You’re reading How To Get Off, our series celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy.

Sex dreams can be fun, thrilling and occasionally mortifying – particularly if you wake up and realise you dreamt about someone off limits. But, as BACP-accredited counsellor Deshara Pariag says, “it’s completely normal to dream about sex, because sex is a normal part of life”. 

There’s also science behind it. The neural firings in the brain – which happen when we sleep – can fire up our libido, says therapist Pam Custers, prompting various bodily responses: wet dreams, sleep orgasms or, as Sex Education’s Dr Jean Milburn (Otis’ mum) calls them, nocturnal emissions. “Because our brain is firing, we can get aroused in our dreams,” says Custers. 

Studies have shown men and women experience increased blood flow to their genitals during REM sleep. A healthy man has up to five erections per night, with each one lasting 25 to 35 minutes. And a study found women could orgasm in their sleep simply by thinking about touching their clitoris – one woman’s heart rate increased from 50 to 100 beats per minute, respiration from 12 to 22 breaths per minute, and she had a “marked” increase in vaginal blood flow. 

When we’re dreaming, the emotional (limbic) part of the brain goes into overdrive, while the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex – which controls executive functions like working memory and cognitive flexibility – is under-activated. 

As a result, the cognitions we experience during dreams are “highly emotional, visually vivid, but often illogical, disconnected and sometimes bizarre,” Patrick McNamara, a neurologist at Boston University School of Medicine, told Time. Chances are, many of us have had some truly baffling sex dreams.

So, should we pay attention to them? They’re very rarely a reflection of our awake state, says Custers. In fact, we may dream about someone we don’t want to dream about in that way at all – a study of 3,500 people found 20% of women and 14% of men had sex dreams about a person who was off limits.

Just because you’ve dreamt about having sex with your boss or next door neighbour, it doesn’t mean you suddenly fancy them. “It simply means that part of a snippet of your experience is being integrated into this REM sleep, which is like a soup of hormones and psychological processing,” explains Custers, who is a member of Counselling Directory.

A lot of the time, sex dreams generally mean nothing at all, and many people will wake up, laugh it off, and take it with a pinch of salt. But that’s not to say people never read into them – it varies from person to person. 

Some believe there can be underlying meanings to these dreams – if you know where to look. Dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg believes if you have a sex dream about someone, it’s not necessarily because you desire them, but more that you want to be like them. “Sex in a dream isn’t as much about a physical union you want, as it is about a psychological union you need,” she told Bustle. “When you dream of someone in that way, there is likely [to be] something about them you need to incorporate into your own life or into your own behaviour.”

Counsellor Deshara Pariag acknowledges there may be times you might want to reflect on your sex dreams a little more – when you feel deeply impacted by the dream, perhaps. For example, you might be dreaming about having sex with a stranger if you’re not satisfied with your sex life, or sex with an ex if you have unresolved issues. You may also keep having a recurring sex dream.

If this is the case, it might be useful to unpack what’s going on in your dream. One way to do this, says Pariag, is to write an email to the person you had sex with in your dream, not to send it to them, but to express what’s going on for you in the dream. This can be a good way to get things out of your brain and help you push forward with why you might feel this way.

Dreams about sex might leave some people feeling vulnerable. This can especially be the case for those who’ve experienced abuse – disturbing dreams or flashbacks can be a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Ammanda Major, from the charity Relate, says if your dreams become disturbing, it may be helpful to explore why with a therapist or counsellor.

Ultimately, though, your sex dream could mean anything – and it could mean nothing. “For the vast majority of people, sex dreams aren’t anything to worry about,” Major adds, suggesting there’s a tendency for people to “overanalyse” what their dreams mean. “They’re a healthy expression of something – and what that something is might be quite hard to determine.” 

Moral of the story? Enjoy those sex dreams, and stop stressing. 

How To Get Off is our answer to Valentine’s Day, celebrating bodies, pleasure and fantasy – whatever your relationship status. We’ll be exploring what really gets us off in 2020, looking at sexual awakenings, toys and erotica, and real-life experience.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Sunday said it has thwarted an attempt by the Hamas militant group to hack soldiers’ phones by posing as young, attractive women on social media, striking up friendships and persuading them into downloading malware.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters that the phones of dozens of soldiers had been infected in recent months, although he said the army detected the scam early on and prevented any major secrets from reaching the Islamic militant group.

“We do not assess there is any significant breach of information,” the military spokesman said.

Conricus said this was the third attempt by Hamas to target male soldiers through fake social media accounts, most recently in July 2018. But he said this latest attempt was by far the most sophisticated.

He said Hamas used a number of social media platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram, to make contact with unsuspecting soldiers. Posing as young women on social media, the group struck up friendships with the soldiers, sending photos, texts and voice messages to them.

The “women” claimed to be new immigrants to explain their poor Hebrew, and even claimed to be deaf or hard of hearing as an excuse for texting, instead of speaking directly on the phone, Conricus said. The profiles appeared on multiple platforms, and he said the photos were disguised to make it difficult to “reverse track” them, giving the accounts additional authenticity.

“We see that the level of social engineering is much higher and much more advanced and sophisticated when compared to previous attempts done by Hamas,” he said. “We see that they’re of course learning and upping their game.”

Eventually, they sent the soldiers links to “seduce” them into downloading what they said was a Snapchat-like app to exchange photos that could quickly disappear, Conricus said. In reality, the links were to three malware programs — Catch&See, ZatuApp and GrixyApp — that allowed Hamas to gain access to the soldiers’ phones.

He said it was “very clear” that Hamas was behind the effort. He said the malware linked to known Hamas servers and at least one of the profiles had been used in a previous Hamas scam. There was no immediate comment from Hamas

Conricus declined to say how many soldiers had been targeted. But he said that dozens had downloaded the malware. He said soldiers had reported the suspicious activity relatively early on, allowing the army and the Shin Bet internal security service to monitor their phones. It is now in the process of removing the malware, he said.

Israel and Hamas, an Islamic movement that seeks Israel’s destruction, are bitter enemies that have fought three wars and numerous skirmishes since the group seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

The enemy sides have been holding indirect talks through Arab and U.N. mediators aimed at reaching a long-term truce under which Israel would ease a blockade on the Gaza Strip in exchange for Hamas assurances to maintain quiet.

