of this country of 170 million people are run by students.

After overcoming a deadly crackdown and toppling Bangladesh’s iron-fisted leader, Sheikh Hasina, the student protesters are now seeking to set a new course for a nation born in bloody rupture five decades ago and marked by political violence ever since.

The magnitude of their task is not lost on anyone. Not on the young leaders and mobilizers themselves, who have been surprised by what they have achieved and are scrambling to protect the spaces that have fallen into their hands.

Ms. Hasina’s power had grown so all-consuming that her departure triggered a near-total collapse of the state. A wave of violence, including revenge killings and arson, persisted after her departure, with the country’s long-persecuted Hindu minority, in particular, gripped with fear. Almost all of the country’s police officers went into hiding, afraid of reprisals for the force’s role in the deaths of hundreds of young protesters.

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A woman in posing for a photo in front of a University of Dhaka building that has been spray painted with graffiti in English and Bengali.

Graffiti at the University of Dhaka. The students who led protests that toppled the government are now trying to set a new course for the South Asian nation.

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People sit on the ground and shout, with many holding their hands in the air. Others form lines in the background.

Protesters outside Bangladesh’s Supreme Court in Dhaka last weekend. They were demanding the resignation of the chief justice.

Students are managing traffic in Dhaka, the congested capital city — checking licenses and reminding people to use helmets. In some roundabouts, the punishments they are doling out to rule breakers are straight out of the classroom: an hour of standing for a wrong turn, 30 minutes for not wearing a seatbelt.

One female student, who looked no older than 16, tried to ease traffic on a busy street with the zeal of an overachiever, shouting what were more pleas than orders to every “bhaiya,” Bengali for brother.

“Bhaiya — helmet!” she implored one man who raced by on his motorbike. “Bhaiya — footpath, footpath!” she yelled at a group of pedestrians.

A car carrying New York Times journalists was stopped by a boy who looked no older than 12. He asked to see a driver’s license.

In another corner of the city where some of the worst violence had taken place, Salman Khan, 17, and two other students manned a roundabout, occasionally pulling aside the fanciest of cars. What exactly were they looking for?

“Black money, black money,” Mr. Khan said, explaining that many of Ms. Hasina’s senior officials were on the run.

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A woman holds her right arm out as she directs traffic at an intersection. Near her is another young woman.

Students are checking licenses and reminding people to use helmets as they direct traffic in Dhaka.

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A man in a short-sleeved shirt hands a bottle of water to his daughter, who is wearing a cadet’s uniform and holding an umbrella.

Tahia, an 18-year-old cadet, receiving water from her father while directing traffic.

Outside her sprawling official residence, which protesters had breached and looted as she fled to India last week, a teenage student sat on a chair and spoke nonstop on a phone.

This was her duty station. When an army soldier called on her for something, she held out her free hand, in a motion meant to silence him — a single gesture that encapsulated all that has suddenly changed in Bangladesh.

Guiding the students who now run this country is a very different figure: the 84-year-old Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. He is gambling his storied legacy as a helper of the poor to be the interim leader of a nation in disarray. But he has accepted the mantle of handpicked grandfatherly figure for what the students describe as “generational transformation.”

“I’m doing this because this is what the youth of the country wanted, and I wanted to help them to do it,” Mr. Yunus said over the weekend in a briefing with reporters. “It’s not my dream, it’s their dream.”

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A man in a best and buttoned shirt sitting in a chair with a flag in the background.

Muhammad Yunus at his temporary office at Jamuna State Guest House in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Tuesday.

Nahid Islam, a key student protest leader who said he had been blindfolded and tortured by security forces, described the immense pressure that had now fallen on the movement, “even though we weren’t prepared for it.”

“The day Hasina resigned, we realized everyone wanted to hear from us — what’s next for Bangladesh? How will Bangladesh be governed? How will the government be formed?” he said in an interview in the University of Dhaka parking lot.

Mr. Islam and a second leader, Asif Mahmud, are two of the 17 ministers in the cabinet. Mr. Mahmud oversees the ministry of youth and sports. Mr. Islam’s portfolio in particular has a whiff of justice — he is in charge of the information technology ministry, after Ms. Hasina had shut down the internet to try to break the movement.

