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07/05/2020

Gas leak at S.Korea-owned factory in India kills 11, hundreds hospitalised

CHENNAI (Reuters) – At least 11 people were killed in India in a gas leak at a South Korean-owned factory making polystyrene products that made hundreds of people sick and led to the evacuation of villagers living nearby, officials said.

The accident occurred some 14 km (9 miles) inland from the east coast city of Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh state, at a plant operated by LG Polymers, a unit of South Korea’s biggest petrochemical maker, LG Chem Ltd.

Srijana Gummalla, commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, said gas from styrene, a principal raw materials at the plant, leaked during the early hours of the morning, when families in the surrounding villages were asleep.

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Yashwanth Saikumar Ambati, 23, who lives about 300 metres away from the plant, said he woke up around 4.30 a.m. because of a strong smell.

“I went back to sleep and I woke up around 6 because the smell got stronger. My eyes were itchy, and I was feeling drowsy, light-headed and slightly breathless,” he told Reuters, adding that neighbours also complained of eye irritation and stomach aches.

In a statement issued from Seoul, LG Chem said that the gas emitted in the leak can cause nausea and dizziness when inhaled, adding that it was seeking to ensure casualties received treatment quickly.

Video from Reuters partner ANI shot later on Thursday showed emergency workers in the area rushing to help victims, some of whom appeared to be listless and disoriented.

A number of victims lay unconscious on the streetside, as volunteers fanned them and others carried them to ambulances.

A spokesman for LG Chem in Seoul said the leak was discovered by a night shift maintenance worker and has been brought under control.

According to both the company spokesman and Gummalla, the plant was being reopened after India relaxed a nationwide lockdown that had been imposed on March 25 to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

Thursday’s incident brought back bad memories of a gas leak at an factory of U.S. chemical firm Union Carbide that killed thousands in the central Indian city of Bhopal in 1984, but thankfully it was on a far smaller scale.

“I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being in Visakhapatnam,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet.

S.N. Pradhan, director general of the National Disaster Response Force, said that at least 11 had died after around 1,000 people living near the plant were exposed to the gas.

FALLING, RUNNING AWAY

B.V. Rani, a revenue official in the district, said she received a call at around 4 a.m. from a police officer near the facility, who sounded panicky. “He asked me to come to the spot immediately,” Rani told Reuters.

When Rani went there, she saw that people had collapsed unconscious in the village adjoining the 60-acre site of the plant.

“I personally helped more than 15 people get to an ambulance who had tried to run away from the village but dropped down within a few metres,” she said.

At least one child was among the dead, a policeman at the site told ANI, whose video showed at least two other children being lifted into an ambulance.

Between 300-400 people were hospitalised, Swarupa Rani, an Assistant Commissioner of Police in Visakhapatnam told Reuters. Another 1,500 people had been evacuated, mostly from a neighbouring village.

Areas within approximately 3-kilometre (nearly 2-mile) radius of the plant were evacuated, he said, with emergency services going from door-to-door to find anyone left behind.

TOP PETROCHEMICAL MAKER

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy said in a televised address that the gas leak occurred because raw material was stored for a long period of time.

The state government will give 10 million rupees ($131,900) compensation to the families to those who died, and it will also form a panel to investigate the cause of the accident, said P.V. Ramesh, a senior aide to the chief minister.

“Obviously something has gone wrong,” Ramesh told Reuters. “Nobody will be spared.”

LG Chem’s share priced closed nearly 2% weaker on Thursday, in a Seoul market that was broadly flat.

South Korea’s top petrochemical maker by capacity, LG Chem acquired the plant in 1997 and established LG Polymers India Private Limited (LGPI), according to a company website.

The LG Polymers plant makes polystyrene products which are used in manufacturing electric fan blades, cups and cutlery and containers for cosmetic products such as make up.

“LG Polymers is a multi national, reputed company, and it is sad that the incident has happened in their plant,” Chief Minister Reddy said in a televised media address.

($1 = 75.8140 Indian rupees)

Source: Reuters

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30/10/2019

The explosive truth about the link between Chinese fireworks and India’s dim Diwali

Black market imports from China, confusing regulations and pollution concerns are undermining India’s fireworks industry
Industry sources say Diwali sales this year were down by 30 per cent

A woman is silhouetted by lit firecrackers during Diwali celebrations in Chennai. Photo: AFP

Arumugam Chinnaswamy set up his makeshift booth selling firecrackers in a Chennai neighbourhood a week ahead of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, with great expectations of doing a brisk trade.

Yet a week later, he has been forced to pack up more than half his stock in the hope he’ll have better luck next year.

“Four years ago, I sold firecrackers worth 800,000 rupees (US$11,288) on the eve of Diwali alone. This year, the sales have not even been a quarter of that,” said Chinnaswamy, 65, painting a grim picture that will be recognised by many in the Indian fireworks industry.

Chinnaswamy buys his firecrackers in Sivakasi, an industrial town in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu that produces more than 90 per cent of the country’s fireworks.

Sivakasi’s dry climate has helped to make it the firework capital of India and many production facilities in the town have been in the business for close to a century. For the most part, the industry has resisted mechanisation and still deals in handmade products. Its 1,100-plus manufacturing units provide jobs for 800,000 mostly uneducated workers and its diligent labour force have earned the town the nickname of ‘Little Japan’.

A worker lays firecrackers in an outdoor yard at a manufacturing unit involved in the production of firecrackers ahead of the Hindu festival of Diwali, in Sivakasi. Photo: AFP

But this reputation is under threat, struggling under the weight of an anti-pollution campaign, regulatory uncertainty and the arrival of cheap black-market Chinese imports. Irregular monsoons and a slowdown-induced cash crunch have not helped matters either.