But low-level fighting has persisted. Early Sunday, Israel carried out a number of airstrikes on Hamas targets in Gaza in response to the firing of two projectiles from Gaza into southern Israel. No casualties were reported on either side.

NEW DELHI — On Republic Day, Radhika Vemula, Saira Bano and the grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh tugged at the halyard affixed to the bundled national flag atop the five-story high flagpole anchored in the middle of the national highway connecting south eastern Delhi to Uttar Pradesh. 

On December 13 2019, the Delhi Police had stormed the Jamia Millia Islamia University campus in a violent attempt to suppress a student demonstration. The students were protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, a controversial new law that violates the secular tenets of the Indian constitution by making religion the basis for granting citizenship, and conspicuously discriminates against Muslims. Two days later on December 15, a group of elderly women from the neighbouring settlement had occupied the highway in protest. 

Now on over a month later, on Republic Day, they were joined by Radhika Vemula,  whose son Rohith had killed himself 5 years ago the administration of the University of Hyderabad harassed him for being Dalit. Saira Bano’s teenage son Junaid was lynched by a group of men who accused him and his friends of being “beef-eaters”. 

As the crew of mothers and grandmothers squinted that the flag, now unfurled and slightly askew, there followed a moment of silence, as if the gathered crowd of several thousands had taken a collective sigh. A low hum began, growing louder as it rippled through row after orderly row of women, children and men. 

“Jana gana mana,” they sang, their voices rising above this barricaded stretch of the highway, carrying snatches of the national anthem up above the overbridge festooned with posters, the scaled model of the war memorial at India Gate, the large welded map of India, the bus-stop now converted into a library and reading room, the ersatz detention camp assembled out of aluminium and plywood.

Their voices floated down High Tension Road (the surprisingly apt name chosen for the high-tension electricity cables that run down its length), past the sweet shops and the meat shops, the bakeries and the restaurants, the fruit-sellers and tea vendors. 

Across the city, tanks thundered down Rajpath, fighter jets screeched over head, ranks of soldiers marched in stiff formations before two ageing men: India’s embattled Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his chief guest Jair Bolsanaro, Brazil’s democratically elected President who happens to be a longtime supporter of military dictatorships.

After passing the CAA, Modi’s Home Minister had said, the government would conduct a national census of citizens, and detain and deport those who couldn’t gather the right papers in time. The protest in Shaheen Bagh was a rebuke to this blatant attempt to disenfranchise citizens.

These two very different processions — a joyous, spontaneous and inclusive gathering of citizens, and a grim, tightly rehearsed, heavily policed, military parade — on the day the constitution turned 70 were a reminder that India remains a young country bolted atop ancient land.

If youth carries the promise that another world is possible, age consecrates that promise by reminding us that another world existed before this one. In the winter of 2019-2020, Shaheen Bagh often felt like a bridge between these two worlds; where grandmothers older than the Indian Republic and the country’s youngest citizens had pushed back the oppressive presence of the Indian state back to the police barricades on either side of the Kalindi Kunj crossing, leaving behind a tiny air pocket of possibility.

Of late, air pockets such as these have become so rare that their presence transmits a febrile electricity through our body politic; no one knows quite what to make of it. So unnerving is this heady whiff of freedom that many commentators have responded by demanding immediate strategic withdrawal; no one can resist the might of the Indian state forever, the reasoning goes, so better to withdraw on one’s own terms.

The grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh have been content to draw out this encounter. For all its projections of power and permanence, the modern Indian state — the constitution, states, union territories, elections every five years, Chief Ministerships, Prime Ministerships, the works —  is younger than they are. They remember that even before this constitution, and before universal adult franchise and elections, there were ways for the people of this land to engage with one and another. They have been joined in their vigil by thousands of young comrades confident in knowledge that they will outlive this current moment and the fossilised politicians who have precipitated this crisis.

On Monday February 17 2020, the Supreme Court shall continue hearings on a petition to end this occupation and open up the highway to traffic. The petition has been filed by Nand Kishore Garg, a member of the national executive of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since no-one in the government has found a good enough argument to move the protestors thus far, the BJP hopes the Supreme Court will.

The petition has been drafted in the preferred language of power: a plea to be reasonable, the argument that people are free to protest but not by inconveniencing others. Yet, the banality of these arguments about convenience and traffic jams cloak the very real horror of the possibility that millions of Indians of all religions could find themselves stripped of all their rights.

No one knows what the court shall say; for now Shaheen Bagh Maintains.

Time And Space

A sit-in begins as an occupation of space then deepens into a liberation of time. On Monday February 17, the Shaheen Bagh occupation will have been in place for close to 1500 hours. 

That is a lot of time to liberate: What would you do if you were suddenly granted 1500 hours in the midst of a thus far orderly lifetime. When would you choose to eat, drink, sleep, sing, read, dance, study, love, fight, and work? 

By day Shaheen Bagh appears much like any other protest; but by night it has an uncanny effect on those who visit. So habituated is the city to hunker down in exhaustion by sundown, that to stay awake deep into the night is a radical act.

In Shaheen Bagh, visitors arrive at all hours of the day and night. They line up at the tented shamiana at the centre of the road and await their time to address the gathered crowds over the static hiss of the public address system: They sing, they recite poetry, they give impassioned speeches, they shout slogans, they mark the passage of time.

A professor of political science was asked to give a lecture on nationalism that began at 3 am the night before Republic Day, in the hope that the crowds she would draw would hold off a rumoured police raid. She delivered the lecture; the raid didn’t happen.

One weeknight in the dead cold of early January, a gaggle of women took their young daughters for a walk at 1 AM. There was no police on the streets, the shops were shuttered, the alleyways were dark. But their neighbourhood had never felt this safe, they marvelled. 

An hour later, a busload of Sikh farmers from Punjab arrived at the shamiana to poke fun at Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. A volunteer walked amongst the crowd, handing out biscuits to children too tired to run around, but too wired with excitement to fall asleep. A neighbourhood momentarily safe enough for a child to sit amongst a crowd unattended, has been described as a threat to national security by the Indian government.