“It’s a coincidence,” Mr. Islam said, smiling.

Behind the scenes, other student leaders are trying to figure out how to enact their idealistic vision for the future, even in this moment of chaotic uncertainty.

Mahfuj Alam, 26, one of the leaders tasked with canvassing input for a road map, said the country needed a new political settlement founded on three principles: dignity, compassion and responsibility.

“We want coordinated change, complex change which will facilitate upcoming governments to be democratic, to be accountable,” Mr. Alam said.

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People take selfies and other photos of a bearded man in a blue shirt.

Nahid Islam, center, a key student protest leader, is now a cabinet minister in the country’s interim government, in charge of information technology.

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Soldiers, dressed in camouflage, group together in a driveway.

Army officers stationed outside the offices of the interim government. With the police mostly gone, the military is trying to keep order.

The student leaders said the country must break from its cycle of violence, and from the way it has been run for most of its history. Power has swung between two dynastic political parties that alternate between perpetrator and victim of the country’s brutal politics. The students are equally wary of a third force, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, the Islamist movement that Ms. Hasina had banned as radical.

The students want to move away from the binaries — the two dynastic parties, but also the “militant Islamism” and “militant secularism” that the country has been caught between in recent years.

“This generation is really, really aspiring for real changes,” Mr. Alam said, “not mere talking or blabbering about some families, about some histories, about some glories.”

But before the Bangladesh of tomorrow can be conjured, security must be restored today.

The country finds itself in a peculiar reality: The military, with its own history of abuses, has been deployed to guard the police. Dozens of police officers were killed in retaliation for Ms. Hasina’s crackdown on protesters, and many officers fear returning to their jobs.

On the desk of one army officer positioned outside a police station was a pile of unclaimed badges belonging to police officers who had fled. He sat between the carcasses of burned vehicles; the station behind him was a charred ruin.

A man in his 60s walked up with dried blood and wounds on his face. He wanted to lodge a complaint against workers from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition to Ms. Hasina, saying they had attacked him on his way to work at the courts. The officer, Masud Rana, said that “this police station is not operational” and could not do much. He eventually appeased the man by writing his name in a ledger.

“Our main work is to ensure the security of the police,” the officer said.

Later, a woman approached with a request that the army definitely could not help with. A police officer, she said, had taken about $400 in bribes to release her son in a drug case. Could someone pay her back the money?

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A soldier sits outside a building that has been burned.

Outside a police station. The military, with its own history of abuses, has been deployed to guard the police.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times
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Clothes hang on lines inside a ransacked police station. Chairs, clothes and other items are scattered on the floor.

A police station in Dhaka damaged during recent protests.

The interim government is rushing to find creative ways to lure police officers back to work and reduce the toxicity associated with them. There have been leadership changes and talk of new uniforms. In a first step toward a return to a uniformed presence, young cadets and scouts have been placed at roundabouts.

In one stood Tahia, an 18-year-old cadet who was directing traffic with half a dozen other young women. A man waited quietly nearby on the footpath, occasionally pulling out a bottle of water to give to Tahia. It was her father.

Asked what he did for a living, the man grinned nervously and dodged the question. Minutes later, he whispered in a reporter’s ear: “Both her parents are police constables.”

The interim government faces an enormous task not only in restoring law and order but also in reopening the economy. And its members understand that they could be short on time. The caretaker government may last only as long as it shows it can deliver something different.

Pretty soon, the interim leaders will find themselves in the push and pull of the established political parties and their business backers, who want an election to be held quickly.

An immediate test may come on Thursday, when the Awami League, the party of Ms. Hasina, has called for a march. That could put the party — with scant law enforcement presence — face to face on the streets with the movement that brought it down after 15 years in power.

But the caretaker leaders are hopeful that a trump card will buy them time. In toppling Ms. Hasina, they demonstrated that they had a wide-ranging mobilizing power that the organized parties lacked. Those parties, they say, have been discredited by the kind of politics that ignored the young nation’s aspirations.

“If we go to our homes right now, there will be no change,” Mr. Alam, one of the student leaders, said. “We don’t want to let them relax.”

