Not politics, not interest rates: India’s surging economy at risk from water

Not politics, not interest rates: India’s surging economy at risk from water
1 / 3
Residents fill their containers from a tap that dispenses water twice a day at a slum in New Delhi on June 27, 2024. (REUTERS)
Not politics, not interest rates: India’s surging economy at risk from water
2 / 3
A man drinks water at a roadside stall serving free drinking water to commuters as a heat wave continues to grip the Indian capital, New Delhi, on May 22, 2024. (AP Photo/File)
Not politics, not interest rates: India’s surging economy at risk from water
3 / 3
A woman walks carrying water collected from a public tap in a shanty town on the outskirts of Jammu, India, on June 18, 2024. (AP Photo/File)
Short Url
Updated 05 July 2024
Follow

Not politics, not interest rates: India’s surging economy at risk from water

Not politics, not interest rates: India’s surging economy at risk from water
  • The world’s most populous nation has suffered from water shortages for decades, but crises are coming around with increasing frequency
  • Contaminated water kills about 200,000 Indians each year, according to the government

NEW DELHI: In the Vivekananda Camp slum, adjacent to the US embassy in New Delhi, communal taps supply brackish water for about two hours a day. Water delivered by tankers provides one additional bucket to each of its 1,000 residents for drinking and cooking.
In parts of the arid state of Rajasthan, southwest of the Indian capital, tap water is available once every four days for an hour. In rural areas near Mumbai, women and children travel more than a mile to get water.
Bengaluru, India’s tech hub of 14 million people, reeled under a water shortage this year and had to rely on tanker deliveries.
“We don’t wash the floor or do the laundry for days sometimes,” said Sampa Rai, a 38-year-old in Delhi’s Vivekananda Camp, who scrambles before dawn every day to meet the first tanker delivering water. “Not even the dishes. We have to manage with what we have.”
The world’s most populous nation has suffered from water shortages for decades, but crises are coming around with increasing frequency. This year, for example, the summer has been one of the hottest on record and the crunch has worsened with rivers and lakes drying up and the water table falling.
The shortages are affecting rural and urban Indians alike, disrupting agriculture and industry, stoking food inflation and risking social unrest. Contaminated water kills about 200,000 Indians each year, according to the government. People and the economy are suffering.
That is adding urgency to public and private-sector efforts to conserve the resource, find ways to recycle waste water and reduce the country’s over-reliance on the annual monsoon, especially in the agricultural sector.
Ratings agency Moody’s warned last week that India’s growing water stress could affect its growth, which at a projected 7.2 percent this April-March fiscal year is the highest among major economies.
“Decreases in water supply can disrupt agricultural production and industrial operations, resulting in inflation in food prices and declines in income for affected businesses and workers, especially farmers, while sparking social unrest,” Moody’s said.
The government plans to more than triple waste water recycling by the end of the decade to 70 percent, according to a federal government policy document dated Oct. 21, 2023 that listed priorities for the next five years.
Krishna S. Vatsa, a senior official at the state-run National Disaster Management Authority, confirmed the targets in an interview last week.
Authorities also plan to cut the extraction of fresh water — ground water and surface water from rivers and lakes — to less than 50 percent by the end of the decade from 66 percent, the highest rate in the world, said the document, which has not been made public and was reviewed by Reuters.
It will also launch a national village-level program this year to recommend crops to farmers based on local water availability, Vatsa said.
Details of plans to address the water crisis have not been previously reported.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already ordered authorities to build or refurbish at least 75 lakes in each of the 785 districts of the country. The government says work has been started or completed on more than 83,000 lakes. Experts say such lakes can help recharge the water table.
Modi launched a near $50-billion program in 2019 to provide all rural households with tap water. The government says it has now covered 77 percent of more than 193 million such families, up from 17 percent five years ago, but residents and experts say not all pipes have water.
“It makes the issue of conservation far more urgent,” Vatsa said. “You cannot sustain such a national pipeline without the availability of water. The pipes will run dry.”
He agreed some taps could already be dry.