Industry figures estimate the Diwali sales of India’s 80 billion-rupee firecracker industry took a 30 per cent drop this year.

A TOXIC PROBLEM

With pollution in Indian cities among the worst in the world, the government has come under pressure to do something about the nation’s toxic air – a problem that becomes more acute during Diwali due to the toxic fumes emitted when celebratory fireworks are set off. This Diwali, for instance, many areas in New Delhi recorded an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 999, the highest possible reading (the recommended limit is 60).

That makes the fireworks industry seem like an easy target when it comes to meeting government air quality targets.

Trouble began brewing in October last year when the Supreme Court banned the manufacture of traditional fireworks containing barium nitrate, a chief polluter. That decision put a rocket under the industry, as barium nitrate is cheap and is used in about 75 per cent of all firecrackers in India.

Factories in Sivakasi responded with a four-month shutdown protest that decimated annual production levels by up to a third.

A seal denotes environment friendly ‘Green Fireworks’ at a manufacturing unit in Sivakasi. Photo: AFP

Apparently realising it had overstepped the mark – and that enforcing the Supreme Court regulations would be next to impossible – the government stepped in to rescue the industry, offering its assistance in the manufacture of environment-friendly crackers containing fewer pollutants, but it was too little, too late.

“The Supreme Court verdict was simply Delhi-centric with the vague idea of [cracking down on] urban pollution. It lacked any on-the-ground knowledge of the fireworks industry,” said Tamil Selvan, president of the Indian Fireworks Association, which represents more than 200 medium and large manufacturers.

Singapore travellers give Hong Kong a miss over Diwali long weekend

“Fireworks are low-hanging fruit for the anti-pollution drive as the industry is unorganised. Could the government or judiciary place a similar blanket ban on more pollution-causing industries like automobiles, plastics or tobacco?” asked Selvan.

CHINESE COMPETITION

The industry has also been hit by a flood of cheap Chinese firecrackers that are smuggled into the country on the black market.

In September, the country’s federal anti-smuggling agency, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, cautioned various government departments that huge quantities of Chinese-produced firecrackers had reached Indian soil in the lead up to Diwali.

But industry sources complain they have seen little action from the government to combat the problem.

An advert for firecrackers ahead of the Hindu festival of Diwali, in Sivakasi. Photo: AFP

Legally, Indian manufacturers can neither import nor export firecrackers. The Indian firecracker industry is the second-largest in the world after China’s.

Raja Chandrashekar, chief of the Federation of Tamil Nadu Fireworks Traders, a lobbying body, said low-end Indian-manufactured firecrackers such as roll caps and dot caps – popular among children – had struggled to compete with Chinese-made pop pops and throw bombs.

“Despite our repeated complaints to government bodies, Chinese firecrackers find a way into India, particularly in the northern parts. This is severely affecting our business,” said Chandrashekar.

While more Chinese fireworks might be entering India, the effect has been to undermine the industry, resulting in fewer sales overall.

FIZZLING OUT?

The Sivakasi fireworks industry faces other problems, too. Not least among these is the use of child labour, which had been rampant until a government crackdown a few years ago, and the practice of some factories to operate without proper licences and with questionable safety standards.

But despite the darker aspects of the industry, its role goes beyond merely helping Diwali celebrations go with a bang every year.

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“The livelihoods of over five million people who are indirectly involved in the business, in areas such as trade and transport, depend on the survival of the industry,” said Chandrashekar.

That survival looks increasingly in question. Dull sales of fireworks have been reported in major cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, though exact numbers can be hard to come by due to the unregulated nature of the industry and unreliable numbers shared by manufacturers.

So great has the resultant outcry been that some cynics even wonder whether the industry is struggling as much as it claims or whether it is part of a ploy by manufacturers to gain more government concessions and avoid any further crackdown.

“These firecracker manufacturers lie through their teeth about the Diwali sales for self-serving motives such as tax avoidance. The overall business is healthy,” said Vijay Kumar, editor of the Sivakasi-based monthly magazine Pyro India News.

“Though there was a 30-40 per cent shortage in annual production, all the manufactured products have been sold this year. No large stockpile is left with any manufacturer.”

Customers buy firecrackers on the eve of the Hindu festival of Diwali in Amritsar. Photo: AFP

Still, regardless of the manufacturers’ motives, the result of the industry’s struggles has been that street sellers like Chinnaswamy have fewer fireworks to sell – and they are struggling even to sell those.

Chinnaswamy says people are confused about the government’s anti-pollution drive and about what firecrackers are now legal and this has discouraged them from buying. Despite the government’s effort to promote “green crackers” he says these are too hard to come by to be a ready solution, at least for this year.

“There was no clarity on what type of firecrackers, whether green crackers or otherwise, can be set off and at what time of the day. Many consumers even asked me whether or not the conventional firecrackers are totally banned while there was much misinformation floating about on social media,” said Chinnaswamy.

Shaking his head, all he can do is hope that next year his Diwali goes with more of a bang.

Source: SCMP

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13/10/2019

Xi, Modi agree to trim trade deficit, boost mutual trust amid US-China tensions

The leaders agreed to set up a mechanism to boost economic ties and tackle India’s trade deficit with China after their second informal summit
As 2020 is the 70th anniversary of diplomatic ties between both countries, India and China will hold 70 events next year to promote relations

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meeting in Mamallapuram, Chennai. Photo: EPA

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi concluded their second informal summit on Saturday by pledging to overcome trade differences and appreciate “each other’s autonomous foreign policies”, signalling an effort to focus on mutual interests rather than on long-standing contentious issues.

