#Growing economy india

[foxnangelseo]

Nike and Adidas Eyeing India: A Strategic Move for the Global Shoe Giants

Nike and Adidas, two of the world's most popular and iconic sports shoe brands, are making headlines with their ambitious plans to set up shop in India. According to a recent article published in The Economic Times, the companies have a combined investment plan of Rs 2,000 crore (approx. USD 280 million) to expand their presence in the Indian market. This move is not only significant for the Indian fashion and footwear industry but also highlights the growing importance of India as a key market for global fashion giants.

Nike and Adidas are looking to tap into the massive consumer base in India, which is estimated to be one of the largest markets for sportswear in the world. With a population of over 1.3 billion, and a burgeoning middle class with increasing disposable income and changing lifestyle preferences, India presents a significant growth opportunity for these global shoe brands.

Nike and Adidas’ plans to invest in India include setting up manufacturing facilities, expanding their retail presence, and investing in digital platforms to enhance their online sales channels. This multi-pronged approach reflects their strategic vision to establish a strong foothold in the Indian market and cater to the diverse needs and preferences of Indian consumers.

One of the key aspects of Nike and Adidas' expansion plan in India is the establishment of manufacturing facilities. This move is aimed at leveraging India's skilled labor force and cost-effective production capabilities. The article mentions that Nike plans to invest Rs 1,700 crore (approx. USD 240 million) to set up a manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu, while Adidas is planning to invest Rs 300 crore (approx. USD 42 million) to set up a similar facility in Andhra Pradesh. These manufacturing facilities are expected to not only cater to the Indian market but also serve as export hubs to meet the global demand for Nike and Adidas products. This is a significant step towards the Indian government's vision of making India a global manufacturing hub and creating employment opportunities for the local workforce.

Expanding their retail presence is another crucial aspect of Nike and Adidas' plans in India. The article highlights that both companies are looking to open new stores and expand their footprint in existing markets across the country. This includes both company-owned stores as well as franchisee-operated stores. This retail expansion strategy reflects their focus on increasing the accessibility and availability of their products to Indian consumers, especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, which are witnessing rapid urbanization and rising consumer aspirations. Additionally, Nike and Adidas are also exploring partnerships with e-commerce platforms and other digital channels to enhance their online sales channels and cater to the growing trend of online shopping in India. This omnichannel approach is in line with the changing retail landscape in India, where consumers are increasingly adopting digital channels for their shopping needs.

Furthermore, Nike and Adidas are also looking to invest in digital platforms and technology to enhance their operations and the customer experience in India. This includes investments in data analytics, artificial intelligence, and other digital tools to gain insights into consumer preferences, optimize supply chain operations, and personalize customer interactions. These investments are aimed at enhancing their competitiveness in the Indian market and staying ahead in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

The entry of Nike and Adidas into India is not only significant from a business perspective but also has wider implications for the Indian fashion and footwear industry. India has a rich heritage of traditional textiles and craftsmanship, and the entry of global fashion brands like Nike and Adidas can create opportunities for collaboration and knowledge-sharing with local artisans and designers. This can contribute to the preservation and promotion of India's rich cultural heritage and traditional craftsmanship while also fostering innovation and creativity in the fashion industry.

Fox&Angel is a dynamic strategy consulting network that brings together a top-tier team of industry experts with a track record of notable achievements, insights, and growth. Our commitment is to tailor personalized business and strategy solutions that address your unique challenges. To achieve this, we carefully select consultants from various industries and geographies who possess the most relevant expertise to help you achieve your goals and succeed.

This post was originally published on: Foxnangel

[da-riya]

I'll try out Vic3 again I think I didn't give it a fair shot on it's own terms

[jobaaj]

UPDATE: India will be the third-largest economy by 2027! We aren’t saying it. J.P. Morgan is!! Recently, James Sullivan, the MD of JP Morgan APAC Equity Research, made this forecast while also adding that India’s GDP could more than double to $7 trillion by 2030!! He expects the contribution of the manufacturing sector to increase from 17% to 25% of India’s GDP while exports are expected to double to over $1 trillion!!

Read full: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/casakshamagarwal_india-economy-jpmorgan-activity-7120687527388196864-Fy-P?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Follow Jobaaj Stories (the Media arm of Jobaaj.com Group) for more.

[thejuniorage]

77 Years of India's Independence : Learn about the important dates that define India's history as a vibrant democracy, a growing economy, and a nation that continues to evolve on the global stage.

[itscomhes]

Importance of Digital Marketing Compared to Old-Time Newspaper Marketing

There is no denying that the Internet, coupled with technological advancements, has revolutionized the face of marketing. Earlier, the best and the most effective way to promote a business was to get display ads printed in newspapers. But times have changed. Today’s generation is more hooked to the digital world than printed media. Consequently, there is a growing need to shift focus on digital marketing. There is no exception for the healthcare industry as well.

What is Healthcare Digital Marketing?

In healthcare, digital marketing refers to using digital platforms such as social media and websites as tools for marketing communication. The “sponsored ads” that pop up on your social feed and the emails you get from healthcare companies are all a part of digital marketing.

Trends in Healthcare Digital Marketing in India

The past few years have been witness to India emerging as one of the fastest-growing digital economies globally. The period between 2014 and 2017 saw the digital adoption index growing by 90%. Regarding revenue, the Indian digital healthcare market stood at a valuation of $ 116.61 billion in 2018. The numbers will expectedly hit INR 485.43 billion by 2024, with a CAGR of around 27.41% during the years 2019–2024. (Source.)

Why Are the Downsides of Traditional Marketing?

The traditional marketing mode is a conventional method to reach out to a semi-targeted audience through various offline advertising methods. It usually comes in prints, broadcasts, direct mail, telephone, and outdoor advertising like billboards. However, conventional marketing has the following drawbacks:

Very costly

Almost no direct interaction with the audience

Making updates is not easy in a static newspaper ad or an already aired TV commercial.

No room for customizations to target a specific audience

Measuring ROI becomes tough.

The rate of leads converting into paying customers is meager.

Receiving feedback is not easy.

Why Go Digital with Healthcare Marketing?

As per ClickZ, the global population has 57% internet users with an average online activity of 6 hours 42 minutes each day. (Source) With different channels like social media, websites, content marketing, pay-per-click, and more, there can be no better time to tap the digital platform’s potential. While traditional newspaper marketing is still useful, technology makes it easier to broaden your outreach, especially when offering something essential, like healthcare services. So here are the top benefits of adopting digital marketing:

Better audience profiling

Direct interaction with the target audience.

Better prediction of customer behavior

Easier to get feedbacks on your service or brand

Tracking your marketing progress is easy.

Cost-effective compared to traditional advertising.