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A person stands inside a building that was burned. The walls are charred.

The house of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding leader and the father of Sheikh Hasina. The building, in Dhaka, was set on fire during the recent protests.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/worl ... tests.html

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Medic’s Killing Fuels Protests and Walkouts in India

The death and apparent rape of a physician trainee reignited rage over violence against women and prompted nationwide protests by colleagues.


Medical students and doctors protesting in Kolkata, India, on Wednesday, after a junior doctor was found killed.Credit...Piyal Adhikary/EPA, via Shutterstock

After a long shift last Thursday, a junior doctor went to sleep in a seminar room at the Kolkata hospital where she worked. The next morning, her colleagues found her dead, her body showing signs of rape and extreme physical brutality.

The killing, at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, has stirred angry protests over entrenched misogyny and violence against women and led thousands of doctors to walk out of major public hospitals across India to demand a safer working environment.

Attacks on doctors in hospitals are common in India. Last month, doctors in New Delhi went on strike after an assault on a hospital by dozens of people, many of them relatives of a woman who died during surgery after giving birth.

In the days after the killing of the junior doctor, a 31-year-old physician trainee whose name may not be published under Indian law, intense anger boiled over into nationwide outrage. On Wednesday night, thousands of women protested on the streets of Kolkata, the largest city in West Bengal.

Outrage among doctors has also continued to build, with many government hospitals suspending all but emergency treatment as medical workers protest to demand better protection from such violence.

After protests by doctors, the head of R.G. Kar Medical College stepped down from his position, but hours later he was reassigned to another hospital by the state government. On Tuesday, a top court in Kolkata asked him to go on leave.

As the women marched, in another part of the city a mob stormed the R.G. Kar hospital, attacking protesting doctors and ransacking its emergency area. Videos from the clash showed the police using batons and firing tear gas.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the rising discontent on Thursday during an event to mark the anniversary of India’s independence, without directly mentioning the killing in Kolkata. As a society, he said, Indians should “seriously think about the kind of atrocities which are taking place against our mothers, sisters, daughters.”

“There is anger about that in the country. Common masses are angry. I am feeling that anger,” Mr. Modi said. “Our nation, our society and our state governments need to take that seriously. Crime against women should be investigated more urgently.”

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A nurse standing outside a hospital room with broken windows and a medical device with a shattered screen.

A nurse looking at an emergency ward of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata after it was vandalized on Thursday.Credit...Dibyangshu Sarkar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

During the initial investigation, the police arrested Sanjoy Roy, a volunteer at a police post within the hospital. Mr. Roy, who was in police custody, could not be reached for comment.

However, Subarna Goswami, an official with the Federation of Government Doctors’ Associations, a nationwide doctors’ organization, said evidence described in a postmortem report “indicates a strong possibility of the involvement of multiple persons.”

Unsatisfied with the investigation, doctors have accused the police of a coverup.

The chief of the Kolkata police, in response to protesters accusing officers of shielding other suspects, said the police had never indicated that there was only one person responsible in the case.

As the protests continued, a top court in Kolkata transferred the murder case from the local police to the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s premier federal investigations agency.

The protesting doctors are demanding a more stringent law to protect them from violence, including by making any attack on a doctor an offense with no bail. In 2019, a draft bill was floated among lawmakers by the government but never gained traction. Federal health ministry officials have now assured doctors they would consider introducing separate legislation in Parliament specifically prohibiting violence against them.

In India, about 75 percent of doctors say they have experienced violence, and a majority of them feel stressed by the profession, according to a 2019 study in The Indian Journal of Psychiatry. Shashi Tharoor, a lawmaker, alluded to this data in urging stronger protection for medical workers before the Indian Parliament, a doctors’ association said.

Many doctors’ organizations have said their members will not return to work until the law to curb attacks on doctors is passed in both houses of Parliament.

Shreya Shaw, a postgraduate medical student at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, said she could no longer work night shifts, and that it was deeply unsettling to watch doctors who were protesting peacefully being attacked by mobs inside the hospital on Wednesday night.