Water stressed
India relies substantially on the annual monsoon for its 1.42 billion people and its largely rural-based economy, where water-intensive crops like rice, wheat and sugarcane take up more than 80 percent of the overall supply.
The monsoon itself is prone to severe and extreme weather conditions. Catchment areas are getting scarce because of rapid urbanization, so even in a good monsoon, much of the rainwater drains off into the sea.
India’s annual per capita water availability, at about 1,486 cubic meters, is set to fall to 1,367 cubic meters by 2031 as its population grows, government projections show. The country has been “water stressed,” defined as per capita availability of less than 1,700 cubic meters, since 2011.
“We have a crisis now every year,” said Depinder Singh Kapur at Indian research body Center for Science and Environment.
“Earlier it used to be drought years versus normal years, now a water crisis is happening every year and with more intensity.”
There are pockets where private enterprise is addressing the crisis.
In Nagpur, a city of 3 million people, the Vishvaraj Group said it helped build a $100 million plant in 2020 that treats 200 million liters of sewage per day, extracting 190 million liters of treated water that it sells to two thermal power plants.
Founder Arun Lakhani said the freed up fresh water will be enough to take care of the expected population growth of the city for the next 35 years.
Some industries are investing in waste water recycling and rain harvesting to cut their dependence on fresh water.
Tata Steel plans to cut its fresh water consumption to less than 1.5 cubic meters per ton of crude steel produced at its Indian operations by 2030, from about 2.5 cubic meters now. JSW Steel also has similar plans.
“At least to plug the gaps in urban areas, treated waste water is going to be one important resource that we need to start acknowledging,” said Nitin Bassi at Indian think-tank The Council on Energy, Environment and Water.
Experts say nearly 90 percent of water supplied to homes can be recycled, but infrastructure for water distribution and sewage treatment has failed to match the growth of major cities and untreated waste ultimately flows into rivers.
Modi’s administration is adding sewage treatment capacity to lift the current rate of 44 percent in urban areas so more water can be recycled and used in industries, agriculture and other areas.
Between 2021 and 2026, it plans to invest about $36 billion to ensure equitable water distribution, reuse of waste-water and mapping of water bodies, the government has said.

Thirsty farmers
The cultivation of crops like rice in semi-arid states has led to rampant extraction of groundwater through borewells and steep falls in water tables, according to government and industry officials.
“The elephant in the room is agriculture,” said Lakhani of Vishvaraj. “We still use flood irrigation, we are not on drip or sprinkler irrigation. If we save just 10 percent water used in agriculture, it will take care of water problems of all the Indian cities.”
The government plans to implement a nationwide rural program on water use this year, said Vatsa, the disaster management official.
“For every village we need to have water budgeting,” he said. “How much water is available? How much should be used for irrigation? How much should be used for your domestic purpose? That would determine what kind of crops you are going to plant.”
Asked about possible resistance from farmers, who are a powerful voting bloc, he said: “There’s no other choice. The water table is just going down and at some point it becomes completely unviable. The borewells fail.”


Trump says Musk, Ramaswamy will form outside group to advise White House on government efficiency

Trump says Musk, Ramaswamy will form outside group to advise White House on government efficiency
Updated 13 November 2024
Follow

Trump says Musk, Ramaswamy will form outside group to advise White House on government efficiency

Trump says Musk, Ramaswamy will form outside group to advise White House on government efficiency
  • Musk has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago since Trump won the presidential election
  • Trump said in his statement the two will “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies”