Enough scope for customizing and updating marketing communication

Conclusion

With progressive government policies, India’s robust digital footprint has played a vital role in nurturing the country’s digital healthcare ecosystem. Healthcare providers are turning to digital media to grow their business while offering their services to the public. Digital marketing has promising prospects for the future, far outweighing the limitations posed by traditional marketing.

There is no denying that the Internet, coupled with technological advancements, has revolutionized the face of marketing. Earlier, the best and the most effective way to promote a business was to get display ads printed in newspapers. But times have changed. Today’s generation is more hooked to the digital world than printed media. Consequently, there is a growing need to shift focus on digital marketing. There is no exception for the healthcare industry as well.

What is Healthcare Digital Marketing?

In healthcare, digital marketing refers to using digital platforms such as social media and websites as tools for marketing communication. The “sponsored ads” that pop up on your social feed and the emails you get from healthcare companies are all a part of digital marketing.

Trends in Healthcare Digital Marketing in India

The past few years have been witness to India emerging as one of the fastest-growing digital economies globally. The period between 2014 and 2017 saw the digital adoption index growing by 90%. Regarding revenue, the Indian digital healthcare market stood at a valuation of $ 116.61 billion in 2018. The numbers will expectedly hit INR 485.43 billion by 2024, with a CAGR of around 27.41% during the years 2019–2024. (Source.)

Why Are the Downsides of Traditional Marketing?

The traditional marketing mode is a conventional method to reach out to a semi-targeted audience through various offline advertising methods. It usually comes in prints, broadcasts, direct mail, telephone, and outdoor advertising like billboards. However, conventional marketing has the following drawbacks:

Very costly

Almost no direct interaction with the audience

Making updates is not easy in a static newspaper ad or an already aired TV commercial.

No room for customizations to target a specific audience

Measuring ROI becomes tough.

The rate of leads converting into paying customers is meager.

Receiving feedback is not easy.

Why Go Digital with Healthcare Marketing?

As per ClickZ, the global population has 57% internet users with an average online activity of 6 hours 42 minutes each day. (Source) With different channels like social media, websites, content marketing, pay-per-click, and more, there can be no better time to tap the digital platform’s potential. While traditional newspaper marketing is still useful, technology makes it easier to broaden your outreach, especially when offering something essential, like healthcare services. So here are the top benefits of adopting digital marketing:

Better audience profiling

Direct interaction with the target audience.

Better prediction of customer behavior

Easier to get feedbacks on your service or brand

Tracking your marketing progress is easy.

Cost-effective compared to traditional advertising.

Enough scope for customizing and updating marketing communication

Conclusion

With progressive government policies, India’s robust digital footprint has played a vital role in nurturing the country’s digital healthcare ecosystem. Healthcare providers are turning to digital media to grow their business while offering their services to the public. Healthcare Digital marketing has promising prospects for the future, far outweighing the limitations posed by traditional marketing.

Source: https://comhes.com/

[reasonsforhope]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is, by some measures, the most popular leader in the world. Prior to the 2024 election, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held an outright majority in the Lok Sabha (India’s Parliament) — one that was widely projected to grow after the vote count. The party regularly boasted that it would win 400 Lok Sabha seats, easily enough to amend India’s constitution along the party's preferred Hindu nationalist lines.

But when the results were announced on Tuesday, the BJP held just 240 seats. They not only underperformed expectations, they actually lost their parliamentary majority. While Modi will remain prime minister, he will do so at the helm of a coalition government — meaning that he will depend on other parties to stay in office, making it harder to continue his ongoing assault on Indian democracy.

So what happened? Why did Indian voters deal a devastating blow to a prime minister who, by all measures, they mostly seem to like?

India is a massive country — the most populous in the world — and one of the most diverse, making its internal politics exceedingly complicated. A definitive assessment of the election would require granular data on voter breakdown across caste, class, linguistic, religious, age, and gender divides. At present, those numbers don’t exist in sufficient detail. 

But after looking at the information that is available and speaking with several leading experts on Indian politics, there are at least three conclusions that I’m comfortable drawing.

First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.

Understanding these factors isn’t just important for Indians. The country’s election has some universal lessons for how to beat a would-be authoritarian — ones that Americans especially might want to heed heading into its election in November.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024. Article continues below.

A new (and unequal) economy

Modi’s biggest and most surprising losses came in India’s two most populous states: Uttar Pradesh in the north and Maharashtra in the west. Both states had previously been BJP strongholds — places where the party’s core tactic of pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority had seemingly cemented Hindu support for Modi and his allies.

One prominent Indian analyst, Yogendra Yadav, saw the cracks in advance. Swimming against the tide of Indian media, he correctly predicted that the BJP would fall short of a governing majority.

Traveling through the country, but especially rural Uttar Pradesh, he prophesied “the return of normal politics”: that Indian voters were no longer held spellbound by Modi’s charismatic nationalist appeals and were instead starting to worry about the way politics was affecting their lives.

Yadav’s conclusions derived in no small part from hearing voters’ concerns about the economy. The issue wasn’t GDP growth — India’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world — but rather the distribution of growth’s fruits. While some of Modi’s top allies struck it rich, many ordinary Indians suffered. Nearly half of all Indians between 20 and 24 are unemployed; Indian farmers have repeatedly protested Modi policies that they felt hurt their livelihoods.

“Everyone was talking about price rise, unemployment, the state of public services, the plight of farmers, [and] the struggles of labor,” Yadav wrote...

“We know for sure that Modi’s strongman image and brassy self-confidence were not as popular with voters as the BJP assumed,” says Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies India. 

The lesson here isn’t that the pocketbook concerns trump identity-based appeals everywhere; recent evidence in wealthier democracies suggests the opposite is true. Rather, it’s that even entrenched reputations of populist leaders are not unshakeable. When they make errors, even some time ago, it’s possible to get voters to remember these mistakes and prioritize them over whatever culture war the populist is peddling at the moment.

Liberalism strikes back

The Indian constitution is a liberal document: It guarantees equality of all citizens and enshrines measures designed to enshrine said equality into law. The signature goal of Modi’s time in power has been to rip this liberal edifice down and replace it with a Hindu nationalist model that pushes non-Hindus to the social margins. In pursuit of this agenda, the BJP has concentrated power in Modi’s hands and undermined key pillars of Indian democracy (like a free press and independent judiciary).

Prior to the election, there was a sense that Indian voters either didn’t much care about the assault on liberal democracy or mostly agreed with it. But the BJP’s surprising underperformance suggests otherwise.

The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, published an essential post-election data analysis breaking down what we know about the results. One of the more striking findings is that the opposition parties surged in parliamentary seats reserved for members of “scheduled castes” — the legal term for Dalits, the lowest caste grouping in the Hindu hierarchy.