“We can’t do emergency, night duties anymore,” she said. “We can’t rely on the hospital security, we cannot rely on the police.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Indian medics refuse to end protests over doctor's rape and murder

OLKATA, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Thousands of Indian junior doctors on Monday refused to end protests over the rape and murder of a fellow medic, disrupting hospital services nearly a week after they launched a nationwide action demanding a safer workplace and swift criminal probe.
Doctors across the country have held protests and declined to see non-emergency patients following the Aug. 9 killing of the 31-year-old medic, who police say was raped and murdered at a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata where she was a trainee.

A police volunteer has been arrested and charged with the crime. Women activists say the incident has highlighted how women in India continue to suffer from sexual violence despite tougher laws brought in after the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi.
The government has urged doctors to return to duty while it sets up a committee to suggest measures to improve protection for healthcare professionals.

"Our indefinite cease-work and sit-in will continue till our demands are met," said Dr. Aniket Mahata, a spokesperson for protesting junior doctors at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, where the incident happened.
In solidarity with the doctors, thousands of supporters of West Bengal state's two biggest soccer clubs marched on the streets of Kolkata on Sunday evening with chants of "We want justice".
That's according to three sources who spoke to Reuters that say it could happen by the end of October.

Groups representing junior doctors in neighbouring Odisha state, the capital New Delhi, and in the western state of Gujarat have also said their protests will continue.

Gita Gopinath, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told India's Business Standard daily that workplace safety was important to raise the country's female labour force participation rate, which was 37% in FY2022-23.

"One cannot raise that (female participation) without ensuring safety at the workplace and safety of women in getting to the workplace. That is absolutely critical," Gopinath said in the interview published on Monday.

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/ind ... 778d3e6de3

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Is India a Safe Place for Women? Another Brutal Killing Raises the Question.

The rape and murder of a trainee doctor at her own hospital has brought up, once again, uncomfortable truths about a country that wants to be a global leader.


Thousands of Indians, including medical professionals, have protested the rape and killing of a trainee doctor at the hospital where she worked.Credit...Piyal Adhikary/EPA, via Shutterstock

In December 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student boarded a bus in New Delhi a little after 9 p.m., expecting it would take her home. Instead, she was gang-raped and assaulted so viciously with an iron rod that her intestines were damaged. She died days later as India erupted in rage.

Nearly 12 years later, the nation is convulsing with anger once again — this time, over the ghastly rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital, as she rested in a seminar room after a late-night shift. Since the Aug 9. killing, thousands of doctors have gone on strike to demand a safer work environment and thousands more people have taken to the streets to demand justice.

For a country desperate to be seen as a global leader, repeated high-profile cases of brutal sexual assaults highlight an uncomfortable truth: India, by many measures, remains one of the world’s most unsafe places for women. Rape and domestic violence are relatively common, and conviction rates are low.

This week, the Supreme Court of India took up the Kolkata case as one of fundamental rights and safety, questioning how hospital administrators and police officers had handled it and saying new protective measures were needed. “The nation cannot wait for another rape and murder for real changes on the ground,” Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said.

Gender-related violence is hardly unique to India. But even as millions of Indian women have joined the urban work force in the past decade, securing their financial independence and helping to fuel the country’s rapid growth, they are still often left to bear the burden of their own safety.

Longstanding customs that both repress women and in many cases confine them to the home have made their safety in public spaces an afterthought. It can be dangerous for a woman to use public transportation, especially at night, and sexual harassment occurs frequently on the streets and in offices. Mothers tell their daughters to be watchful. Brothers and husbands drop their sisters and wives off at work.

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A woman dressed in pink stands in front of a fence adorned with a banner stating “No safety, no duty.”

The main entrance to R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, where the killing occurred.Credit...Piyal Adhikary/EPA, via Shutterstock

In 1997, India’s Supreme Court issued guidelines intended to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Those rules stemmed from the 1992 rape of a social worker, Bhanwari Devi, who tried to stop the marriage of a nine-month-old child.

A bill to put the guidelines into law was proposed in 2007. It was approved six years later in 2013, a year after the gang-rape of the young physiotherapy student in New Delhi, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, or fearless.