At 2 AM, a young woman took to the stage and read out a ghazal she had typed out on her phone. “Mein ne Shaheen Bagh mein Hindustan ko dekha,” she said. “Ma ke haat mein samvidhan to dekha.” (I saw India in Shaheen bagh/ I saw my mother with the constitution in her hand.)

It is no surprise that much of the opposition to the Shaheen Bagh, including in the Supreme Court, has been couched in the language of traffic jams and the hardship caused to office-goers, and school buses; those imprisoned by the clock have approached the Supreme Court to take action against those who have freed themselves from its the demands.

Questions Versus Answers

Political actors of all stripes and persuasions often speak of the need to preserve political momentum: Energies unlocked in the heat of protest cannot be allowed to merely dissipate, they argue, they must be channeled into movements. 

As a consequence, leaderless movements like Shaheen Bagh often produce an anxiety amongst a section of the occupation’s supporters. What will happen to the energies released in Shaheen Bagh? Who will channel them into a movement?

This question has animated many conversations at Shaheen Bagh, on support groups on Whatsapp, in good natured arguments en route to or upon return from, the protest.

Radhika Vemula’s presence at Shaheen Bagh offers some answers: the nation-wide protests that followed her son Rohith’s death sparked national movements that are still working out the contours of their politics. This kinetic conversation of resistance is most visible in the personhood of Chandrashekhar Azad Raavan, the charismatic face of the Bhim Army.

Some would dismiss the posters of Chandrashekhar and Rohith Vemula at Shaheen Bagh as a sign that the demonstrators exist in an echo-chamber of their making. Another interpretation is to see these as mutually reinforcing: An event ripples outwards from its epicentre, only to find resonance in another synchronous reverberance. The ripples amplify, the event horizon expands.

In Shaheen Bagh it is hard to escape the energy radiating outwards from the shamiana where the women sit, but is it equally hard to translate this energy into a simple narrative: Why are so many people coming to Shaheen Bagh? What do they carry within themselves when they leave?

Over the past two months, the middle-aged lady with the red woollen scarf, worn as a hijab, visited Shaheen Bagh every weekend in a show of solidarity. Each time she came in the afternoon, sat by the stairs adjacent to the now-shuttered shop-fronts and listened to the speeches from the stage.

Then one afternoon, as she walked the neighbourhood’s narrow alleyways, she was confronted by the largest crowd she had ever seen. A rumour that the United Nations was sending a team to Shaheen Bagh had prompted an outpouring of public support. 

“I saw the crowd,” she later recollected, “And I was suddenly overwhelmed. Suddenly, I was crying but I couldn’t understand why — what was it? What was it?”

She sat back in her plastic chair to relive the moment. At the shamiana, someone was singing “Hum Dekhenge”.

“I thought, is this what it must have felt like to protest against the British?” she said, now annoyed by the fact that she had cried. 

“I thought, am I crying because I now see there are so many who are suffering through this present time?” she said.

“I thought, am I crying because I thought I was alone, but I know there are so many who stand with me?”

Where these tears of joy, or rage, or sorrow, she still didn’t know. She knew these weren’t tears of helplessness. 

Shaheen Bagh does not have all the answers to what is happening in India today; but listen carefully and Shaheen Bagh can push you to ask the right questions.

A new piece of street art by elusive artist Banksy has been vandalised in Bristol 24 hours after the artist claimed it. 

The mural, in Marsh Lane, features a stencilled image of a girl firing a slingshot of red flowers and leaves.

Vandals splashed explicit graffiti spelling out ‘w****rs’ in huge red letters across the artwork.

One local resident who spotted the vandalism said: “It’s a real shame, but it was always going to happen unfortunately.”

A protective screen covering the artwork was torn down on Friday.

Residents in the Barton Hill area of the city awoke on Thursday to find the striking piece on the side of a building.

Banksy confirmed the piece by posting two images of it on his official Instagram account and website in the early hours of Valentine’s Day.

The artwork appeared on a rented home owned by Edwin Simons, who celebrated his 67th birthday on Thursday.

His daughter, Kelly Woodruff, 37, found out about it after being tagged in a Facebook post.

“We’ve been down here all day and it’s just been a complete buzz of excitement,” she told the PA news agency.

“There’s so many people coming and enjoying it, taking pictures, it’s fantastic.

“There’s been a lot of debate if it is a Banksy or not. Most people I’ve spoken to think it 100% is, and they’re naming it the Valentine’s Banksy.

“It’s incredible and beautiful.”

The family are looking to cover up the artwork with glass to preserve it.

“My slight worry is, we’ve got this Storm Dennis coming on the weekend, so I really want to try and protect the roses,” she added.

News of the Banksy first emerged on Twitter, with Bristol Somali Community Association writing: “Today in Barton Hill, we woke up with this remarkable mural art painted on one of the houses of the area.

“We hope it’s Banksy’s work. Come and have a look yourself. Whoever painted, it’s worth admiring their creativity. Thank you.”

One local resident, James Bullock, saw scaffolding on the wall at about 6.20am on Thursday.

He walked past it later with his girlfriend and was stunned to see the artwork had appeared.

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Guterres is currently undertaking a four-day visit to Pakistan.

“We hope the UN secretary general would emphasise on the imperative for Pakistan to take credible, sustained and irreversible action to put an end to cross-border terrorism against India, which threatens the most fundamental human right - the right to life - of the people of India, including in J&K,” the MEA spokesperson said.

Addressing a press conference after his meeting with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad, the UN secretary general said he was “deeply concerned” over the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and tensions along the Line of Control.

Guterres said it was important for India and Pakistan to de-escalate “militarily and verbally” and exercise “maximum restraint” on the Kashmir issue.

He said he was ready to help if both countries agreed for mediation.

“Diplomacy and dialogue remain the only tools that guarantee peace and stability with solutions in accordance with the Charter of United Nations and resolutions of the Security Council,” Guterres said.

NEW DELHI—Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim in Lok Sabha last week that the Indian economy is not in trouble and that “green shoots” of recovery were visible is a “problem” and serious analysts should not use the expression, India’s former Chief Statistician Pronab Sen said in an interview with HuffPost India. 

“Now, this is the problem. Any economic system will show volatility. This is the nature of economic systems. Things go up and down. If every time something goes up you say that’s a green shoot, then you have a problem. You actually have to look at the trend, not a one quarter or one month uptick,” he said.