Caste has long been an essential cleavage in Indian politics, with Dalits typically favoring the left-wing Congress party over the BJP (long seen as an upper-caste party). Under Modi, the BJP had seemingly tamped down on the salience of class by elevating all Hindus — including Dalits — over Muslims. Yet now it’s looking like Dalits were flocking back to Congress and its allies. Why?

According to experts, Dalit voters feared the consequences of a BJP landslide. If Modi’s party achieved its 400-seat target, they’d have more than enough votes to amend India’s constitution. Since the constitution contains several protections designed to promote Dalit equality — including a first-in-the-world affirmative action system — that seemed like a serious threat to the community. It seems, at least based on preliminary data, that they voted accordingly.

The Dalit vote is but one example of the ways in which Modi’s brazen willingness to assail Indian institutions likely alienated voters.

Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest and most electorally important state, was the site of a major BJP anti-Muslim campaign. It unofficially kicked off its campaign in the UP city of Ayodhya earlier this year, during a ceremony celebrating one of Modi’s crowning achievements: the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a former mosque that had been torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992. 

Yet not only did the BJP lose UP, it specifically lost the constituency — the city of Faizabad — in which the Ayodhya temple is located. It’s as direct an electoral rebuke to BJP ideology as one can imagine.

In Maharashtra, the second largest state, the BJP made a tactical alliance with a local politician, Ajit Pawar, facing serious corruption charges. Voters seemingly punished Modi’s party for turning a blind eye to Pawar’s offenses against the public trust. Across the country, Muslim voters turned out for the opposition to defend their rights against Modi’s attacks.

The global lesson here is clear: Even popular authoritarians can overreach.

By turning “400 seats” into a campaign slogan, an all-but-open signal that he intended to remake the Indian state in his illiberal image, Modi practically rang an alarm bell for constituencies worried about the consequences. So they turned out to stop him en masse.

The BJP’s electoral underperformance is, in no small part, the direct result of their leader’s zealotry going too far.

Return of the Gandhis? 

Of course, Modi’s mistakes might not have mattered had his rivals failed to capitalize. The Indian opposition, however, was far more effective than most observers anticipated.

Perhaps most importantly, the many opposition parties coordinated with each other. Forming a united bloc called INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), they worked to make sure they weren’t stealing votes from each other in critical constituencies, positioning INDIA coalition candidates to win straight fights against BJP rivals.

The leading party in the opposition bloc — Congress — was also more put together than people thought. Its most prominent leader, Rahul Gandhi, was widely dismissed as a dilettante nepo baby: a pale imitation of his father Rajiv and grandmother Indira, both former Congress prime ministers. Now his critics are rethinking things.

“I owe Rahul Gandhi an apology because I seriously underestimated him,” says Manjari Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Miller singled out Gandhi’s yatras (marches) across India as a particularly canny tactic. These physically grueling voyages across the length and breadth of India showed that he wasn’t just a privileged son of Indian political royalty, but a politician willing to take risks and meet ordinary Indians where they were. During the yatras, he would meet directly with voters from marginalized groups and rail against Modi’s politics of hate.

“The persona he’s developed — as somebody kind, caring, inclusive, [and] resolute in the face of bullying — has really worked and captured the imagination of younger India,” says Suryanarayan. “If you’ve spent any time on Instagram Reels, [you’ll see] an entire generation now waking up to Rahul Gandhi’s very appealing videos.”

This, too, has a lesson for the rest of the world: Tactical innovation from the opposition matters even in an unfair electoral context.

There is no doubt that, in the past 10 years, the BJP stacked the political deck against its opponents. They consolidated control over large chunks of the national media, changed campaign finance law to favor themselves, suborned the famously independent Indian Electoral Commission, and even intimidated the Supreme Court into letting them get away with it. 

The opposition, though, managed to find ways to compete even under unfair circumstances. Strategic coordination between them helped consolidate resources and ameliorate the BJP cash advantage. Direct voter outreach like the yatra helped circumvent BJP dominance in the national media.

To be clear, the opposition still did not win a majority. Modi will have a third term in office, likely thanks in large part to the ways he rigged the system in his favor.

Yet there is no doubt that the opposition deserves to celebrate. Modi’s power has been constrained and the myth of his invincibility wounded, perhaps mortally. Indian voters, like those in Brazil and Poland before them, have dealt a major blow to their homegrown authoritarian faction.

And that is something worth celebrating.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Iran is now a “legitimate target” for Israeli missile strikes, one of the country’s most senior ministers has told the Telegraph, raising the prospect of an all-out war with Tehran.

In a wide-ranging interview, Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy minister, also said Palestinians from the West Bank would never be allowed to work in the country again and would be replaced by more than a quarter of a million imported foreign workers.

He also complained that the war in Gaza had not been fought aggressively enough.

Mr Barkat, who is favourite to succeed Benjamin Netanyahu as leader of the ruling Likud party, said Israel could afford to keep fighting and open up a new front with Lebanon, despite the billion shekel (£200 million) a day cost of the conflict.

He said that as “big as the crisis is, it is also a really big opportunity”, with governments around the world needing Israel’s technical expertise to combat global jihadism.[...]

The risk of the war spreading to Lebanon and as far as Iran will alarm Western leaders, with Mr Barkat becoming increasingly influential in the ruling party.

Polls suggest the economy minister would win five more seats than Mr Netanyahu if he replaced him as Likud’s leader.

Mr Barkat, 64, said: “Iran is a legitimate target for Israel. They will not get away with it. The head of the snake is Tehran. My recommendation is to adopt the strategy that President Kennedy used in the Cuban missile crisis. What he basically said then was a missile from Cuba will be answered with a missile to Moscow.[...]

Israel is edging towards a full-blown war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, having evacuated the north of the country. Mr Barkat said a second war was affordable while “the threat of Hezbollah must be eliminated”.

“Whatever it takes,” he said[...]

The economy is expected to grow by two per cent this year, down from five per cent forecast prior to the war.[...]

As the country lurches to the Right in the aftermath of October 7 and with Mr Netanyahu’s personal ratings plummeting, Mr Barkat appears to be making a play to replace the prime minister as party leader.[...]

Mr Barkat rejected any suggestion that Palestinian labourers, who previously came into Israel daily to work in the construction and other industries, would be allowed to return. Daily crossings for labourers into Israel from the West Bank have been on hold since October 7.

He likened the Palestinian Authority running the West Bank to the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

“You know what the difference is? Nothing,” said Mr Barkat. [...]

Israel has long been reliant on workers coming into the country from Gaza and the West Bank, but Mr Barkat, whose ministry is responsible for the construction industry, said: “We are done with Palestinian employees. The rationale behind it is very simple: we only want foreign employees from peaceful countries. We don’t want employees from enemies.[...]