The legal protections have been ineffectual partly because the government has been lax about implementing the law and investing in mechanisms to properly handle cases of sexual assault, said Vrinda Grover, a lawyer and women’s rights activist.

She said that investigations she had examined were often “unprofessional, shoddy” and carried out by people with little training. The state’s approach, Ms. Grover said, is colored by prejudice against women.

If the government acts only after people organize protests, “then it is the system that has become dysfunctional and we will not see the end of sexual violence,” she said.

In the Kolkata case, Chief Justice Chandrachud identified a number of breakdowns in the official response to the rape and killing. He asked why hospital administrators and police officers had not followed protocol in reporting the crime in the hours after the victim’s body, which bore signs of rape and brutal injury, was discovered at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, where she worked. The top court also set up a national task force to recommend safety measures to protect medics, who are often subject to violence and abuse.

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A street crowded with marchers, partially obscured by a tree.

A march in Kolkata on Wednesday. The killing has stirred anger over the broader issue of workplace safety for women.Credit...Dibyangshu Sarkar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Three senior officials at the Kolkata hospital have been removed from their posts. A 33-year-old man, who was a volunteer at a police post at the hospital, has been arrested in connection with the killing, but as of Thursday he had not been charged. The Supreme Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is handling the case, to submit a status report on Thursday.

The ongoing protests — with dozens of Bollywood celebrities and other public figures lending their voices — have morphed into widespread anger, not just at the plight of many in the medical profession, but also about workplace safety for women.

The millions of Indian women who have entered the work force in recent years have challenged patriarchal norms to pursue the same opportunities that men have in one of the world’s fast-growing economies. Women, along with men, are also increasingly migrating from villages to cities, seeking better earnings.

But India still has a low labor force participation rate among women compared to other countries, a figure that had been on a long downward slide until the past few years. Women make up less than a third of India’s urban labor force, and men vastly outnumber women in both government and private-sector jobs.

Safety in the workplace is essential if more women are to enter the labor force, said Gita Gopinath, the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

“No way that will happen if women in India don’t feel completely safe,” Ms. Gopinath, who is of Indian origin, told the journalist Barkha Dutt in an interview posted this weekend on YouTube. “Not having to worry about your safety is absolutely a basic right” as a woman, she said.

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A nurse stands looking in an emergency ward with smashed windows in the doors and other debris.

Vandalism at the hospital in Kolkata.Credit...Dibyangshu Sarkar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The numbers tell a harrowing story for Indian women. In 2023, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security ranked India 128th out of 177 countries in its annual index on women’s inclusion, justice and security.

According to the World Bank, 35 percent of Indian women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of their partners, higher than the world average of 27 percent.

Nearly 45,000 rape cases were investigated in 2022, the latest year for which statistics are available from India’s National Crime Records Bureau. But among the cases that went to trial, there were convictions in just over 5,000 — a rate of 27.4 percent, lower than for cases of murder, kidnapping and other violent crimes.

Many more rape cases go unreported because of social stigma and other reasons.

Though gruesome incidents of rape continue to occur and sexual harassment remains a reality for many women, the Nirbhaya case and the #MeToo movement have changed how such matters are perceived, said Ms. Grover, the women’s rights activist.

“There is a marked change in how women across brackets of age, class and caste structures view themselves,” Ms. Grover said. “There is no confusion that this is a crime they are in no way responsible for.”

On Wednesday, hundreds of doctors wearing aprons and stethoscopes protested outside the federal health ministry and at Jantar Mantar, a designated spot for protests in the nation’s capital. They demanded immediate action to ensure the safety of doctors and other medical workers.

“Most of the incidents are not reported,” said one doctor, Pinky Verma. “That is because the attacks happen on women, and people can live with it.”

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Amid other protesters, a young woman holds a sign with red handprints and #standforjustice

A vigil for the murdered woman in Guwahati, India, on Saturday.Credit...Anupam Nath/Associated Press

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Pakistani Police Arrest Lawmakers Allied With Former Prime Minister Imran Khan

In an overnight raid on the Parliament, police arrested at least 10 members of Khan’s party, deepening the political battle between the imprisoned ex-leader and the country’s powerful military.