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” — which is not, despite the name, a government agency.
The acronym “DOGE” is a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.” He added that the move would shock government systems.
It’s not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.
Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.
Musk has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago since Trump won the presidential election.
The president-elect has often said he would give Musk a formal role overseeing a group akin to a blue-ribbon commission that would recommend ways to slash spending and make the federal government more efficient. Musk at one point suggested he could find more than $2 trillion in savings — nearly a third of total annual government spending.
Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.
“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September. “He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost cutter.”
Ramaswamy suspended his campaign in January and threw his support behind Trump.
Trump said in his statement the two will “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
 

 


Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary

Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary
Updated 13 November 2024
Follow

Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary

Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary
  • Trump is rolling out a steady stream of appointees and nominees for his upcoming administration, working thus far at a faster pace

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is nominating Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary.
Hegseth deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Minnesota in 2012 before joining Fox News.
“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said in a statement. “Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is nominating former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. He also said he had chosen former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and his longtime friend Steven Witkoff to be a special envoy to the Middle East.
In a flurry of announcements, Trump also named Bill McGinley, his Cabinet secretary in his first administration, as his White House counsel.
Trump is rolling out a steady stream of appointees and nominees for his upcoming administration, working thus far at a faster pace and without as much drama as his first transition following his 2016 victory.
A former Republican congressman from Texas, Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence for the final months of Trump’s first term, leading the US government’s spy agencies during the coronavirus pandemic. He is a more traditional pick for the role, which requires Senate confirmation, than some rumored loyalists pushed by some of Trump’s supporters.
Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel, and his intended nomination comes as Trump has promised to align US foreign policy more closely with Israel’s interests as it wages wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Witkoff is a Florida real estate investor who is serving as a chair of Trump’s inaugural committee. He also spent time in the world of New York real estate, where Trump first made his mark as a public figure.
As intelligence director, Ratcliffe was criticized by Democrats for declassifying in the final days of the 2020 presidential election Russian intelligence alleging damaging information about Democrats during the 2016 race even though he acknowledged it might not be true.
Ratcliffe’s visibility rose as he emerged in 2019 as an ardent defender of Trump during the House’s first impeachment proceedings against him. He was a member of Trump’s impeachment advisory team and strenuously questioned witnesses during the impeachment hearings.
After the Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump, Ratcliffe said, “This is the thinnest, fastest and weakest impeachment our country has ever seen.” He also forcefully questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“I look forward to John being the first person ever to serve in both of our Nation’s highest Intelligence positions,” Trump said in a statement. “He will be a fearless fighter for the Constitutional Rights of all Americans, while ensuring the Highest Levels of National Security, and PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”
Huckabee has led paid tour group visits to Israel for years, frequently advertising the trips on conservative-leaning news outlets.
“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement. “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”
David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel in his first term, said he was “thrilled” by Trump’s selection of Huckabee.
Witkoff is also the president-elect’s golf partner and was with him when he was the target of a second assassination attempt at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, in September.
Trump’s transition team did not offer details about the Middle East envoy role, but Trump said in a statement, “Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud.”
The selection of Witkoff follows a pattern for Trump in putting people close to him in pivotal roles on the Middle East portfolio. Eight years ago he appointed his former corporate attorney Jason Greenbaltt as his special representative for international negotiations and relied on his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as his personal envoy in talks in the region.


Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar

Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar
Updated 13 November 2024
Follow

Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar

Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar
  • He has accused Sall’s administration of leaving behind “catastrophic” public finances and manipulating financial figures given to international partners, which the previous leaders deny