India is the likeliest target for a recruitment drive with the promise of wages seven to ten times higher than at home. “Everybody wins,” said Mr Barkat.

“If you don’t do what I proposed, it’s as if we didn’t learn the lessons of October 7.”[...]

On the conduct of the war in Gaza and in the face of international condemnation of Israel’s tactics, Mr Barkat said: “Israel is being very cautious[...]

The reality is at certain points in time I prefer a much more aggressive approach.”[...]

["]This is a religious war.” [he said]

24 Jan 24

[dresshistorynerd]

How did cotton win over linen anyway?

In short, colonialism, slavery and the industrial revolution. In length:

Cotton doesn't grow in Europe so before the Modern Era, cotton was rare and used in small quantities for specific purposes (lining doublets for example). The thing with cotton is, that's it can be printed with dye very easily. The colors are bright and they don't fade easily. With wool and silk fabrics, which were the more traditional fabrics for outer wear in Europe (silk for upper classes of course), patterns usually needed to be embroidered or woven to the cloth to last, which was very expensive. Wool is extremely hard to print to anything detailed that would stay even with modern technology. Silk can be printed easily today with screen printing, but before late 18th century the technique wasn't known in western world (it was invented in China a millenium ago) and the available methods didn't yeld good results.

So when in the late 17th century European trading companies were establishing trading posts in India, a huge producer of cotton fabrics, suddenly cotton was much more available in Europe. Indian calico cotton, which was sturdy and cheap and was painted or printed with colorful and intricate floral patters, chintz, especially caught on and became very fashionable. The popular Orientalism of the time also contributed to it becoming fasionable, chintz was seen as "exotic" and therefore appealing.

Here's a typical calico jacket from late 18th century. The ones in European markets often had white background, but red background was also fairly common.

The problem with this was that this was not great for the business of the European fabric producers, especially silk producers in France and wool producers in England, who before were dominating the European textile market and didn't like that they now had competition. So European countries imposed trade restrictions for Indian cotton, England banning cotton almost fully in 1721. Since the introduction of Indian cottons, there had been attempts to recreate it in Europe with little success. They didn't have nearly advanced enough fabric printing and cotton weaving techniques to match the level of Indian calico. Cotton trade with India didn't end though. The European trading companies would export Indian cottons to West African market to fund the trans-Atlantic slave trade that was growing quickly. European cottons were also imported to Africa. At first they didn't have great demand as they were so lacking compared to Indian cotton, but by the mid 1700s quality of English cotton had improved enough to be competitive.

Inventions in industrial textile machinery, specifically spinning jenny in 1780s and water frame in 1770s, would finally give England the advantages they needed to conquer the cotton market. These inventions allowed producing very cheap but good quality cotton and fabric printing, which would finally produce decent imitations of Indian calico in large quantities. Around the same time in mid 1700s, The East Indian Company had taken over Bengal and soon following most of the Indian sub-continent, effectively putting it under British colonial rule (but with a corporate rule dystopian twist). So when industrialized English cotton took over the market, The East India Company would suppress Indian textile industry to utilize Indian raw cotton production for English textile industry and then import cotton textiles back to India. In 1750s India's exports were mainly fine cotton and silk, but during the next century Indian export would become mostly raw materials. They effectively de-industrialized India to industrialize England further.

India, most notably Bengal area, had been an international textile hub for millennia, producing the finest cottons and silks with extremely advance techniques. Loosing cotton textile industry devastated Indian local economies and eradicated many traditional textile craft skills. Perhaps the most glaring example is that of Dhaka muslin. Named after the city in Bengal it was produced in, it was extremely fine and thin cotton requiring very complicated and time consuming spinning process, painstakingly meticulous hand-weaving process and a very specific breed of cotton. It was basically transparent as seen depicted in this Mughal painting from early 17th century.

It was used by e.g. the ancient Greeks, Mughal emperors and, while the methods and it's production was systematically being destroyed by the British to squash competition, it became super fashionable in Europe. It was extremely expensive, even more so than silk, which is probably why it became so popular among the rich. In 1780s Marie Antoinette famously and scandalously wore chemise a la reine made from multiple layers of Dhaka muslin. In 1790s, when the empire silhouette took over, it became even more popular, continuing to the very early 1800s, till Dhaka muslin production fully collapsed and the knowledge and skill to produce it were lost. But earlier this year, after years lasting research to revive the Dhaka muslin funded by Bangladeshi government, they actually recreated it after finding the right right cotton plant and gathering spinners and weavers skilled in traditional craft to train with it. (It's super cool and I'm making a whole post about it (it has been in the making for months now) so I won't extend this post more.)

Marie Antoinette in the famous painting with wearing Dhaka muslin in 1783, and empress Joséphine Bonaparte in 1801 also wearing Dhaka muslin.

While the trans-Atlantic slave trade was partly funded by the cotton trade and industrial English cotton, the slave trade would also be used to bolster the emerging English cotton industry by forcing African slaves to work in the cotton plantations of Southern US. This produced even more (and cheaper (again slave labor)) raw material, which allowed the quick upward scaling of the cotton factories in Britain. Cotton was what really kicked off the industrial revolution, and it started in England, because they colonized their biggest competitor India and therefore were able to take hold of the whole cotton market and fund rapid industrialization.

Eventually the availability of cotton, increase in ready-made clothing and the luxurious reputation of cotton lead to cotton underwear replacing linen underwear (and eventually sheets) (the far superior option for the reasons I talked about here) in early Victorian Era. Before Victorian era underwear was very practical, just simple rectangles and triangles sewn together. It was just meant to protect the outer clothing and the skin, and it wasn't seen anyway, so why put the relatively scarce resources into making it pretty? Well, by the mid 1800s England was basically fully industrialized and resource were not scarce anymore. Middle class was increasing during the Victorian Era and, after the hard won battles of the workers movement, the conditions of workers was improving a bit. That combined with decrease in prices of clothing, most people were able to partake in fashion. This of course led to the upper classes finding new ways to separate themselves from lower classes. One of these things was getting fancy underwear. Fine cotton kept the fancy reputation it had gained first as an exotic new commodity in late 17th century and then in Regency Era as the extremely expensive fabric of queens and empresses. Cotton also is softer than linen, and therefore was seen as more luxurious against skin. So cotton shifts became the fancier shifts. At the same time cotton drawers were becoming common additional underwear for women.

It wouldn't stay as an upper class thing, because as said cotton was cheap and available. Ready-made clothing also helped spread the fancier cotton underwear, as then you could buy fairly cheaply pretty underwear and you didn't even have to put extra effort into it's decoration. At the same time cotton industry was massive and powerful and very much eager to promote cotton underwear as it would make a very steady and long lasting demand for cotton.