Gohar Khan, chairman of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party, addressed the media outside court following his release in Islamabad on Tuesday.Credit...Salahuddin/Reuters

Pakistani police arrested at least 10 lawmakers belonging to the imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party, in an hourslong raid on the Parliament building in Islamabad that began Monday night, officials said.

The police sweep was the first time in recent memory that Pakistani lawmakers have been arrested while at the Parliament and it intensified the political turmoil gripping the country over the past nearly three years. That crisis has pit Pakistan’s powerful military — long seen as an invisible hand guiding the country’s politics — against the still-strong political force of Mr. Khan and his die-hard supporters.

The overnight police raid began around 8:30 p.m. on Monday night, when dozens of police officers entered the building in the capital shortly after the end of a legislative session. As word spread of the raid, some lawmakers barricaded themselves inside their offices, while others were pulled from their cars by police officers as they tried to leave the premises, according to videos and witnesses.

The lights in the building went out late Monday night, going back on only after the police sweep ended around 2 a.m. on Tuesday.

The party members were arrested on charges related to antiterrorism laws, according to court documents and leaders of Mr. Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, or P.T.I. At least one lawmaker who had been arrested was released from custody late on Tuesday, court documents show.

The police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The raid seemed to signal the lengths to which the security establishment is willing to go to squash Mr. Khan’s party, analysts said, even into the halls of Parliament.

“Whatever happened in the Parliament, definitely a stand will have to be taken,” Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, the speaker of the National Assembly, said during a fraught session on Tuesday.

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A group of men marching as one holds up a framed portrait of Imran Khan.

Supporters of Mr. Khan protested outside the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly in Peshawar on Tuesday after Islamabad police arrested leaders of his party.Credit...Bilawal Arbab/EPA, via Shutterstock

In that session, some cabinet members of the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, or P.M.L.N., defended the arrests, describing them as a consequence of threats that P.T.I. leaders had made at a rally on Sunday to secure Mr. Khan’s release from prison within two weeks — by force if necessary.

“It was a reaction to what happened at the rally,” said Khawaja Muhammad Asif, the defense minister and a member of P.M.L.N.

But Mr. Khan’s party members condemned them as a threat to the country’s fragile democracy. “This is an attack on democracy and Pakistan’s constitution,” said Ali Muhammad Khan, a lawmaker from P.T.I.

The current political crisis began in 2022, when Mr. Khan, a former international cricket star-turned-populist politician, fell out with the generals and was ousted as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence. Since then, he has made a stunning political comeback and rallied thousands across the country with his message criticizing the military’s role in politics.

Earlier this year, Mr. Khan’s party won the most seats in a general election but fell short of the majority needed to form a government. His rivals, led by the party of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, cobbled together a coalition government instead. Mr. Khan was arrested last year and remains in prison on what he calls politically motivated charges.

In recent months, the generals have slowly ramped up their crackdown on Mr. Khan’s party.

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Police, some holding plastic riot shields, standing in front of a green-walled building.

Pakistani security officials standing guard as supporters of Mr. Khan protested outside the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly in Peshawar on Tuesday.Credit...Bilawal Arbab/EPA, via Shutterstock

Last month, the military arrested a powerful former spy chief and ally of Mr. Khan — the first time in Pakistan’s history that a current or former chief of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., has faced court-martial proceedings. Human rights groups and analysts have accused the government of secretly testing a firewall-like system to better surveil and control the country’s internet, including social media sites where Mr. Khan’s supporters are particularly active.

And recently, Mr. Khan’s supporters have expressed concerns that the generals may be preparing to try Mr. Khan in a military court on charges that he instructed his supporters to attack military installations during a major protest last year.

While some hoped that his party could engage in talks with the military to secure Mr. Khan’s release, most now believe that doing so is off the table.

“It seems that P.T.I. sees no path to securing Imran Khan’s release from prison through a negotiated settlement with the military and has instead chosen to use this moment to apply pressure on the establishment and initiate a political campaign,” said Zaigham Khan, a political analyst in Islamabad.