“So you remember last time they were saying, “Oh! IIP is up, so we are good.” Well, IIP promptly went down the next month.” 

Sen made the above comments a day after the Narendra Modi government released data pertaining to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January 2020 and Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for December 2019. While the CPI, or retail inflation, was the highest since May 2014 at 7.59%, the Index of Industrial production was at -0.3% for December 2019. 

These numbers poured cold water on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim, made just two days before in Lok Sabha, about “green shoots” for the economy.  

According to Sen, who was previously the principal economic adviser to the then planning commission, what these numbers essentially show is that, there is a “supply side problem in agriculture which is pushing up prices and you have a demand side problem in manufacturing which is pushing down prices.”

In other words, poor supply of onions and garlic, as well as other crops, caused a spike in food prices which reflected in high consumer price index in January and poor demand for manufacturing goods, which led to a drop in their prices in December 2019. The poor demand, he further explained, is due to the ongoing economic slowdown. 

The economic slowdown is persistent, Sen said, because there isn’t “enough agreement” about the “origins of the problem”.

“At the end of the day, any solution has to be based on your diagnosis of the origins of the problem. You have to attack it at the source. You cannot attack at the symptoms level,” he said. 

Adding further, “You know, economics is not aspirin. It’s more like an antibiotic, you have to recognise the nature of the problem. Where does it originate and what can you do to address that? Now there is, I don’t think enough agreement on the origins of the problem. And that is where the real issue lies”.

Sen, who was appointed to lead a special standing committee on statistics in late December by the Narendra Modi government, has a two point solution for the ongoing economic slowdown: a) get cash back into the rural economy and b) stop demonising cash because that’s how rural India operates. 

“I am all for formalisation and moving to non-cash. Provided you have systems in place and people are able to transact without using cash. Those systems are not in place today; not in rural India. Even in urban India, they are not,” he explained. 

Edited excerpts from the interview:

What do you make of the IIP and CPI numbers released by the government?

Well, you see, as far as the IIP is concerned, if you look at what has been happening for the last few months, it’s essentially hanging around zero. That’s what it suggests. If you take away the normal statistical discrepancies, zero seems to be a fairly reasonable way to go. Nothing much is happening. So basically it seems to be flat. 

But why is that a satisfactory situation to be in for an economy like India?

No. Not in the least. It’s not a satisfactory situation. 

The IIP growth doesn’t necessarily equal growth of value added in manufacturing. There are intervening variables like productivity increases, like differential movement in output and input prices, so all of those things have a role to play. 

But nevertheless if we are talking about any kind of a reasonable growth in the economy, you would want to have manufacturing value added increasing somewhere around 7-8%. So what you would want for that to happen is that IIP should be growing somewhere around 4.5-5% at least. We are way below that. As I said, we are closer to 0%. 

You also mentioned this one bit about the discrepancy between what the IIP numbers state and what the GDP numbers show. 

You see, the GDP number is value added. The IIP is about physical production. Now the two are related, of course. But, you know, you can have 0% IIP growth and yet have positive value added growth through things, as I said, like productivity increases and differential price movements. But at the end of the day if you are thinking about employment, then what is critically important is what’s happening to volumes, which is what the IIP shows. It is not the GVA. GVA has absolutely nothing to do with employment, in fact GVA growth can be employment displacing as well. Yeah, so if you have labour saving technology coming in, that gives rise to productivity, then you can have positive GVA growth and employment going down. So employment is very closely linked to the IIP. 

So will it be fair to say that this IIP number is a reflection of the poor state of employment generation? 

It is a part of the same story. 

And what do you make of the Consumer Price Index number—highest in five years—which made headlines? What’s being said is that it is so because of seasonal spike in vegetable prices (interrupted)

Well, it’s actually an unseasonal spike. Because what you had was very late monsoons which led to crop damage and so on. That is primarily the case, but if you look at the CPI data more carefully though CPI is not the appropriate price data to look at for these purposes; on manufacturing, the inflation is very, very low. So what you are getting is a supply side problem in agriculture which is pushing up prices and you have a demand side problem in manufacturing which is pushing down prices. 

If you could simplify this for our readers, by referring to supply side problems in agriculture, you are essentially talking about the spike in prices of onion and garlic that we saw due to poor supply, right?

Yes, yeah; which then trickles into other crops as well.

But will it be right to understand that these were the primary crops that were most affected?

Yeah. It is, it is. One of the issues that one needs to be little careful about is that the reality is probably not as bad as what the CPI is showing simply because the CPI now is seriously outdated. The CPI is based on 2011-12 consumption patterns. Now we are 10 years down the road. So the CPI desperately needs to be revised. My sense would have been that, if past patterns continued to hold good, then the weight of food in the CPI basket would go down quite significantly. So the inflation would be much more moderate than what is being reported. 

It’s too far away, over the course of practically a decade now, so the basket could have changed quite a lot, so the CPI may not be very representative. 

But given that these numbers are for a period in which food inflation peaked, and it was essentially the main concern about the economy, within the available methods of calculation, it would still be fair to say that the number does capture to a great extent what was going on, right?

No, no, it does capture; but you know, the thing is that, remember, your entire monetary policy depends upon not just the direction but also the magnitude. So if the CPI is overstating inflation, then we may be doing less of a monetary expansion, than we should be. 

Will the statistics committee that you head right now look at revising the base year and formula for calculating the Consumer Price Index? 

For doing that we need to have the household consumption expenditure survey, that is where you get the CPI weights from. We had one in 2017-18 but the government has junked that. So now the next one is being planned for 2020-2021. It will be released sometime in 2022. We are quite far away from there. 

So, in the interim period, we are basically working with imperfect or probably imprecise data. How would you characterise the present data that we are working with?

You have no choice but to continue with the old weights. We have no data to change the weights of the different commodities in the Consumer Price Index basket. Till that data becomes available, you just have to continue with the old ones.

So essentially, the numbers released point us in the right direction but you are not certain about the extent (interrupted)

The magnitude of inflation. 

But you remain concerned about the inflation problem as such. Is that right?

Well, no. In fact, my concern is elsewhere. You see, when you have high food inflation, there are two things you need to be very conscious about. 