Modi remarked that both sides had agreed to be “sensitive” to each other’s concerns and not let differences escalate into disputes, while Xi called for communication to “alleviate suspicions” and for India and China to enhance strategic mutual trust, according to state news broadcaster CCTV.

Their desire to look beyond irritants in diplomatic ties, including a decades-long border row and China’s close military ties with India’s arch rival, Pakistan, comes as Beijing is embroiled in a tariff war with Washington that has rocked the global economy.

In a sign of China’s willingness to address India’s trade deficit with it, the leaders agreed to launch a “High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue”.

As Xi meets Modi, Chinese in Chennai hope to witness the ‘Wuhan spirit’

Chinese Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua and Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will meet regularly to discuss ways to boost two-way trade and investments, Indian foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale said in a media briefing.

India has a US$53 billion trade deficit with China, which makes up almost a third of its total trade deficit. It is also facing pressure to decide if it will commit to the China-led

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

(RCEP), which aims to create the world’s largest trading bloc involving 16 countries before the end of the year.

Narendra Modi exchanges gifts with Xi Jinping. Photo: AFP

Negotiations are ongoing with talks taking place in Bangkok this week, but India’s domestic producers have opposed the agreement over fears of a flood of Chinese imports. On Friday, the Indian government rejected clauses in the agreement related to e-commerce, according to reports.

Gokhale told the media briefing that both leaders, who met in the coastal town of Mamallapuram about 50km away from Chennai, briefly discussed the RCEP.

“PM Modi said India was looking forward to the RCEP but it is important that RCEP is balanced, that a balance is maintained in trade in goods, trade in services and investments,” he said, adding that Xi agreed to further discussions of India’s concerns on the issue.

Narendra Modi with Xi Jinping in Mamallapuram. Photo: EPA

CCTV said Xi had six suggestions for how China and India could further improve ties, including assessing each other correctly and stepping up cooperation between their militaries. Besides economic and trade dialogue, China welcomed Indian pharmaceutical and IT companies to invest there, he said.

“We should look at disputes with a correct mind, and not let disputes affect cooperation.

“Both sides should properly and fairly get a solution for border disputes that are acceptable to each other … [and] cautiously handle each other’s core interests, and take proper measures to control issues that cannot be resolved immediately,” the president reportedly said.

Gokhale told reporters that both countries had agreed to pursue, through special representatives, an ongoing dialogue on their disputed border. China and India have held more than 20 rounds of talks to resolve their boundary dispute, over which they went to war in 1962. Different mechanisms have been set up to maintain peace along the 4,000-kilometre (2,485-mile) so-called Line of Actual Control.

Xi and Modi bank on chemistry as they talk trade and terrorism

Gokhale confirmed that the leaders – who met for a total of seven hours over Friday and Saturday, with the bulk of their time spent in one-on-one talks – did not discuss

Kashmir

, a region that is currently divided between India and Pakistan but which both nuclear-armed rivals claim in full.

Since India revoked the autonomy of the area it controls in August and imposed a lockdown,

Pakistan

has lobbied its allies – including its all-weather friend China – to support its opposition to the move. New Delhi had reacted sharply to Beijing’s move to take the matter to the United Nations, insisting that it was a purely bilateral issue. Two days before the summit, Xi had hosted Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and had assured him of China’s support on all core issues, a statement that had irked India.

Gokhale said both leaders “emphasised the importance of having independent and autonomous foreign policies”.

“President Xi said that the two countries needed to have more extensive dialogue in order to understand each other’s perspectives on major global and regional issues,” he added.

Narendra Modi exchanges gifts with Xi Jinping. Photo: AFP

The leaders also discussed terrorism, with a statement issued later by New Delhi saying both sides would make efforts to ensure the international community strengthened its framework “against training, financing and supporting terrorist groups throughout the world and on a non-discriminatory basis”.

The China-led multilateral Financial Action Task Force, which has been investigating Pakistan’s efforts to stamp out the financing of terrorism, is expected to decide soon if it would add Islamabad to its blacklist along with Iran and North Korea, a move that could invite stringent economic sanctions and drive away international financial institutions, both of which could affect Pakistan’s already-indebted economy adversely.

Gokhale added that as 2020 is the 70th anniversary of diplomatic ties between both countries, India and China will hold 70 events next year to promote people-to-people ties, with Modi accepting an invitation by Xi for the next informal summit to be held in China.

Both leaders had struck positive notes on the summit – with Xi describing their discussions as “candid” and between friends and Modi hailing the “Chennai Connect” meeting as marking a new era of cooperation between both countries.

War games, Kashmir and a US$57b question: the issues as Xi meets Modi

But analysts said they would be looking to see how the newly-announced high-level mechanism on trade panned out.

Narayani Basu, a New Delhi-based author, foreign policy analyst and China watcher felt the summit had achieved its purpose of bagging small wins for both sides.

“Discussing contentious issues would have defeated the purpose of the summit. The idea behind such a summit must be that despite the overarching posturing on different divergent issues, the two countries can achieve the easily-achievable wins. That is what the summit seems to have tried doing.”

But in terms of actual outcomes, she said she remained sceptical.

“I don’t think there has been much progress in the ties between the two countries since the last summit in Wuhan. Hence, this time, there is a lot more caution and scepticism towards such a summit,” she said, referring to the first summit last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

During Xi’s visit to southern India, which lasted 24 hours in all, Modi took him on a personal tour of temple monuments dating back to the seventh and eighth century in Mamallapuram when regional leaders had trade ties with Chinese provinces. He was also shown local artisan handicrafts and art forms, and gifted a handwoven silk portrait, a lamp and a painting.

Xi gave Modi a porcelain plate with the image of the prime minister’s face printed on it.