In conclusion, cotton has a dark and bloody history and it didn't become the standard underwear fabric for very good reasons.

Here's couple of excellent sources regarding the history of cotton industry:

The European Response to Indian Cottons, Prasannan Parthasarathi

INDIAN COTTON MILLS AND THE BRITISH ECONOMIC POLICY, 1854-1894, Rajib Lochan Sahoo

[metamatar]

Why do you always defend China like that? I mean I get the the world tries to do the red scare, but aren't you defending a nation state when you brush off every criticism? Or does the criticism like target things that hamper capitalists and the actual criticisms regarding China lie elsewhere?

"Always?" All I said India is worse than China on a reblog about censorship on the Monkey Man lmao. There's stuff on my blog this year critiquing: Chinese uselessness on Palestine, involvement in Congo and critiquing workers rights in China through the lens of Foxconn factories trying to replicate their model in India.

I'm getting accused of campism for saying that India's blood and soil fascism is way worse, more dangerous than Chinese high surveillance 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.' India is formenting religious pogroms. The average Chinese citizen is not lynching their neighbours and burning down their homes on suspicion of eating the wrong thing. For Netflix to distort and kowtow to rabid fascists when the United States is strengthening ties with India (for anti China reasons) is really dangerous, given how much influence organisations like the Hindu American Foundation have in US politics. The average Westerner hates China plenty. Liberals do however cluelessly support Indian origin politicians who are funded by the Sangh.

Look man. I'm Indian. India has, since the BJP came to power gotten worse on hunger indexes every year. For countries not at war, we have the highest rate of child hunger in the world: 1 in 5 children are wasting despite the economy growing 6% every year. Journalists are routinely jailed and die in there. Kashmir is still under curfew and internet blackouts. Whatever hysterical story you want to tell about China is reality in India too. Without any kind of economic prosperity.

Why do these lives not matter to you? Why does the fact that Indian govt is passing laws that would enable India to strip muslims of citizenship not seem urgent to you? Is it because you maybe only think that the lives of people only matter in so far as they can be weaponised in some kind of story aligning with american state department?

[probablyasocialecologist]

While enslaved people were mostly overseas, in colonies, out of sight, slavery funded British wealth and institutions from the Bank of England to the Royal Mail. The extent to which modern Britain was shaped by the profits of the transatlantic slave economy was made even clearer with the launch in 2013 of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project at University College London. It digitised the records of tens of thousands of people who claimed compensation from the government when colonial slavery was abolished in 1833, making it far easier to see how the wealth created by slavery spread throughout Britain after abolition. “Slave-ownership,” the researchers concluded, “permeated the British elites of the early 19th century and helped form the elites of the 20th century.” (Among others, it showed that David Cameron’s ancestors, and the founders of the Greene King pub chain, had enslaved people.)

But as Bell-Romero would write in his report on Caius, “the legacies of enslavement encompassed far more than the ownership of plantations and investments in the slave trade”. Scholars undertaking this kind of archival research typically look at the myriad ways in which individuals linked to an institution might have profited from slavery – ranging from direct involvement in the trade of enslaved people or the goods they produced, to one-step-removed financial interests such as holding shares in slave-trading entities such as the South Sea or East India Companies.

Bronwen Everill, an expert in the history of slavery and a fellow at Caius, points out “how widespread and mundane all of this was”. Mapping these connections, she says, simply “makes it much harder to hold the belief that Britain suddenly rose to power through its innate qualities; actually, this great wealth is linked to a very specific moment of wealth creation through the dramatic exploitation of African labour.”

This academic interest in forensically quantifying British institutions’ involvement in slavery has been steadily growing for several decades. But in recent years, this has been accompanied by calls for Britain to re-evaluate its imperial history, starting with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign in 2015. The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 turbo-charged the debate, and in response, more institutions in the UK commissioned research on their historic links to slavery – including the Bank of England, Lloyd’s, the National Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Guardian.

But as public interest in exploring and quantifying Britain’s historic links to slavery exploded in 2020, so too did a conservative backlash against “wokery”. Critics argue that the whole enterprise of examining historic links to slavery is an exercise in denigrating Britain and seeking out evidence for a foregone conclusion. Debate quickly ceases to be about the research itself – and becomes a proxy for questions of national pride. “What seems to make people really angry is the suggestion of change [in response to this sort of research], or the removal of specific things – statues, names – which is taken as a suggestion that people today should be guilty,” said Natalie Zacek, an academic at the University of Manchester who is writing a book on English universities and slavery. “I’ve never quite gotten to the bottom of that – no one is saying you, today, are a terrible person because you’re white. We’re simply saying there is another story here.”

[mariacallous]

What would you want to tell the next U.S. president? FP asked nine thinkers from around the world to write a letter with their advice for him or her.

Dear Madam or Mr. President,

Congratulations on your election as president of the United States. You take office at a moment of enormous consequence for a world directly impacted by the twin challenges of energy security and climate change.

Democrats and Republicans disagree on many aspects of energy and climate policy. Yet your administration has the chance to chart a policy path forward that unites both parties around core areas of agreement to advance the U.S. national interest.

First, all should agree that climate change is real and worsening. The escalating threat of climate change is increasingly evident to anyone walking the streets of Phoenix in the summer, buying flood insurance in southern Florida, farming rice in Vietnam, or laboring outdoors in Pakistan. This year will almost certainly surpass 2023 as the warmest year on record.

Second, just as the energy revolution that made the United States the world’s largest oil and gas producer strengthened it economically and geopolitically, so will ensuring U.S. leadership in clean energy technologies enhance the country’s geostrategic position. In a new era of great-power competition, China’s dominance in certain clean energy technologies—such as batteries and cobalt, lithium, graphite, and other critical minerals needed for clean energy products—threatens America’s economic competitiveness and the resilience of its energy supply chains. China’s overcapacity in manufacturing relative to current and future demand undermines investments in the United States and other countries and distorts demand signals that allow the most innovative and efficient firms to compete in the global market.

Third, using less oil in our domestic economy reduces our vulnerability to global oil supply disruptions, such as conflict in the Middle East or attacks on tankers in the Red Sea. Even with the surge in U.S. oil production, the price of oil is set in the global market, so drivers feel the pain of oil price shocks regardless of how much oil the United States imports. True energy security comes from using less, not just producing more.

Fourth, energy security risks extend beyond geopolitics and require investing adequately in domestic energy supply to meet changing circumstances. Today, grid operators and regulators are increasingly warning that the antiquated U.S. electricity system, already adjusting to handle rising levels of intermittent solar and wind energy, is not prepared for growing electricity demand from electric cars, data centers, and artificial intelligence. These reliability concerns were evident when an auction this summer set a price nine times higher than last year’s to be paid by the nation’s largest grid operator to power generators that ensure power will be available when needed. A reliable and affordable power system requires investments in grids as well as diverse energy resources, from cheap but intermittent renewables to storage to on-demand power plants.