The first is what will happen to non-food prices. Now, as far as non-food prices are concerned, manufacturing prices are trending down. They are not trending up. So there is a downward trend and, if things get worse, you could be slipping into deflationary territory, where inflation goes into the negative territory. That’s one thing you have to keep in mind so you have to look at non-food inflation as well and see what’s happening there. 

What are the consequences on the economy in a real sense, not only the theoretical?

What happens if prices go into negative territory, then viability of industries gets jeopardised. Because when companies borrow money, they assume a particular level of inflation at which they can service their debt. If inflation is much lower than debt, particularly negative, then they have a hard time paying back. 

The second thing you have to remember are commodities where households will actually divert income from other goods and services to keep their food consumption the same. You have a very low elasticity of demand so what happens with high food inflation is, by and large, demand for other goods and services goes down. So if you already have a demand deficiency for all other products, this will make it worse. That seems to be the situation. That is more worrying than the food inflation in itself, or the headline inflation for that matter. 

This is interesting because, among some analysts, the word ‘stagflation’ seems to be frequently used to describe where the Indian economy could end up. But what you are talking about is a different argument.

It is a different argument. 

So you don’t see any possibility of India facing stagflation.  

You see, stagflation, by and large, is a situation where there is a growing demand deficiency and a cost push inflation. So the stagflation term actually originates, If you go into its etymology, it originates in the oil price shocks. Where commodity prices globally went up because of oil and demand contracted. In the 70s and again in the 90s. 

I was asking also because wage growth is terrible. 

Wage growth is terrible. So think of families having roughly constant incomes with food prices going up. So what will end up happening is that they will shift their consumption pattern to protect their food consumption and will cut down on other so-called discretionary components. 

And there is a possibility that in the months of December and January, the most recent months for which data was released, something like this happened. 

It could. 

So that then nullifies or reduces the “green shoots” in the economy that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman referred to, right? 

Now, this is the problem. Any economic system will show volatility. This is the nature of economic systems. Things go up and down. If every time something goes up you say that’s a green shoot, then you have a problem. You actually have to look at the trend, not a one quarter or one month uptick. So you remember last time they were saying, “Oh! IIP is up, so we are good.” Well, IIP promptly went down the next month. 

So the whole green shoot thing is only for talking. Serious analysts should not be saying green shoots. Because green shoots would be when you are saying overall, across-sector  either things bottoming out or starting to turn up. If you are seeing components going down, worry. 

Some analysts have said inflation may have bottomed out now. What do you think?

That is quite likely, unless some other disaster happens in the middle. Because the agricultural cycle, particularly for horticultural crops, is three to four months. And it’s been three to four months since food prices shot up. So there is a good chance that we have bottomed out of this or topped up, as the case may be. 

So there is some cause for optimism then. 

Yeah. But in order to get that, you have to track what is happening at the mandi level, which I don’t do. I am not sure they are doing it either. 

I want to come back to the point you made about the manufacturing sector. You mentioned that, when you look at the data closely, you find that there are demand side problems pushing down prices. Could you elaborate?

As far as the manufacturing sector is concerned, incomes are not growing. Okay? Manufacturers are increasingly having a difficult time selling their product. So you are seeing large discounts happening. So that’s what is going on. 

So that is a reflection of stagnant incomes, isn’t it?

Yeah, basically. 

What can be done to revive income? Does the budget give us enough tools to revive incomes?

Not really. So far as I can make out, there has been no real push towards increasing demand in the budget. 

The new personal income tax scheme announced by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the budget won’t help?

It’s very small. And how much benefit will actually accrue isn’t all that clear. Because much of it depends on how many people switch and how many people don’t switch to the new system. That’s not clear at all. 

Also, it doesn’t address the source of the problem ie: rural India, right?

No, it doesn’t address the source of the problem. 

So the problem of slowdown and stagnant incomes is going to persist with us for a while now. 

Well, that’s what it looks like, yes. 

What do you think should be done to address these stubbornly persistent problems?

At the end of the day, any solution has to be based on your diagnosis of the origins of the problem. You have to attack it at the source. You cannot attack at the symptoms level. You know, economics is not aspirin. It’s more like an antibiotic, you have to recognise the nature of the problem. Where does it originate and what can you do to address that? Now there is, I don’t think enough agreement on the origins of the problem. And that is where the real issue lies. 

I could give you a long spiel on what I think is the origins of the problem, I am already on record, there is nothing new, if you google my writings, you will get it. But my sense of it is that the origins of the problem is rural distress, which started well before this government, started in 2012 or thereabouts, but got exacerbated by demonetisation. Now if that is the nature of the problem, you have to recognise that, till such time as systems are in place where non-cash transactions can happen in the rural economy, to discourage the use of cash is a self-defeating set of decisions. And this has been happening repeatedly. Cash has been demonised in the system. 

That’s fine. I am all for formalisation and moving to non-cash. Provided you have systems in place and people are able to transact without using cash. Those systems are not in place today; not in rural India. Even in urban India they are not. So, at this moment, my thing would be: 1) please get cash back into the rural economy. 2) stop demonising cash because that’s how rural India operates. Until you have enough evidence that rural India has been able to move into a non-cash transaction mode, don’t do anything drastic. 

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that the Delhi Police had lived up to Sardar Valllabhai’s Vallabhbhai Patel’s advice of remaining “calm” despite “provocation” while dealing with miscreants with a “firm hand”.

Shah was speaking at the 73rd Raising Day ceremony of the Delhi Police when he called it one of the leading metropolitan police forces in the country and the world which has foiled attempts to create disturbance without fail.

Shah’s comments come in the wake of a series of incidents in the capital where the Delhi Police has been accused of either gross brutality or sheer apathy.

The home minister’s statement stood in stark contrast to Delhi Police action seen in the CCTV footage released by the Jamia Coordination Committee on Sunday which showed paramilitary and police personnel beating up students inside the library in Jamia Milia Islamia on December 15.

The university confirmed to the Indian Express that footage was from its library, but refused to comment on the video.

The Delhi Police had in December denied entering the library.

Last week, students of the all-women Gargi College alleged that the Delhi Police did nothing after a group of men broke into college during its festival ‘Reverie’ and groped, harassed and molested the students. The students said that Rapid Action Force and Delhi Police personnel were deployed close to the gate from where the men entered.