Xi Jinping with Narendra Modi in Mamallapuram. Photo: Reuters

On Friday, New Delhi announced that visa rules for Chinese nationals visiting India would be relaxed, with multiple-entry visas with a validity period of five years available from this month onwards. At present, most visas are single-entry and usually for between 30 and 60 days. Visa fees would also be reduced, the government said, with the multiple-entry visa costing US$80.

This was aimed at further enhancing “people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and [encouraging] more Chinese tourists to choose India as a destination for tourism purposes,” it said in a statement.

Xi left Chennai on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Nepal, which lies in between India and China. He will be the first Chinese president to visit Nepal in 22 years and is expected to sign a slew of deals with Nepal’s Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, including the planned extension of the rail link from remote, mountainous Tibet to Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

The link will be part of Beijing’s ambitious infrastructure project to boost trade, the

Belt and Road Initiative

(BRI), that Nepal joined two years ago.

More than 120 countries have signed on to the BRI, including Pakistan, where a series of projects worth US$46 billion are being constructed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). India has snubbed the BRI and questioned the transparency of funding agreements.

Source: SCMP

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11/10/2019

Spotlight: Film, yoga, smartphone industries enhance China-India links

People practice yoga at a park in New Delhi, India, June 21, 2019. TO GO WITH: Spotlight: Film, yoga, smartphone industries enhance China-India links (Xinhua/Zhang Naijie)

by Xinhua writers Chen Jian, Zhao Xu, Zhang Xingjun

CHENNAI, India, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) — “I would like to see a lot of collaboration between creative people from China and India, making stories that people from both countries would love to see,” said Bollywood star Aamir Khan before a film-promotion trip to China in early 2018.

As one of the most recognized Indian actors in China, Khan’s biographical sports film “Dangal” raked in nearly 1.3 billion yuan (190 million U.S. dollars) in the Chinese box office in 2017, making it the highest-grossing Indian film of all time in China.

Inspired by the real journey of an Indian wrestler, Khan acted the part of a strict father who turned his daughters into world-class athletes.

From “Dangal” and “Secret Superstar” to “Hichki” and “Thugs of Hindostan,” Bollywood hits have been immensely popular among Chinese moviegoers in recent years. Older generations were impressed by Indian films like “Awara” (1951) and “Caravan” (1971), which featured spectacular song-and-dance scenes.

Khan, who has visited China several times, said he felt Chinese and Indian people have many things in common. For example, both peoples attach great importance to family, he told Xinhua.

“Many people get to know a certain country through watching their movies. Through my work, quite a few foreign viewers start to know the sorrows and happiness of ordinary Indian people,” Khan said, adding that artists can help people with different cultural backgrounds understand each other.

Bollywood actress Rani Mukerji, whose Hindi comedy-drama film “Hichki” was screened in China last year, said Chinese audience watching her film with Chinese subtitles reacted similarly to Indian fans.

“You realize that you don’t have to know the language to connect with the film. I think that’s what makes movies so, so special … If the emotions are universal, it can connect anywhere,” she told Xinhua in an interview earlier this year.

In “Hichki,” Mukerji played the leading role of an aspiring teacher with Tourette Syndrome, who must prove herself by educating a group of underprivileged students.

Taking note of Bollywood’s developed industrial system and China’s huge film market, the Indian actress is also looking forward to India-China film co-productions.

“I am actually very keen to do India-China co-productions where I can be part of a Chinese film or Chinese actors can be part of Indian films,” she said.

YOGA IN CHINA

Before Yu Songsong, a young man from southwest China’s Guizhou Province, started to practice yoga, he knew little about India, where the practice originated.

Having spent the last six years learning yoga, he is attracted by the yoga culture and eager to travel to India.

Yu used to suffer from an emotional disorder. “It was yoga that turned me around. I was no longer lost. I’ve found a direction for my life,” he said.

Yu started to practice yoga when he was a freshman and became a vegetarian. “The physical and mental practices relieved me of psychological distress,” he said.

Through yoga, Yu is engaging in a comparative study in the philosophies of China and India, two ancient civilizations in the world.

“In the class, we discuss and compare the traditional Chinese theory that ‘man is an integral part of nature’ and the Indian idea that ‘the Buddha and I are one.’ Through this, we explore the similarities that underline the culture and civilizations of the two countries,” he said.

The China-India Yoga College, established at Kunming’s Yunnan Minzu University in June 2015, is China’s first yoga college. Fifty branches are planned to be opened in China’s major cities in the next three to five years, and are attracting batches of Indian yoga teachers to China, with 38-year-old Subbulakshmi Velusamy being one of them.

Velusamy arrived in Kunming in late 2015 and quickly adapted to the climate and life there. She said the local diet is light, which is very palatable to yoga practitioners and vegetarians.

Velusamy said teaching yoga in Yunnan was a wonderful experience as the Chinese people around her were very helpful and kind.

“They often chat with me after class and invite me to parties,” she told Xinhua in an earlier interview.

Velusamy said she was eager to learn about the ancient Chinese civilization. At the same time she introduced yoga to more Chinese as a unique and valuable Indian cultural asset.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has played a significant role in spreading yoga at home and abroad. He was instrumental in urging the United Nations to mark June 21 as International Yoga Day.

“Beyond exercise and health, yoga is about life, self-awareness and a connection with your soul. So I expect my students to understand their consciousness in today’s technologically-driven world,” said Rama Rathore, a yoga trainer in New Delhi.

CHINESE SMARTPHONE BRANDS

Smartphones are becoming easily available to everyone thanks to their affordable prices. With the exploding growth of Internet data usage and its access across the country, millions of Indians are now connected with the world thanks to their smartphones.