Fifth, expanding clean energy sectors in the rest of the world is in the national interest because doing so creates economic opportunities for U.S. firms, diversifies global energy supply chains away from China, and enhances U.S. soft power in rapidly growing economies. (In much the same way, the Marshall Plan not only rebuilt a war-ravaged Europe but also advanced U.S. economic interests, countered Soviet influence, and helped U.S. businesses.) Doing so is especially important in rising so-called middle powers, such as Brazil, India, or Saudi Arabia, that are intent on keeping their diplomatic options open and aligning with the United States or China as it suits them transactionally.

To prevent China from becoming a superpower in rapidly growing clean energy sectors, and thereby curbing the benefits the United States derives from being such a large oil and gas producer, your administration should increase investments in research and development for breakthrough clean energy technologies and boost domestic manufacturing of clean energy. Toward these ends, your administration should quickly finalize outstanding regulatory guidance to allow companies to access federal incentives. Your administration should also work with the other side of the aisle to provide the market with certainty that long-term tax incentives for clean energy deployment—which have bipartisan support and have already encouraged historic levels of private investment—will remain in place. Finally, your administration should work with Congress to counteract the unfair competitive advantage that nations such as China receive by manufacturing industrial products with higher greenhouse gas emissions. Such a carbon import tariff, as proposed with bipartisan support, should be paired with a domestic carbon fee to harmonize the policy with that of other nations—particularly the European Union’s planned carbon border adjustment mechanism.

Your ability to build a strong domestic industrial base in clean energy will be aided by sparking more domestic clean energy use. This is already growing quickly as market forces respond to rapidly falling costs. Increasing America’s ability to produce energy is also necessary to maintain electricity grid reliability and meet the growing needs of data centers and AI. To do so, your administration should prioritize making it easier to build energy infrastructure at scale, which today is the greatest barrier to boosting U.S. domestic energy production. On average, it takes more than a decade to build a new high-voltage transmission line in the United States, and the current backlog of renewable energy projects waiting to be connected to the power grid is twice as large as the electricity system itself. It takes almost two decades to bring a new mine online for the metals and minerals needed for clean energy products, such as lithium and copper.

The permitting reform bill recently negotiated by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso is a good place to start, but much more needs to be done to reform the nation’s permitting system—while respecting the need for sound environmental reviews and the rights of tribal communities. In addition, reforming the way utilities operate in the United States can increase the incentives that power companies have not just to build new infrastructure but to use existing infrastructure more efficiently. Such measures include deploying batteries to store renewable energy and rewiring old transmission lines with advanced conductors that can double the amount of power they move.

Grid reliability will also require more electricity from sources that are available at all times, known as firm power. Your administration should prioritize making it easier to construct power plants with advanced nuclear technology—which reduce costs, waste, and safety concerns—and to produce nuclear power plant fuel in the United States. Doing so also benefits U.S. national security, as Russia is building more than one-third of new nuclear reactors around the world to bolster its geostrategic influence. While Russia has been the leading exporter of reactors, China has by far the most reactors under construction at home and is thus poised to play an even bigger role in the international market going forward. The United States also currently imports roughly one-fifth of its enriched uranium from Russia. To counter this by building a stronger domestic nuclear industry, your administration should improve the licensing and approval process of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and reform the country’s nuclear waste management policies. In addition to nuclear power, your administration should also make it easier to permit geothermal power plants, which today can play a much larger role in meeting the nation’s energy needs thanks to recent innovations using technology advanced by the oil and gas sector for shale development.

Even with progress on all these challenges, it is unrealistic to expect that the United States can produce all the clean energy products it needs domestically. It will take many years to diminish China’s lead in critical mineral supply, battery manufacturing, and solar manufacturing. The rate of growth needed in clean energy is too overwhelming, and China’s head start is too great to diversify supply chains away from it if the United States relies solely on domestic manufacturing or that of a few friendly countries. As a result, diminishing China’s dominant position requires that your administration expand economic cooperation and trade partnerships with a vast number of other nations. Contrary to today’s protectionist trends, the best antidote to concerns about China’s clean technology dominance is more trade, not less.

Your administration should also strengthen existing tools that increase the supply of clean energy products in emerging and developing economies in order to diversify supply chains and counter China’s influence in these markets. For example, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. (DFC) can be a powerful tool to support U.S. investment overseas, such as in African or Latin American projects to mine, refine, and process critical minerals. As DFC comes up for reauthorization next year, you should work with Congress to provide DFC with more resources and also change the way federal budgeting rules account for equity investments; this would allow DFC to make far more equity investments even with its existing funding. Your administration can also use DFC to encourage private investment in energy projects in emerging and developing economies by reducing the risk investors face from fluctuations in local currency that can significantly limit their returns or discourage their investment from the start. The U.S. Export-Import Bank is another tool to support the export of U.S. clean tech by providing financing for U.S. goods and services competing with foreign firms abroad.

Despite this country’s deep divisions and polarization, leaders of both parties should agree that bolstering clean energy production in the United States and in a broad range of partner countries around the world is in America’s economic and security interests.

I wish you much success in this work, which will also be the country’s success.

[foxnangelseo]

Apple To Invest More In India

As per undisclosed sources familiar with the matter, Apple Inc. is reportedly revamping the management of its international businesses to place a larger emphasis on India, reflecting the country's growing importance in the company's overall strategy. This move marks a significant milestone as India is set to become its own sales region at Apple for the first time, signaling the surging demand for Apple's products in the region. As a result, India is expected to gain greater prominence and visibility within the company.

The decision to focus on India could be a strategic move by Apple, given that India is one of the fastest-growing smartphone markets in the world. By prioritizing India, Apple may be seeking to gain a larger market share in the region, which could help the company offset slowing growth in other markets. The company's recent launch of an online store in India is further evidence of its commitment to expanding its presence in the country. Last quarter, despite a 5% dip in total sales, Apple achieved record revenue in India. The tech giant has set up an online store to cater to the region and plans to open its first retail stores there later this year. During the last earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted the company's significant emphasis on the Indian market and compared its current state to its early years in China. He mentioned how Apple is leveraging its learnings from China to scale in India. China is Apple's largest sales region after the Americas and Europe, generating around $75 billion in revenue per year. Apart from boosting Apple's sales, India is also becoming increasingly critical to the company's product development. Key suppliers are shifting to the region, and Apple is partnering with manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (also known as Foxconn) to establish new iPhone production facilities in India, according to Bloomberg News. Apple has been expanding its focus on the Indian market in recent years, and the company has been making efforts to improve its sales operations in the country. In 2020, Apple launched an online store in India, which allowed the company to sell its products directly to consumers in the country for the first time. This move was seen as a significant step for Apple, as India is one of the world's fastest-growing smartphone markets. If Apple is restructuring its international sales operations to put a more significant focus on India, it suggests that the company sees significant growth potential in the Indian market. Apple may be looking to increase its market share in India by focusing on pricing, localizing products and services, and building relationships with key partners in the country. It remains to be seen how Apple's restructuring will affect the company's operations in other regions. However, this move is undoubtedly a positive sign for India's tech industry, as it shows that major global players are taking note of the country's potential as a growth market.