On February 10, the Delhi Police was seen lathicharging Jamia protesters who were taking out a march to the Parliament against the CAA and NRC on February 10. Several students were injured and women said the police hit their private parts.

In his speech on Sunday, Shah cited a 1950 speech by India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and said, “Despite all the anger and provocation, Delhi Police should remain calm but it should also be ready to deal with the miscreants with firm hands to protect the people.”

“I believe, on many occasions, the Delhi Police has lived up to this advice of Saradar Patel,” the home minister said.

He lauded the force for helping the government on occasions like celebrations of Independence Day and Republic Day, festivals and visits by foreign dignitaries.

 Shah claimed that while constructive criticism of the police was always welcome, one must keep in mind more than 35,000 police personnel had laid down their lives on the line of duty.

Shah said that under the Delhi Safe City Project, the Centre has sanctioned Rs 857 crore for the safety and security of the capital city.

As many as 10,000 CCTV cameras have been set up in the area covered by 165 police stations and the home ministry has sanctioned 9,300 more to ensure the safety of women in the city, he said.

(With PTI inputs)

“Society holds a strong belief in gender roles that men are physically stronger and women are weak and submissive.” The court said the notion “women are the weaker sex” is flawed, Bar&Bench reported.

The bench also said that the exclusion of women from command posting goes against the principles against discrimination and equal opportunity in public service, ie, Articles 14 and 16 of the Consitution.

The bench said women officers in the past have brought laurels to the country and change of mindset is required on the part of the government to put an end to gender bias in armed forces.

The top court said despite there being no stay on the 2010 Delhi High Court verdict allowing grant of permanent commission to women officers, the Centre had showed scant regard in implementing the directive in past one decade.

The top court said even after 70 years of post-colonial era, there is a need for change in mindset with regard to giving equal opportunity to women officers in the Indian Army.

It said that women officers have brought laurels to the country and several gallantry, sena medals and UN Peace Keeping awards for their contribution in armed forces and to cast aspersion on them on the basis of physiological features is wrong as based on a fallacy.

The bench, however, clarified that deployment of women officers in combat role is a matter of policy as held by the Delhi High Court and the competent authority has to look into it.

The top court said permanent commission can be given to the women officers in the Army irrespective of their tenure of service.

Almost a week after the Delhi election results, the Congress continues to implode. The recent round of blame game began after the party managed to win zero seats in the assembly election and actually did worse in terms of vote percentage.

As Congress leaders celebrated the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) win over BJP, others from the party have been hitting back at them. 

On Monday, senior Congress leader Milind Deora tweeted praise for the Delhi government led by Arvind Kejriwal. “Delhi Government doubled its revenues to ₹60,000 crore & maintained a revenue surplus over the last 5 years,” he said. 

Party leader Ajay Maken slammed Deora’s comment saying, “brother, you want to leave Congress—please do—then propagate half baked facts”. 

Congress leader Radhika Khera — who was the candidate from Janakpuri, but lost — also commented on Deora’s tweet.

Khera responded to Deora’s tweet, saying she found it “extremely disappointing” that senior Congress leaders are “busy patting AAP’s back” instead of encouraging the party to do better. 

This is the latest incident exposing the rifts within the Congress since the Delhi election results in which the party saw its vote share drop to 4.26% — down from 9.7% in 2015 — and 63 of its candidates lost their deposits. 

As party leaders took to congratulating Delhi for rejecting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), others slammed these leaders for celebrating AAP’s victory. 

Last week, Sharmistha Mukherjee, daughter of former president Pranab Mukherjee, slammed senior leader P. Chidambaram, who had saluted the people of Delhi for setting “an example to other states” by defeating the “polarising” agenda of the BJP. 

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said that those spreading “religious hatred” had been wiped out. “Amit Shahji had asked people to press the voting button with such force that the current is felt in Shaheen Bagh. Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter has given a good statement by saying that the button was pressed (by voters) in such a way that it (BJP) got electrocuted,” he was quoted as saying by PTI.

On the Congress’s performance in Delhi, Singh only said the votes got shifted to AAP as people backed the person and the party which they believed could defeat the BJP.

(With PTI inputs)

READ: Delhi: Congress Has No Idea Who To Blame, BJP Has Manoj Tiwari

I had barely woken up on 30 August 2019, when I opened the door of my room to find five police officers standing there, instead of my parents. 

Why were they there? The Hong Kong Police Force were accusing me of protesting without their given permission, and inciting others to join at a time when mass pro-democracy protests were sweeping Hong Kong. The movement in 2019 started against a controversial extradition bill – now suspended – which would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial. 

Until 1997, Hong Kong was ruled by Britain as a colony but then returned to China. Under the ‘one country, two systems’ arrangement, we are meant to be independent from China in all internal affairs. Our preserved rights, which are not enjoyed in mainland China, include freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. These values make Hong Kong a special home for many people like me. 

Over the years, growing up in Hong Kong, I have felt that our unique values and freedoms have come under threat, by attempts to integrate Hongkongers into China. It is highly stressful living with the thought that we may, and most likely will, become fully part of China – which is why I joined the fight for our rights to be preserved in Hong Kong.

The first time I became aware of China’s interference in Hong Kong was at the age of 15, when I saw a Facebook post showing young people demanding change – during a time when the Hong Kong government was planning to introduce ‘moral and national education’ in 2012. To me this, sounded like Chinese brainwashing and a corruption of our education system. After all, if an authoritarian regime wants to control a place, the first thing they do is control the city’s education system. 

So I joined a student group, Scholarism, where I met Joshua Wong, another activist my age and a prominent pro-democracy voice. As a group, following demonstrations, we managed to overturn the government’s plans. It was exhilarating to help make such a change at a young age. But we were motivated by our futures, and not only by fears of China.  We want to live in Hong Kong for the next 30 years, 50 years, 70 years – but with at least the same rights as we have, if not more.

So, in 2014, we realised that we Hongkongers had fell short of true democracy. This started off the Umbrella Movement, a 79-day occupation of several Hong Kong neighbourhoods, which my friends and I took part in eagerly. How were we to have a say in our future, without democracy? The government responded by gradually limiting our political rights more and more.