“It is the people’s window to the world and the growth opportunity in this sector is huge,” said Saifi Ali, a head researcher associated with a leading telecom operator located in Gurgaon on the outskirts of New Delhi.

“India has overtaken the United States in the smartphone market,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chinese smartphone brands, such as Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, have been successful in India’s fast growing market, according to global market research firm Canalys.

Xiaomi has been the leading smartphone brand in India for eight consecutive quarters, with a 28.3-percent market share for the second quarter of this year.

Xiaomi has become the first brand in India to sell more than 100 million smartphones within a span of five years, since the company began operations in the country in 2014.

Jobs and technical training provided by the Chinese companies have helped many Indian workers to enhance their technical skills and earn good money.

Neeraj Sharma, 25, is an Indian employee at MCM, a Noida-based Chinese company of smart terminal equipment. Sharma said he has learned a lot from the company and his technical skills have also improved.

“From here I started learning practical knowledge. Everything I know about the technology we are using here for SMT (Surface Mount Technology) and also in assembly is from this company. I started from the very lowest designation and right now I am working as a floor-in-charge there,” he told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Thanks to his stable income from MCM, Sharma, who is from the northern Uttar Pradesh state, has fulfilled his dream of buying a house in Noida, outside New Delhi.

“I came here, so at that time I had planned to buy a house here for my family. Right now I have already bought a small house. Maybe further in the future I will have a flat,” he said.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in ancient civilizations, Bollywood actress, Bollywood star, Buddha, Canalys, Chennai, China-India links, China-India Yoga College, emotional disorder, enhance, Film, Freshman, Guizhou Province, Gurgaon, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, industries, International yoga day, Kunming, New Delhi, philosophies, smartphone, SMT (Surface Mount Technology), Subbulakshmi Velusamy, Tourette Syndrome, Uncategorized, United Nations, United States, vegetarians, Xiaomi, Yoga, Yunnan Minzu University | Leave a Comment »

09/10/2019

China Focus: Xi’s trip to India, Nepal to inject new impetus into ties

BEIJING, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s upcoming trip to India and Nepal is expected to inject new impetus into China’s relations with the two countries, an official said here Wednesday.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced earlier in the day that at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nepali President Bidhya Devi Bandari, President Xi will attend the second informal meeting with Modi and pay a state visit to Nepal from Oct. 11 to 13.

This will be Xi’s first overseas trip after the grand celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Vice Foreign Minister Luo Zhaohui told a press briefing.

Xi’s trip will inject new impetus into China-India and China-Nepal relations, even China’s relations with South Asia, Luo said, adding that Xi’s trip will also open up new space for strengthening regional connectivity and economic and trade cooperation, set up new platforms for enhancing mutual trust and friendship among regional people, and make new contributions to world peace and prosperity.

China and India, both as developing countries and emerging economies, are the only two major countries in the world with a population of more than 1 billion, Luo said, stressing that China-India cooperation will not only benefit the development of the two countries, but also help promote world multipolarization and economic globalization, and safeguard the common interests of developing countries.

Since the first informal meeting between Xi and Modi in Wuhan last year, China-India relations have entered a new stage of steady growth, with cooperation and exchanges being carried out in various fields and differences being properly managed, Luo said.

In Chennai, Xi will have an in-depth communication with Modi on issues that have overall, long-term and strategic significance on bilateral relations, set the tune and guide the direction for future development of the ties, and speak to the world in unanimous voice, so as to inject positive energy into the world full of uncertainties.

Regarding Xi’s visit to Nepal, Luo said that Xi will be the first Chinese president to visit the South Asian country after an interval of 23 years.

Nepal, as a friendly neighbor, also serves as an important partner of China in terms of carrying out the Belt and Road cooperation, Luo said.

Since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the two countries have treated each other on an equal footing with mutual respect and support, said Luo, adding that China and Nepal have become a model of mutually beneficial cooperation between countries that are different in social system and size.

“This historic visit will definitely exert historic influence,” Luo said.

He said that Xi will attend the welcome ceremony and banquet hosted by President Bandari, meet with Bandari, hold talks with Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and jointly witness the signing of cooperation documents with him.

Xi will also meet with co-chairman of the Nepal Communist Party Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, and leaders of the country’s Federal Parliament and other political party leaders, Luo added.

Leaders of the two countries will make new plans for the development of bilateral relations, ushering in a new era of fast development for China-Nepal relations, Luo said.

This will also consolidate political mutual trust and foundation of public opinions for friendship between the two countries, push forward high quality construction of the Belt and Road, speed up building an interconnectivity network across the Himalayas, and inject new impetus into pragmatic cooperation in various areas between the two countries, Luo said.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, Belt and Road (B&R), Belt and Road Cooperation, Chennai, China-India relations, China-Nepal relations, Chinese foreign ministry, Chinese President Xi Jinping, diplomatic ties, economic globalization, Federal Parliament, grand celebration, Himalayas, India alert, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, multipolarization, Nepal, Nepal Communist Party, Nepali President Bidhya Devi Bandari, overseas trip, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, South Asia, South Asian country, Uncategorized, Vice Foreign Minister Luo Zhaohui, Wuhan | Leave a Comment »

09/10/2019

India’s Modi to host China’s Xi at summit with ties strained by Kashmir

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping at an informal summit this week, the Indian foreign ministry said on Wednesday, their talks coming at a time of strained ties over the disputed region of Kashmir.

The meeting in the southern Indian city of Chennai on Oct. 11-12 is aimed at enhancing the rapport the leaders built when they met in the Chinese city of Wuhan last year to help stabilise ties after a standoff in another contested section of their long border, far removed from Kashmir.