The most provocative speech at the rally on Sunday was delivered by Ali Amin Gandapur, an ally of Mr. Khan and chief minister of the restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Mr. Gandapur, known for his brash style of politics, threatened to stage a mass protest in Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, where the local government is led by P.T.I.’s main rival party, the P.M.L.N.

“Put your house in order,” Mr. Gandapur said in comments directed at the military. “I am not scared of the army uniform,” he added, in what was understood to be a warning against any move to try Mr. Khan in military court.

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A man holding a microphone with his arm raised and a finger pointing upward, flanked by other men.

Ali Amin Gandapur, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, during a rally last month to mark Pakistan’s Independence Day. in Peshawar.Credit...Bilawal Arbab/EPA, via Shutterstock

Mr. Gandapur also accused journalists who were not supportive of Mr. Khan’s party of being sellouts.

Mr. Gandapur’s speech was widely condemned, even by members of his own party, as inflammatory and employing derogatory language.

Mr. Khan, the analyst, said the speech made the crisis “appear irreconcilable for the time being, signaling tough times ahead for P.T.I.” as well as for the coalition government and the military, both of which are grappling with a lack of public support and credibility.

Some also called the criticism from P.T.I. hypocritical, pointing to an episode in 2022, during Mr. Khan’s tenure, when three opposition lawmakers were arrested in their lodges across from the Parliament building.

Mr. Sadiq, the speaker of the National Assembly, ordered a complete investigation into the arrests and requested a report on the incident from the Inspector General of Islamabad, his office said in a statement.

The ruling party, which is widely considered little more than a front for the military, stood alone in defending the police actions. On Tuesday, even its coalition partners in government condemned the arrests, saying they crossed a line and signaled troubling times to come.

“What will happen tomorrow?” said Syed Naveed Qamar, a member of the Pakistan Peoples Party. “Will they come for you, on the floor of the Parliament?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Faced With Regional Setbacks, India Flexes Its New Economic Muscle

Tapping into a fast-growing economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been offering financial help to India’s neighbors as he tries to counter China’s influence.


Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, right, with President Mohamed Muizzu of the Maldives in New Delhi on Monday. Mr. Muizzu called India, which offered more than $750 million in aid, “a key partner.”Credit...Adnan Abidi/Reuters

As political turmoil churns India’s immediate neighborhood, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been using a relatively new asset to compete with China for influence: the financial wherewithal that comes with a fast-growing economy.

When Sri Lanka suffered economic catastrophe in 2022, India stepped in with over $4 billion in aid. In tiny neighboring Bhutan, which has boundary disputes with China, Mr. Modi this year doubled India’s assistance, to $1 billion over five years. In Bangladesh, he provided billions for infrastructure projects to back that country’s autocratic leader, who promoted India’s interests until she was ousted in August.

The latest beneficiary is the Maldives. Its new president, Mohamed Muizzu, campaigned last year on an “India Out” platform, demanding that Mr. Modi withdraw a small military contingent from the archipelago nation. But that seemed forgotten on Monday, when Mr. Muizzu arrived in New Delhi for a state dinner, a photo opportunity at the Taj Mahal with his wife, and over $750 million in Indian aid, in the form of currency swaps, to bail his government out of extreme fiscal stress.

“India is a key partner in the socioeconomic and infrastructure development of the Maldives and has stood by the Maldives during our times of need,” said Mr. Muizzu, standing next to Mr. Modi.

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Three men in construction gear walk down a road. Housing towers are in the background.

An India-funded housing project in the Maldives. India’s economic success is giving it more regional leverage.Credit...Elke Scholiers for The New York Times

India’s economy is growing at about 7 percent while China and its other neighbors struggle to return to prepandemic growth levels, according to the World Bank. Political and business leaders increasingly see India, despite frustrations with its bureaucracy, as an exciting partner for deals and trade agreements, with an economy that has yet to reach its full potential.

Many poorer Indians have seen little benefit from that growth, as the country still struggles to generate enough employment. But it has provided the government with much-needed cash to grease diplomatic wheels, while China’s economic struggles have forced it to somewhat reduce its regional largess.