DAKAR: Senegal’s former leader Macky Sall, who earlier this year sparked one of the worst crises in decades by delaying the presidential election, is seeking a controversial comeback in Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections.
Sall left office in April after 12 years in power, handing over the reins to his successor Bassirou Diomaye Faye and departing Senegal for Morocco.
The ex-president is now leading a newly formed opposition coalition from abroad, raising questions over the motives behind his return to the political fray and what it could mean for the West African country.
Sall’s longtime political foe, current Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, has repeatedly suggested that members of the former administration, including Sall, could be brought before the courts.
He has accused Sall’s administration of leaving behind “catastrophic” public finances and manipulating financial figures given to international partners, which the previous leaders deny.
Political science professor Maurice Soudieck Dione sees Sall’s return as an attempt “to get a grip on the political game in order to protect his own interests” in the event of any “political recriminations.”
There is also a “personal dimension around him not having had his fill of power,” Dione suggested, pointing out that Sall had for a time toyed with the idea of running for a third presidential term.
Well respected on the international stage, Sall’s final years in power were marred by a political standoff with Sonko that led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests.
His last-minute decision to postpone the presidential election in February then sparked one of Senegal’s worst crises in decades.
The thirst for change among a hard-pressed population saw Sall’s hand-picked successor, Amadou Ba, crushed at the ballot box by Sonko’s former deputy Faye.
Faye and Sonko had been released from prison just ten days before the vote.
Faye dissolved the opposition-dominated parliament in September, paving the way for legislative elections.

In returning to politics so soon, Sall has broken with the restraint normally adopted by former presidents in Senegal.
As the lead candidate for the Takku Wallu Senegal coalition, Sall justified his comeback in a five-page letter, citing the need to defend the “achievements” of his time in power.
He warned of the looming political and economic “dangers” faced by Senegal after months of “calamitous governance” by the new administration.
Presidential spokesman Ousseynou Ly decried Sall’s “indecency” on social media, blaming the former head of state for years of what he described as deadly unrest, debt and corruption.
As the election approaches, Sonko is traveling the length and breadth of Senegal promising economic transformation to excited crowds, while Sall addresses less rowdy audiences via speakerphone.
The former president can, officially, return to the country whenever he chooses.
“If he were to return to the country, we would ensure his safety because he is a citizen and former President of the Republic,” government spokesman Amadou Moustapha Ndieck Sarre told the Senegalese radio station RFM.
“But if he returns and the courts decide to arrest him, neither the prime minister nor the head of state can do anything about it,” he said.
Sonko has recently spoken of “high treason” in relation to what he termed the “catastrophic” state of public finances left by Sall’s administration.
High treason is the only case in which a president can be charged.
Legally, this would be “very complicated,” said El Hadji Mamadou Mbaye, a political science lecturer and researcher at the University of Saint-Louis.
Sall is returning to politics because “in reality he never wanted to leave power,” Mbaye said. “He feels indispensable.”
But “I don’t think the Senegalese are ready to forgive,” he added.
“If he had returned, the campaign would have been much more eventful, bordering on violent,” said political science professor Dionne.
“He had to carry out a very harsh crackdown on the opposition,” he added, referring to the years of turmoil.
“The wounds have not healed.”
 

 


Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general
Updated 13 November 2024
Follow

Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

CARACAS: Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab defended the state’s crackdown on opposition supporters after disputed July elections, telling AFP the authorities’ actions helped avert a “civil war.”
The proclamation of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the July 28 election triggered widespread protests.
The opposition, which had been tipped by polls for an easy win, had published detailed polling-station-level results which showed its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.
Twenty-eight people, including two police officers, were killed and 200 injured in the unrest, during which around 2,400 people were arrested.
Saab claimed the violence that marred the protests had been “premeditated.”
“There was an attempt to trigger a civil war,” he said.
“The plan consisting in claiming there was fraud in order to generate a terrorist act. If we had not acted as we did at that moment Venezuela would have been gripped by civil war,” he told AFP in an interview Monday at his office in Caracas.
He denied the security forces had any responsibility for the deaths of demonstrators.
A September 4 report into the killings by Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed the finger at Venezuelan security forces and pro-government militias known as “colectivos” in some of the deaths.
One of the victims was a 15-year-old boy, Isaias Jacob Fuenmayor Gonzalez, who sustained a gunshot to the neck while taking part in a protest in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-biggest city, according to HRW.
Saab, whose office walls are lined with portraits of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, late Venezuelan socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez, his late Cuban ally Fidel Castro and Maduro, denied allegations his office was under Maduro’s thumb.
Appointed attorney general in 2017, he was re-elected to the position earlier this month by a parliament stacked with Maduro loyalists.
He cited among his achievements increased investment in community policing and 600 convictions handed down to police officers for human rights violations.
He also pointed to nearly 22,000 convictions for corruption under his watch and claimed to have dismantled “34 corruption systems” at graft-ridden state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela.
Five of the last eight oil ministers are in prison or fled the country.
Saab claimed that during the post-election violence “around 500” buildings, including schools, clinics and town halls were damaged by protesters.
He denied that those detained were political prisoners, accusing them of “trying to burn” and “shooting at” demonstrators, without providing any evidence of his claim.
“A political prisoner is someone who has been detained because of his political ideas and who uses peaceful tactics... These people took weapons to (try to) overthrow a legitimately constituted government,” he accused.
The opposition says many of those arrested were arbitrarily arrested.
Venezuela’s Foro Penal rights NGO says some 1,800 people remain behind bars over two months later, including 69 teenagers.
Saab denied that children were being held, but said that the law allowed for the arrest of minors aged between 14 and 17.
He refused to be drawn on how many protesters were still in custody, saying only that “many have been freed.”
And he denied claims by the families of some of the prisoners that their loved ones had been tortured.
Only a handful of countries, including Russia, have recognized Maduro’s claim to have won a third six-year term.
But opposition protests have largely petered out since September, when Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Saab said the 75-year-old former diplomat would be “automatically detained” if he returned to Venezuela.
Saab also said that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has been in hiding since the election, was under investigation but refused to say whether a warrant had been issued for her arrest.


US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages
Updated 13 November 2024
Follow

US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

PORT-AU-PRINCE: The United States on Tuesday banned all civilian flights to Haiti for a month, a day after a jetliner was shot at on approach to the capital and as a new prime minister took the reins of a nation ravaged by poverty and gang violence.
The US Federal Aviation Administration’s move came after a Spirit Airlines jetliner arriving from Florida in Port-au-Prince was hit by gunfire and had to reroute to the Dominican Republic.
Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime was sworn in on Monday, replacing outgoing premier Garry Conille, who was appointed in May but became embroiled in a power struggle with the country’s unelected transitional council.
On Tuesday, Haiti remained cut off from the rest of the world, with its main airport closed and bursts of gunfire ringing out in several neighborhoods of the capital.
Many stores and schools were shuttered as people feared more attacks by the powerful and well-armed gangs that control 80 percent of the city, even though a Kenyan-led international force has been deployed to help the outgunned Haitian police restore order.
Violent crime in the capital city remains high, with gang members routinely targeting civilians and robberies, rapes and kidnappings are rampant.
The attack on the Spirit Airlines aircraft saw one flight attendant suffer minor injuries. Images posted online appeared to show several bullet holes inside the plane.
The transitional council, aiming to put Haiti on a path to voting in 2026, had been tasked with stabilizing a country that has no president or parliament and last held elections in 2016.
The United States on Tuesday called on Haiti’s leaders to put personal interests aside and concentrate on getting the country back on its feet.
“The acute and immediate needs of the Haitian people mandate that the transitional government prioritize governance over the competing personal interests of political actors,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Haiti has not had a president since the assassination of Jovenel Moise in 2021.
The Caribbean nation has long struggled with political instability, poverty, natural disasters and gang violence.
But conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Despite the arrival of the Kenyan-led support mission in June, violence has continued to soar.
A recent United Nations report said more than 1,200 people were killed in Haiti from July through September, with persistent kidnappings and sexual violence against women and girls.
The report said the gangs were digging trenches, using drones and stockpiling weapons as they change tactics to confront the Kenyan-led police force.
Gang leaders have strengthened defenses for the zones they control and placed gas cylinders and Molotov cocktail bombs ready to use against police operations.