But India’s decision in August to withdraw special status for Kashmir drew sharp condemnation from Pakistan and its old ally, China, which took the matter to the U.N. Security Council.

During a meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan in Beijing on Wednesday, Xi said that he was watching the situation in Kashmir closely, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xi said that the right and wrong of the situation was clear and India and Pakistan should resolve the dispute via peaceful dialogue, according to Xinhua.

India says its revocation of the special status of Muslim-majority Kashmir, which was accompanied by a crackdown on dissent by the security forces, is an internal matter aimed at developing the Himalayan territory, which is also claimed by Pakistan, more quickly.

India will make clear that any change to its Jammu and Kashmir state is an internal affair if the Chinese side were to raise the matter in the forthcoming talks, a government source said.

China’s close security ties with Pakistan have long been a matter of concern in New Delhi and in recent years India has drawn closer to the United States to help balance China’s rising weight across the region.

“The forthcoming Chennai Informal Summit will provide an opportunity for the two leaders to continue their discussions on overarching issues of bilateral, regional and global importance and to exchange views on deepening India-China Closer Development Partnership,” the Indian ministry said in a statement.

“OMINOUS SIGNALS

China, which has been criticised by the United States for its treatment of members of Muslim ethnic minorities, said it believed India and Pakistan must refrain from taking unilateral action in Kashmir and has expressed concern over human rights violations there. India has dismissed those concerns.

Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of Chinese studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said it was important for the nuclear-armed neighbours to stabilise relations as both dealt with domestic and regional issues.

“The second informal meeting as such is significant given these ominous signals at bilateral, regional and global levels,” he said.

Xi will also make a state visit to Nepal at the end of his India visit, the first by a Chinese president in 22 years, the Nepali foreign ministry said.

China has deepened ties with India’s neighbours, building ports and power stations in an arc stretching from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka and Pakistan as part of its grand Belt and Road energy and infrastructure plan.

Ahead of Xi’s trip to India, China invited Pakistan’s Prime Khan for talks and said it supports Pakistan in safeguarding its independent sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir is divided between India, Pakistan and China. India rules the populous Kashmir Valley and the Hindu-dominated region around Jammu city, while Pakistan controls a wedge of territory in the west, and China holds a thinly populated high-altitude area in the north.

During Xi’s visit, Modi is expected to raise economic issues, including India’s $53 billion trade deficit with China in 2018/19, and the smaller presence of Indian companies in China compared with that of other major economies.

Source: Reuters

Posted in Bangladesh, Beijing, Belt and Road (B&R), Chennai, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Himalayan territory, India alert, India-China Closer Development Partnership, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, informal summit, Jammu and Kashmir, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kashmir, Nepal, Nepali foreign ministry, New Delhi, Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan, Sri Lanka, U.N. Security Council, Uncategorized, United States, Wuhan, Xinhua News Agency | Leave a Comment »

02/07/2019

Viewpoint: Why India’s Chennai has run out of water

Indian women with empty plastic pots protest as they demand drinking water in Chennai on June 22, 2019.

Chennai (formerly Madras), the capital of India’s southern Tamil Nadu state, is gaining notoriety as the disaster capital of the world – floods one year, cyclone the next, and drought the year after. But it is not alone. Environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman explains why.

As I write this, it has rained in Chennai – the first real welcome shower, but one that lasted only 30 minutes. But, still, that has been enough to flood the streets and stall traffic. The irony is that Chennai’s vulnerability to floods and its water scarcity have common roots. Blinded by a hurry to grow, the city has paved over the very infrastructures that nurtured water.

Between 1980 and 2010, heavy construction in the city meant its area under buildings increased from 47 sq km to 402 sq km. Meanwhile, areas under wetlands declined from 186 to 71.5 sq km.

The city is no stranger to drought or heavy rains. The north-east monsoon, which brings most of the water to this region in October and November, is unpredictable. Some years it pours, and in other years, it just fails to show up.

Any settlement in the region ought to have been designed for both eventualities – with growth limited not by availability of land but of water. Early agrarian settlements in Chennai and its surrounding districts did exactly this.

Shallow, spacious tanks – called erys in Tamil- were carved out on the region’s flat coastal plains by erecting bunds with the same earth that was scooped out to deepen them. Essentially, the infrastructure for water to stay and flow was created first; the settlements came later.

In this photo taken on June 20, 2019, Indian residents collect water from a community well in Chennai after reservoirs for the city ran dry.

This agrarian logic valourised open spaces. Each village had vast tracts of land, including water bodies, grazing grounds and wood lots, demarcated as Poromboke or commons. Construction was outlawed in the commons. The three districts of Chennai, Thiruvallur and Kanchipuram alone had more than 6000 erys – some as old as 1,500 years.

So rather than transport water over long distances against gravity, early settlers had the technology and good sense to harvest water where it fell.

But this faded with the advent of modern technology.

As urban logic took root, built-up spaces began to be seen as more valuable than open earth. In fact, one could argue that Chennai’s date with “zero water” was made in the 17th Century when it was incorporated as a city by Royal Charter. Born a colony of the British, the city rapidly became a coloniser of the countryside.

The British commandeered a small irrigation ery in a village called Puzhal, and vastly expanded its capacity to supply drinking water to the city, in response to the Madras famine of 1876. Renamed the Redhills Reservoir, this was Chennai’s first centralised, big-budget drinking water project.

For more on the Chennai water crisis:

Reliance on a distant water source disconnected residents of the fast urbanising settlement from local water and landscapes. For the urban agenda, this was great as it freed up inner-city water bodies for real estate development.

In the 1920s for instance, the ancient 70 acre Mylapore tank was filled up to create what is now a bustling residential and commercial area called T Nagar.