Fox&Angel is an open strategy consulting ecosystem, put together by a top-line core team of industry experts, studded with illustrious success stories, learnings, and growth. Committed to curate bespoke business & strategy solutions for each of your challenges, we literally handpick consultants from across the globe and industries who fit the role best and help you on your path to success. 

This post was originally published on: Foxnangel

[fatehbaz]

[C]olonial policies to monitor and restrict Indian cattle were coterminous with policies to monitor and restrict Indian humans. [...] [T]he ‘milk-line’ [...] has been said by [colonial] scholars since the nineteenth century to bisect the region. [...] [This] reified and naturalised what remains a contentious division between South and Southeast Asia along the western borders of Myanmar. [...] [D]enaturalise [...] this border by uncovering the colonial history of how milk became entangled in the immanent political geography of British Burma. [...] As part of imperial writings on the distinctiveness of the colony's cultural landscape, milk informed the imaginative geography of Burma as a place distinct from India. [...]

---

[T]he turn-of-the-century writings of colonial scholar officials and travel-writers [...] generated a particular imaginative geography [...]. These authors rendered Burma a ‘unique geographic entity’ [...]. Being unable to acquire milk whilst travelling Burma was a frequent gripe in imperial writings. In this it stood in contrast to the rest of British India. [...] Imperial writings on dairy consumption – or, rather, the lack of it – in Burma reified this geography [...]. Burma was where you could not get milk in British India. [...] But the difficulty of milk did not end with the cow. Once produced, the milk itself was liable to adulteration and infection necessitating state and scientific intervention. Limiting the mobility of dairy cattle and removing them from urban areas through policies designed to order and police space were central to colonial schemes for improving milk production [...]. By the twentieth century most of the dairy production in the colony was conducted by Indians who had migrated to Burma with their own cattle. [...]

The rendering of cattle as lively commodities in the milk industry was seen to be in tension with their commodification in a different economic sector, the rice industry. 

This was overwhelmingly the most important part of Burma's colonial economy. 

The late nineteenth century saw a rapid expansion of the deltaic rice frontier. By the opening decades of following century the Burma delta had become the largest rice producing region in the world. The importance of plough cattle was reflected in their market value, which doubled between the end of World War One and 1930. [...] 

In particular, they worried that the bloodlines of the Burmese breed of oxen, apparently favoured by cultivators, were at risk. [...] Indian milch cattle were considered a particular threat. This imperial imperative to protect a so-called ‘Burmese’ breed of ox reified and naturalised Burma as a geographic entity, with Indian cattle figured as invasive.

These concerns were entangled with colonial policies regarding the human Indian population in the colony [...].

---

[There was] a growing recognition of the importance of [Burmese] cattle to the production of rice in the Burma delta. [...] The stocky, strong Burmese ox [...] was thought to be especially suited to labour in paddy fields [...]. Burma was imagined as being constituted of upland areas where cattle were bred and the southern deltaic region where they were worked [...]. This was an animal geography that was transgressed by mobile herds of milking cattle imported from India residing along the sides of waterways and in the railway towns [...]. Following the colony's transportation network, migrant Indian cattle penetrated the spaces [...] To many officials, by the start of World War One the existing measures for protecting Burmese plough cattle from the ‘evils’ of Indian milch cattle were deemed inadequate. The push for greater controls began in 1915 with an agricultural and cooperative conference held in Mandalay. [...] ]C]olonial officials came to frame Indian cattle as a problem breed. The conference was attended by over nine hundred people from across Burma, including [...] state officials. It unanimously agreed that action had to be taken to protect [Burmese] cattle from Indian cattle.

Their suggested course of action was three-pronged: taxation, prohibition and segregation. [...] Attitudes to Indian cattle in the colony were conterminous with attitudes to Indian people.

The interventions [in cattle segregation] [...] can be considered as part of a wider range of state controls placed on Indian migrants to Burma. The timing of these committees was synchronous with inquiries into the sanitary conditions that Indian workers travelled and lived in [...]. At the same time [...], the state introduced compulsory medical checks and vaccinations on human arrivals from the subcontinent. In addition, the concerns expressed by officials contributing to these reports on cattle in Burma were indicative of British officialdom's paternalistic attitude towards the Burmese people, viewing their role as protecting the Burmese from the Indian and Chinese populations. The administrative view of the colony, which by the turn of the century held it to be culturally distinct from India, was increasingly imagining it as a separate geo-political entity. Officials began planning for it to be separated from British India.

During the interwar years anti-Indian sentiments gained ground [...]. Indian migrants were figured by some as a threat [...]. There were a number of anti-Indian riots in the 1930s [...]. The 1935 Government of India Act was enacted in 1937 separating Burma from India [...].

---

All text above by: Jonathan Saha. “Milk to Mandalay: dairy consumption, animal history and the political geography of colonial Burma.” Journal of Historical Geography Volume 54. October 2016. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[darkmaga-retard]

In a recent report by TASS, a major state-owned news agency in Russia, Valentina Matviyenko, the Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, announced significant progress on the BRICS digital payment platform, an initiative that could potentially revolutionize global financial transactions. This development comes as Russia continues to navigate the challenges of extensive international sanctions and its exclusion from the SWIFT payment network. BRICS is an acronym representing a coalition of five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The term was first introduced in 2001 by economist Jim O’Neill to describe these rapidly growing economies, which were expected to become dominant players in the global market. Over time, BRICS evolved from a concept into a formal intergovernmental organization, with its member countries cooperating on various fronts, including economic development, political coordination, and cultural exchange. The group’s mission extends to advocating for the reform of international financial and political institutions to better reflect the shifting global power dynamics.

As of August 2024, BRICS has undergone a significant expansion. During the BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg in 2023, it was announced that six additional countries would join the group, bringing the total membership to eleven. The new members, effective January 1, 2024, include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This expansion underscores BRICS’ growing influence and strategic importance on the world stage.