The newfound leverage is coming in handy for India. It has faced repeated diplomatic setbacks in the region, where its traditional influence had been waning in the face of China’s aggressive push. Over the past year, India-friendly leaders in at least three countries were either voted out or toppled in protests.

“India is able to deploy much more power now in the neighborhood, and the economic clout is far stronger than it was — there’s no doubt about it,” said Nirupama Menon Rao, who was once India’s foreign secretary. “But the political interests that bind us to the neighborhood, I think they are constant.”

Even leaders in the region who are “traditionally labeled or stereotyped as anti-India” have little choice but to work with New Delhi, Ms. Rao said. That is not just for immediate financial help, but to align themselves with India in the longer term, in the hope that its economic potential can bring them future windfalls.

Regional leaders are showing a “high seriousness in understanding the growing economic clout and the place that India is taking on the global stage,” Ms. Rao said. India, in turn, is taking a more pragmatic approach to some of its neighbors than it once did, avoiding “histrionics” and “diplomatic theater,” she said.

A hard lesson came this year from Bangladesh, the country of 170 million people that shares a 2,000-mile border with India.

India was seen as a staunch protector, financially and diplomatically, of Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s increasingly autocratic prime minister. As Ms. Hasina persecuted critics and opponents, India used its diplomatic leverage to urge her Western critics to back off. In Bangladesh, anger against her began to translate into anger against India.

When she was driven out of office in August — toppled by huge protests, which surged drastically after her security forces killed hundreds of demonstrators — Ms. Hasina fled to India. Her continuing presence there has created a dilemma: On the one hand, India wants to signal that it will stand by its friends. But sheltering Ms. Hasina will cause problems as India tries to regain ground with Bangladesh’s new political powers.

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An aerial view of a building being stormed by a crowd. Smoke wafts through the air.

Protesters stormed the residence of Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in August, after she resigned as prime minister and fled the country.Credit...Parvez Ahmad Rony/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But Paul Staniland, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace whose research focuses on South Asia, called that a more “mundane” challenge than it might once have been, and said India’s growing economic might was an important reason for that.

“India’s neighbors are certainly interested in autonomy from India and having the option to engage with China and other outside states. But India is a massive economic and political presence that all governments have to at least do business with,” Mr. Staniland said.

He added that some of India’s regional relationships were now characterized by “a restrained and respectful posture from Delhi combined with tangible efforts to cooperate,” echoing a point made by Ms. Rao. That approach, he said, “limits nationalist backlash in these neighboring states while creating incentives to work together.”

India’s current relationship with Sri Lanka is one example.

After the island nation’s civil war ended in 2009, China established a huge presence there, bankrolling the lavish development projects of a populist president. Officials in Colombo, even ones sympathetic to India, complained that New Delhi’s outreach was slow and bureaucratic by comparison.

Sri Lanka’s economic collapse two years ago, largely caused by mismanagement and reckless spending, changed that perspective. China was seen as conspicuously absent, and it was hesitant about renegotiating the terms of Sri Lanka’s debt. India seized the opportunity, stepping in with $4 billion in various forms of support.

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A ship at a port. A banner reads “humanitarian assistance from people of India.”

A shipment of aid from India in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2022. India offered $4 billion in support after Sri Lanka’s economy collapsed.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

Its change of approach was even more visible on the political front. Once it became clear that Sri Lanka’s old guard, including politicians close to India, had been discredited by the economic collapse, Mr. Modi’s government began warming up to other players.

Months before the September presidential election, it hosted Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of a small leftist party with an anti-India past. He seemed best positioned to ride the public’s anger into office, and both sides clearly wanted to overcome that history. When Mr. Dissanayke won a comfortable victory last month, India’s top diplomat in Colombo was there within hours to congratulate him.

Ms. Rao said India’s traditional ties with its neighbors, combined with its growing financial resources, would serve it well in its competition with China.

“China continues to flex a lot of economic muscle, there’s no doubt,” Ms. Rao said. “But China, I think, has not really demonstrated its capacity to be the kind of first responder that India is when it comes to crisis situations that face our neighbors. And that, I think, is a very critical factor.”

Suhasini Raj contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/worl ... 778d3e6de3