That tank was part of a larger complex called the Long Tank that extended nearly 10 km (6.21 miles) to the north. Now all that remains of these tanks are thoroughfares named Spurtank Road and Tank Bund Road.

The city has pursued its aspirations to become an economic hub by promoting itself as a major IT and automotive manufacturing centre. In addition to attracting new settlers to Chennai and vastly increasing the pressure on scant resources, these industries have dealt death blows to the region’s water infrastructure.

Land-use planning today is a far cry from the simple principles that prevailed in medieval Tamil Nadu.

Wetlands were off-limits for construction, and only low-density buildings were permitted on lands immediately upstream of tanks. The reason: These lands have to soak up the rainwater before letting it to run to the reservoir.

It is this sub-surface water that will flow to the lake as the levels go down with use and time. Unmindful of such common sense, the IT Corridor (a road which houses a large number of IT companies in the city) was built almost entirely on Chennai’s precious Pallikaranai marshlands.

Indian workers collect water from the Puzhal reservoir on the outskirts of Chennai on June 20, 2019. - Water levels in the four main reservoirs in Chennai have fallen to one of its lowest levels in 70 years, according to local media reports — Image caption Puzhal reservoir was Chennai’s first centralised, big-budget drinking water project

And the area immediately upstream of Chembarambakkam – the city’s largest drinking water tank – has now been converted into an automotive special economic zone (SEZ).

Other water bodies have been treated with similar disdain.

The Perungudi garbage dump spreads out through the middle of the Pallikaranai marshlands.

The Manali marshlands were drained in the 1960s for Tamil Nadu’s largest petrochemical refinery. Electricity for the city comes from a cluster of power plants built on the Ennore Creek, a tidal wetland that has been converted into a dump for coal-ash.

The Pallavaram Big Tank, which is perhaps more than 1,000 years old, has over the last two decades been bisected by a high-speed road with the remainder serving as a garbage dump for the locality.

In Chennai, the water utility supplies are barely a fourth of the total water demand. The remainder is supplied by a powerful network of commercial water suppliers who are sucking resources in the region dry.

Along the periphery of Chennai, and far into the hinterland, the land is dotted with communities whose water and livelihoods have been forcibly taken to feed the city. The water crises in these localities desiccated by the city never make it to the news.

Indian residents queue with plastic recipients to get drinking water from a distribution tanker in the outskirts of Chennai on May 29, 2019.

The world won’t change unless we replace capitalism with other ways of doing business that are not premised on the exploitation of nature and people.

Our dominant economic model, with its blind faith in technology, is doomed.

Modern economy views open, un-built land as useless. It believes that value can be extracted from such lands only by digging, drilling, filling, mining, paving or building on it.

Degrading land use change is colliding with climate change in all the modern cities of the world, exposing their vulnerabilities.

Chennai’s struggles with water – be it flooding or scarcity – cannot be addressed unless the city re-examines its values, and how it treats its land and water.

Further growth and more buildings are not an option – it needs to actively shrink in size instead.

By ushering in policies to promote land-friendly economies in the state’s hinterland, the government can make it easier for people to migrate out of the city in a planned and feasible way.

Although difficult, this would be less painful than what would happen if they were to wait for nature to do the job.

Source: The BBC

Posted in automotive special economic zone (SEZ, British, Chembarambakkam, Chennai, IT companies, IT Corridor, Kanchipuram, Long Tank, Madras, Manali marshlands, Mylapore tank, Pallikaranai marshlands, Perungudi garbage dump, Puzhal reservoir, Royal Charter, run out of water, T Nagar, Tamil, Tamil Nadu, Thiruvallur, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

18/06/2019

Chennai water crisis: City’s reservoirs run dry

A woman sits amid empty water pots — Image caption Empty water pots in Chennai, which has run out of water

The southern Indian city of Chennai (formerly Madras) is in crisis after its four main water reservoirs ran completely dry.

The acute water shortage has forced the city to scramble for urgent solutions, including drilling new boreholes.

Residents have had to stand in line for hours to get water from government tanks, and restaurants have closed due to the lack of water.

“Only rain can save Chennai from this situation,” an official told BBC Tamil.

The city, which, according to the 2011 census, is India’s sixth largest, has been in the grip of a severe water shortage for weeks now.

As the reservoirs started to run dry, many hotels and restaurants shut down temporarily. The Chennai metro has turned off air conditioning in the stations, while offices have asked staff to work from home in a bid to conserve water.

Residents have been standing in line in order to get water — Image caption People queue to get water from government trucks

Vinoth Kaligai, the general secretary of an IT workers’ association, confirmed that some firms had told employees to stay at home. “But homes are also running out of water, so what are we supposed to do?” he added.

The situation has also prompted clashes to break out between residents. Last week, police arrested a man for stabbing his neighbour during a fight over water-sharing in the neighbourhood.

Officials are trying to find alternative sources of water, with the city’s water department starting to identify and extract water from quarries.

But the big concern is the dry reservoirs and low groundwater levels.

The city has started drilling bore wells due to the water shortage — Image caption The search is now on for new sources of water

“The only way to make this better is to improve the groundwater level,” Nakkeeran, a social activist, said. “We’ve had dry years before but the groundwater was our saviour.”

The water crisis has also meant that most of the city has to depend solely on Chennai’s water department, which has been distributing water through government trucks across neighbourhoods.

“The destruction has just begun,” an official said. “If the rain fails us this year too, we are totally destroyed.”

Source: The BBC

Posted in Chennai, Madras, reservoirs, run dry, Uncategorized, water crisis | Leave a Comment »

13/06/2019

No survivors, says IAF after first recce team reaches crashed An-32 aircraft

Air force and army helicopters on Wednesday had airdropped 15 mountaineers for rescue operations last evening. The IAF said eight reached the An-32 crash site on Thursday morning.