The inclusion of these new members aligns with BRICS’ long-term goal of creating a more balanced global economic order, offering a counterweight to Western-dominated institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. By expanding its membership, BRICS aims to enhance cooperation among a broader spectrum of emerging economies, addressing global financial inequalities and promoting more inclusive international governance.

Per the TASS report, during a press conference, Matviyenko provided details about the BRICS Bridge, an independent financial payment platform being developed within the BRICS nations. This standalone system is designed for mutual payments across BRICS countries, offering an alternative to existing global financial networks.

[no-passaran]

Video transcription: warning racism & discrimination. Indian settlers dressed as Indigenous Jarawa in blackface dance at the official opening of Andaman airport. The Indian government's racist attitude to Andaman and Nicobar Islands' tribes is a threat to their lands and survival - like the uncontacted Shompen people, who won't survive the Indian government's plan to turn their island into the "Hong Kong of India".

From Survival International:

The indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India —including the Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Sentinelese and Shompen— have endured centuries of racism that has justified the theft of their land and their near-total annihilation. Indigenous peoples of India are still often treated with contempt, as racist displays like this video of Indian settlers wearing blackface shows. These attitudes continue to fuel land thefts today.

For example, the Indian government is set on using Indigenous land for development without consent. The Shompen who live on Great Nicobar Island are at risk of being wiped out if their forest is used for a mega-development project, which aims to settle over 650,000 people on the island— the equivalent of an 8,000% increase in population.

Without their forest, the Shompen, most of whom are uncontacted, could be totally wiped out.

More information on the Shompen, the Indian Government's mega-project for turning their island into a military, commercial and touristic base through ecocide and genocide, and a link to easily send a pre-written email to the government officials and companies involved here:

Some context to understand why Indian settlers are caricaturely dressed up as Jarawa people in this airport:

The Jarawa are a nomadic cultural group indigenous to the Andaman Islands, where nowadays indigenous peoples are outnumbered by settlers from India. Still, like most tribal peoples who live self-sufficiently on their ancestral lands, the Jarawa people thrive and their numbers are steadily growing. Research on their nutrition and health found that their nutrition is "optimal", in large part thanks to their deep knowledge of their natural surroundings (they have detailed knowledge of more than 150 plant and 350 animal species) and the well-being of the forests.

In the 1990s, the local Indian settler authorities revealed their long-term ‘master plan’ to settle the Jarawa in two villages with an economy based on fishery, suggesting that hunting and gathering could be their ‘sports’. This meant forcing the Jarawa, who are nomadic and get their food from hunting and gathering, to abandon their way of living. The plan was so prescriptive it even detailed what style of clothes the Jarawa should wear.

Forced settlement had been fatal for other tribes in the Andaman Islands, but a vigorous campaign brought success and in 2004 the authorities announced that the Jarawa would be able to choose their own future with minimal intervention. However, in the next years (most notably 2010), Indian settler authorities have again tried to force the Jarawa to abandon their way of life and become part of India's mainstream society. This pressure continues, including Indian MPs asking for residential schools to be created to take away Jarawa children from their families and strip them from their culture.

Indian government officials repeatedly refer to the Jarawa people as "primitive", "backwards" and "uncivilized".

Tribal peoples like the Jarawa are used as a tourist claim by Indian settlers, who organize "human safaris" for tourists to go see Jarawa people. Even though in 2002 India's Supreme Court ordered closing the highway that runs through Jarawa land, it's still open and used by thousands of outsiders who go watch them like they're wild animals in human safaris.

Outsiders, both local settlers and international poachers enter their rich forest reserve to steal the game the tribe needs to survive. Although in recent years many poachers have been arrested, none have been sentenced by the courts, despite the offence carrying a prison term of up to seven years.

Jarawa girls and women are sexually abused by poachers, settlers, bus drivers and others. Jarawa people report outsiders who get drunk on alcohol and high on marijuana going in Jarawa villages to rape Jarawa girls and women.

Vehicles queue to enter the Jarawa reserve along the Andaman Trunk Road © G Chamberlain/ Survival

Source: Survival International.

[reasonsforhope]

"India’s announcement that it aims to reach net zero emissions by 2070 and to meet fifty percent of its electricity requirements from renewable energy sources by 2030 is a hugely significant moment for the global fight against climate change. India is pioneering a new model of economic development that could avoid the carbon-intensive approaches that many countries have pursued in the past – and provide a blueprint for other developing economies.

The scale of transformation in India is stunning. Its economic growth has been among the highest in the world over the past two decades, lifting of millions of people out of poverty. Every year, India adds a city the size of London to its urban population, involving vast construction of new buildings, factories and transportation networks. Coal and oil have so far served as bedrocks of India’s industrial growth and modernisation, giving a rising number of Indian people access to modern energy services. This includes adding new electricity connections for 50 million citizens each year over the past decade. 

The rapid growth in fossil energy consumption has also meant India’s annual CO2 emissions have risen to become the third highest in the world. However, India’s CO2 emissions per person put it near the bottom of the world’s emitters, and they are lower still if you consider historical emissions per person. The same is true of energy consumption: the average household in India consumes a tenth as much electricity as the average household in the United States.  

India’s sheer size and its huge scope for growth means that its energy demand is set to grow by more than that of any other country in the coming decades. In a pathway to net zero emissions by 2070, we estimate that most of the growth in energy demand this decade would already have to be met with low-carbon energy sources. It therefore makes sense that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced more ambitious targets for 2030, including installing 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, reducing the emissions intensity of its economy by 45%, and reducing a billion tonnes of CO2. 

These targets are formidable, but the good news is that the clean energy transition in India is already well underway. It has overachieved its commitment made at COP 21- Paris Summit [a.k.a. 2015, at the same conference that produced the Paris Agreement] by already meeting 40% of its power capacity from non-fossil fuels- almost nine years ahead of its commitment, and the share of solar and wind in India’s energy mix have grown phenomenally. Owing to technological developments, steady policy support, and a vibrant private sector, solar power plants are cheaper to build than coal ones. Renewable electricity is growing at a faster rate in India than any other major economy, with new capacity additions on track to double by 2026...

Subsidies for petrol and diesel were removed in the early 2010s, and subsidies for electric vehicles were introduced in 2019. India’s robust energy efficiency programme has been successful in reducing energy use and emissions from buildings, transport and major industries. Government efforts to provide millions of households with fuel gas for cooking and heating are enabling a steady transition away from the use of traditional biomass such as burning wood. India is also laying the groundwork to scale up important emerging technologies such as hydrogen, battery storage, and low-carbon steel, cement and fertilisers..."

-via IEA (International Energy Agency), January 10, 2022

Note: And since that's a little old, here's an update to show that progress is still going strong:

-via Economic Times: EnergyWorld, March 10, 2023