Along with Nathan Law, Joshua and I founded the political group Demosisto. Believing Hong Kong’s future should not be decided by the Beijing government, but by us, I tried to stand as a candidate in the Legislative Council elections in 2018, but I was banned from even standing. In the past pro-independence parties has been banned but now it appeared that our party had been too outspoken in even demanding democracy – another sign of the increasing limitations on our political rights. I was frustrated for our generation, because it meant that many like me were not allowed to have a voice in deciding our common future in Hong Kong. 

After many attempts at taking the official route to demanding universal suffrage, Hongkongers realised we weren’t being listened to by our own government and China. Some two million citizens from all walks of life took to the streets. Eventually, we forced the extradition bill to be suspended. 

This was a massive success for the protest movement, of course – but we have a long way to go. We still have demands: that our protests not to be characterised as “riots” (which could see protestors jailed for up to ten years); amnesty for arrested protesters; an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality, and finally the implementation of complete universal suffrage. We are not only fighting against the Hong Kong government and police, we are also opposing to the authoritarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party controls the Hong Kong government. Democracy, to me, is like air. We don’t really realise how important it is but, once there is no air, we struggle for it.

Hong Kong experienced a lot in 2019, and now too in 2020. One way or another we’re going to face more suppression and more violence from the Chinese authorities and the Hong Kong government.  But we Hong Kongers won’t give up the fights for the values we cherish so much. Sometimes, like all of us, I feel very scared. But I certainly can’t give up. This is the only thing I know. 

Agnes Chow is a student and pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong. Follow her on Twitter at @chowtingagnes. Agnes features in Channel 4′s Dispatches: The Battle for Hong Kong.

Have a compelling personal story you want to tell? Find out what we’re looking for here, and pitch us on ukpersonal@huffpost.com

The Supreme Court on Monday appointed senior counsel Sanjay Hedge and advocate Sadhana Ramachandran to hold talks with protestors on moving the Shaheen Bagh protest to an alternate site where no public place is blocked. 

The bench comprising Justice Kaul and Justice KM Joseph suggested that the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) at Shaheen Bagh be shifted to an area earmarked for protests, such as Ramlila Maidan or Jantar Mantar.

“We are not saying that people don’t have the right to raise their concerns. The question is where to protest? Because if this continues on the roads today for this legislation, tomorrow it could be done for another legislation,” The Indian Express quoted Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul as saying.

Democracy works on expressing views but there are lines and boundaries for it, the top court said regarding the Shaheen Bagh protest. 

The court also asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to look into any alternatives that can be agreed upon. The bench pointed out that there are certain places earmarked for protests like Ramlila Maidan and Jantar Mantar. 

NDTV reported that the top court told the lawyer, who represented the protesters, that they can continue their protest but not on a road that’s used by a large number of people everyday.

“Give us some time, we will do it,” the lawyer reportedly said.

The next date of hearing is February 24. 

Advocate Amit Sahni had filed an appeal in the apex court against the January 14 order of the high court directing the police to deal with the situation keeping in mind law and order. He had said that due to the protests since December 15 last year traffic flow on Kalindi Kunj-Shaheen Bagh stretch has been badly affected.

READ: Shaheen Bagh’s Contagious Freedom Lets Us Imagine The Nation We Can Be

Former Delhi MLA Nand Kishore Garg had also filed a plea in the top court seeking directions to the authorities to remove the protestors from Shaheen Bagh.

Earlier, Sahni had approached the high court seeking directions to the Delhi Police to ensure smooth traffic flow on the Kalindi Kunj-Shaheen Bagh stretch which has been blocked since December 15 last year due to protest at Shaheen Bagh.

(With PTI inputs)

Three Kashmiri engineering students, who were arrested on charges of sedition, were beaten up by members of the Bajrang Dal outside a court in Karnataka on Monday, The NewsMinute reported.

The three students, who had been arrested on Saturday but released from jail on a bond on Sunday, were arrested again on Monday and produced at a court in Hubballi. 

On Monday, a large crowd of people gathered outside the Judicial Magistrate-First Class court as they were produced in court. The crowd shouting ‘Bolo Bharat Mata ki jai’, TNM’s report said.

Members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, and other Hindutva outfits tried to manhandle them as they were being taken to the police van after leaving court, The Hindu reported.

The three students, who study at a private engineering college, were arrested on Saturday for allegedly raising pro-Pakistan slogans and posting it on social media on the first anniversary of the Pulwama attack that left dozens of CRPF soldiers dead in Kashmir.

Officials told PTI that the selfie video of the three had gone viral as they posted it on WhatsApp. In the video, one of the students can be purportedly seen initially uttering something with background music on, after which they chant “Azadi” one after the other. Then joining the chorus to the music that is playing, they purportedly say “Pakistan Zindabad.” 

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The students were arrested let off on Sunday after the execution of a bond under Section 169 of CrPC, but were arrested again on Monday.

According to PTI, the action came after members of right-wing organisations staged demonstrations outside the police station on Sunday.

“They (Kashmiri students) have been arrested, produced before the court and remanded in judicial custody,” the Hubballi-Dharwad police Commissioner R Dileep told PTI on Monday. The three have been remanded to judicial custody till March 2.

Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik was among those who criticised the police for releasing the students.

Meanwhile, the Bar Association in Hubballi has passed a resolution saying its members would not represent any of the three students, The NewsMinute reported.

An irradiated nuclear zone is hardly the most obvious animal sanctuary. But in January, almost a decade after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, scientists using remote cameras in the area around the abandoned power station discovered an abundance of wildlife.

Macaques, raccoon dogs (a relative of the fox), wild boar, pheasants ― over 20 species in all were found to be thriving in the absence of people.

It’s the latest piece of research to show that nature bounces back when humans are out of the way. And fortunately, this doesn’t require a nuclear disaster. 

In 1995, faced with severely depleted fish stocks, the Mexican village of Cabo Pulmo decided to abandon its nets and campaign to establish a “no-take” marine reserve. Decades of overfishing had all but emptied the once-thriving coral reef of the colorful shoals the Sea of Cortez was renowned for, and the community feared for the future. 

Fifteen years later, its waters were again teeming with life. A 2009 study found fish biomass had increased by 463%, to a level similar to that of reefs that have never been fished. 