INDIA Updated: Jun 13, 2019 14:35 IST

HT Correspondent
Hindustan Times, New Delhi

Air force and army helicopters on Wednesday had airdropped 15 mountaineers for rescue operations last evening.(ANI )

Thirteen military personnel on board the An-32 aircraft that crashed in Arunachal Pradesh on June 3 have died, the Indian Air Force said on Thursday hours after the first recce team reached the crash site. Air force and army helicopters on Wednesday had airdropped 15 mountaineers for rescue operations. Eight of them reached the crash site and transmitted the tragic news.

“IAF is sad to inform that there are no survivors from the crash of An32,” the air force said in a string of tweets to “pay tribute to the brave air-warriors who lost their life” in the crash.

The IAF also identified the air warriors who died in the crash: Wing Commander GM Charles, Squadron Leader H Vinod, Flight Lieutenants R Thapa, Ashish Tanwar, S Mohanty and Mohit K Garg, Warrant Officer KK Mishra, Sergeant Anoop Kumar, Corporal Sherin, Leading Air Craftsman SK Singh and Pankaj and two non combatant enrolled employees Putali and Rajesh Kumar.

Also Read | AN-32 pilot’s wife was on ATC duty in Jorhat when the aircraft went off the radar

The An-32 was on its way to an advanced landing ground at Mechuka in Arunachal Pradesh’s West Siang district – about 15 km from the Line of Actual Control, the disputed border with China – when it lost contact with ground control in about 30 minutes after taking off from Jorhat in Assam.

The aircraft was equipped with an emergency locator transmitter, an emergency beacon in the cargo section that can broadcast distress signals to reveal the location of an aircraft. But no signal came from this device.

The The 24-metre-long aircraft with a wingspan of about 29 metres was a speck in a treacherous search zone spanning hundreds of square kilometers dotted with towering ridges, thick forests and deep valleys, officials familiar with the search said. The search efforts were hampered by bad weather, with fierce rains and poor visibility narrowing the scope of operations.

For eight days, the IAF deployed every possible asset it could – right from satellites in space, specialised surveillance aircraft from the Navy, unmanned aerial vehicles, and Global 5000 surveillance jet of the country’s external spy agency to locate the Soviet-origin transport plane that mysteriously disappeared from its radar screens. It also announced a Rs 5 lakh reward for information that could help it locate the aircraft.

The first firm clue about the crash site came eight days later from a villager in Arunachal Pradesh’s remote mountains, according to state government officials in the West Siang district.

Also Read | From ‘missing’ to ‘crash’: The family of IAF cook swings between hope and despair

A Mi-17 helicopter, among the scores of aircraft involved in the massive search, finally sighted the wreckage at 12,000 feet near a tiny village called Lipo with a population of just around 120 people. The first image of the crash site indicated the plane had blown up into a ball of fire on impact and dimmed hopes about the possibility of the IAF personnel surviving the crash.

The crash is similar to an incident from 10 years ago in which the wreckage of an AN-32 that crashed in West Siang with the same number of people on board was found at 12,000 feet. There were no survivors in the June 2009 crash. The IAF has lost 10 aircraft this year.

In 2016, another AN-32 – flying from Chennai to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – went missing above the Bay of Bengal with 29 people on board. Search teams were not able to locate the aircraft despite a massive operation.

Source: Hindustan Times

Posted in AN-32 aircraft, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, army helicopters, Chennai, crashed, emergency beacon, emergency locator transmitter, Global 5000 surveillance jet, Indian Air Force (IAF), Mi-17 helicopter, mountaineers, navy, recce team, rescue operations, surveillance aircraft, survivors, Uncategorized, unmanned aerial vehicles, West Siang | Leave a Comment »

03/06/2019

Indian Air Force’s AN-32 aircraft with 13 onboard goes missing

An AN-32 aircraft of the Indian Air Force with 13 people onboard has gone missing after taking off from Jorhat in Assam.

The aircraft was headed to Mechuka Advance Landing Ground, the landing strip in the eastern Himalayas of Arunachal Pradesh’s West Siang district. The landing strip is about 30-odd km from the nearest point on the India-China border.

The transport aircraft took off from Jorhat at 12.25 pm.

It was in contact with ground agencies for the next 35 minutes. An Indian Air Force official said there had been no contact after 1 pm.

“Since the aircraft did not reach the airfield, overdue action was initiated by IAF,” the official said, adding that all available resources had been deployed to locate the aircraft.

A total of eight crew and five passengers are onboard the aircraft.

News agency ANI said Sukhoi-30 combat aircraft and C-130 Special Ops aircraft had also been deployed on a search mission to locate the IAF aircraft.

The AN-32s joined the IAF in 1983 and continue to remain in service. The air force has a fleet of more than 100 AN-32s.

Monday’s missing aircraft revived memories of the AN-32 that went missing while flying from Chennai to Port Blair in July 2016.

A massive search mission had been launched to find the 29 people on the transport plane. The IAF had then carried out 200 search sorties to cover over 2 lakh square nautical miles multiple times by these aircraft. The IAF court of inquiry later concluded that it was unlikely that the missing personnel on board the aircraft survived the accident.

Source: Hindustan Times

Posted in accidents, Aircraft, airfield, AN-32 aircraft, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, C-130 Special Ops, Chennai, court of inquiry, Himalayas, India-China border, Indian Air Force (IAF), Jorhat, landing strip, Mechuka Advance Landing Ground, missing, Port Blair, Sukhoi-30 combat aircraft, survived, Uncategorized, West Siang district | Leave a Comment »

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

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