Indian Mandala

Yesterday, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India announced new standards for the most sought-after grain since Mughal times. Pakistan has been opposed to India’s application for Protected Geographical Indication, fearing a negative impact on its exports. As India lifts protectionist measures, Indian exports are expected to jump in the coming months.

This year India’s wedding season promises to be more lavish than ever after many couples postponed their nuptials due to the pandemic. According to some estimates, weddings are the fourth-largest industry in the country. But dowries are a sore point with more than 8,000 women dying as a result.

A steady flow of refugees from Afghanistan and Myanmar has highlighted what some observers have called India’s deliberate “strategic ambiguity”. India is not a party to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. Assistance and refoulement depend on geopolitical and domestic political considerations.

Long-time top members of India’s once-dominant party have left. After running the country for half a century, it has failed to renew itself, increasingly centralised and in the hands of the Gandhi family. Rahul's march to unite the country against the BJP is unlikely to succeed.

The recent attack on a Catholic church in Punjab could have serious repercussions. On 5 September, Sikh religious leaders will hold an assembly to demand anti-conversion laws in a state not ruled by Hindu nationalists and where coexistence between religious groups has always been peaceful. As a result of the incident, the Diocese of Jalandhar closed schools for a day in protest. Meanwhile, India’s Supreme Court told the Modi government to gather evidence from states about the rise in violence against Christians.

Print newspaper readership in India rose until 2019. The country remains the world’s second largest market with a circulation of 240 million copies. With the pandemic, digital content is up, but so is repression against journalists, a paradoxical situation in a country where the press was born to oppose British colonialism.

The typhoon devastated the state of West Bengal in May last year. Indian insurance companies are among the worst in the world when it comes to covering extreme weather events, even though they reimbursed record expenses between 2020 and 2021. Intensity and frequency of typhoons are set to increase in India.

The never-ending conflict in the region divided between Pakistan and India has been reignited by the latest Bollywood film, which recounts the exodus of the Pandits between 1989-90. The movie has been accused of historical revisionism. The BJP has made the film tax-free to promote its viewing. At least 350 civilians and military personnel died in Kashmir last year.

International relations professor Swaran Singh believes India does not want to side with the United States and the West, but neither does it want to side with Russia. In the last week, however, it has had to recalibrate itself. The risk is that the Ukraine conflict will turn into yet another frozen conflict around the Russian borders.

More than 200 languages have disappeared in India in the past 50 years and another 197 are considered at risk. The languages of Adivasi groups are mostly spoken. Little room is available online and in official documents for those languages with a script. Yet something has changed in recent years, as more grassroots initiatives try to preserve the cultural heritage of indigenous tribes.

India has banned asbestos mining but buys it mainly from Russia. Experts are calling for a ban on trade in the dangerous mineral, which is widely used for roofs in the slums where the poorest people live. Environmental lawyer Gopal Krishna explains to AsiaNews how the Indian government has based its inaction on research financed by producers that minimise the risks.

After the international outcry, only a handful of organisations, including Mother Teresa's nuns, have had permits, which expired at the end of 2021, renewed. How the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act works and why it affects small organisations in particular. A local operator: "The Modi government is telling everyone: You may work here only by our kind permission".