“The results were completely amazing,” said Octavio Aburto, the study’s author and director of the Gulf of California Marine Program, adding that top predators like bull sharks have returned to the once-depleted habitat. Those at the top of the food chain, often called “keystone species,” are critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems because they keep populations of smaller animals in check.

Such cases add fuel to a growing call for a more radical approach to conservation ― one that would ultimately give protected status to half the planet, putting existing wilderness off-limits and rewilding developed areas. Proponents argue that such action is vital to stem species extinctions and avert climate breakdown.

“We know from many studies all around the world that when we give space to nature, she comes back spectacularly,” said Enric Sala, explorer in residence at National Geographic. “And we know that when nature comes back, all the services that nature provides for us come back too.”

Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson proposed setting aside 50% of the planet for nature in his 2016 book, “Half Earth.” The idea was given fresh impetus in April 2019 when Sala and a group of fellow scientists published a paper calling for a target of preserving 30% of Earth in its natural state by 2030, in what they framed as a Global Deal for Nature. 

Almost three million people around the world have since signed a petition backing the call, while a coalition of countries ― including Costa Rica, France and Senegal ― has pledged to push for a global commitment to the 30% target this year. In January, the figure was included in a draft text to be negotiated at a key United Nations meeting in October. The “30 by 30” goal is intended to be as important for nature as the Paris agreement is for climate change.

Sala said he is now confident that countries can reach an ambitious agreement, thanks in part to growing awareness of the critical role of natural habitats in tackling climate change. “Even if [our energy system] went 100% renewable, we still need forests and wetlands and healthy ecosystems to help us absorb all the CO2 we’ve put in the atmosphere,” he said. “The realization there is no solution to climate without biodiversity and vice versa has been key.”

The stakes could hardly be higher. U.N. scientists have said one million species now face extinction. A recent paper from the World Economic Forum named major biodiversity loss as one of the top five risks of the next decade and warned of the dire consequences to food and medical supplies if we fail to act. 

But is protecting a third ― let alone half ― of the planet doable? 

Today, the most generous estimates put currently protected areas at 15% of the Earth’s land and 7% of the oceans. Meanwhile, deforestation rates, for example, have accelerated in the past five years. 

Success in habitat protection will depend on governments looking beyond the “easy metric” of area to the harder one of effective management, said Sarah Hameed, the California-based director of the Blue Parks Program at the Marine Conservation Institute, which gives out awards to exemplary marine reserves. 

This means sufficient investment in surveillance and enforcement, she said, but above all in community engagement. Without buy-in from local people, you’re “very likely to see poaching problems,” Hameed said, noting that many of the habitats most in need of protection, like mangrove forests, are found on populated coastlines.

Part of the answer, Aburto argues, lies in mass-scale replication of the transformation of Cabo Pulmo, where locals now make more money from ecotourism than they ever did from fishing. He has co-authored a white paper calling for a worldwide map of similar communities and envisages a global network of small protected areas, led by local people and receiving government funding.

“The only thing we need is to invest in this model, rather than governments investing in subsidies for fishing or massive scale tourism development that only bring more extraction of natural resources,” he said. 

But even in Cabo Pulmo, the tussle between nature and society is complex. Success has brought exploding visitor numbers and concerns those tourists could damage fragile corals, as well as growing interest from major hotel developers. While Aburto suggested that diving companies could stem the flow of tourists by raising their prices, he acknowledged this would likely be criticized as a “very capitalist approach.”

While Cabo Pulmo demonstrates that habitat protection can benefit both wildlife and local residents, some human rights activists have deep worries about how an ambitious, top-down conservation goal could affect people, especially in already vulnerable communities. Stephen Corry, director of the indigenous rights group Survival International, said at least 10 million people have been displaced by protected areas to date and described the push to create more as “deeply anti-people.”

A BuzzFeed investigation last year revealed that in the fight against poachers, the World Wildlife Fund had funded paramilitary groups who ended up being accused of atrocities ― including torture, murder and sexual assault ― against indigenous people who had been displaced in the name of conservation. 

The whole notion of pristine nature as something separate from humans is a fabrication, Corry argues, pointing out that people like the Baka in Congo, whom plans for a new national park threaten to displace, have been managing the forest sustainably for thousands of years. 

“It’s nonsense and of course it detracts from the real issue, which is overconsumption by the West,” he said. It is not indigenous people who are destroying habitats, said Corry, but rich countries’ insatiable desire for more stuff, which drives the ever-increasing thirst for land for industries like agriculture, timber and mining. 

Sala said we can protect indigenous rights and tackle the drivers of climate change at the same time. Both goals require us to take on destructive fossil fuel lobbies and extractive industries ― those he described as wanting “to make money in the casino of the Titanic after hitting the iceberg.”

These industries hold big sway. In the U.S., for example, the Trump administration has been working to open up new lands for drilling and fracking and to roll back existing protections, from pollution regulations to the Endangered Species Act.

“Politically the environment in which we’re doing this work very much puts us on defense,” said Jenny Binstock, senior campaigner at the Sierra Club. Her team is currently rallying to protect a hard-won deal to balance conservation needs with renewable energy development and other land use requirements across 10.5 million acres of California desert, which the Trump administration has signaled it intends to roll back.

But Binstock remains optimistic about achieving the “30 by 30” goal, arguing that President Donald Trump’s “all-out assault on nature” has prompted a stronger national conversation about strategies to protect public lands and their potential to mitigate climate change.

She also pointed to a recent letter from a group of institutional investors urging energy, timber and mining firms not to take advantage of newly weakened regulations, as a sign that key sectors regard Trump’s wrecking ball as temporary. “I think there’s acknowledgment that these are not necessarily durable changes in a post-Trump America and so they’re not reliable investments,” she said.

Ultimately, conservation is never simple, Binstock said. “You’re constantly needing to negotiate amongst folks who use the land in many, many different ways. It’s not easy work at all, but it’s the work that we have to do together.”

NEW DELHI — A Delhi court Monday issued fresh death warrants for March 3 at 6 am against the four death row convicts in the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case.

Additional Session Judge Dharmender Rana issued fresh warrants against death row convicts — Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31).

This is the third time that death warrants have been issued against them.

The first date of execution, January 22, was postponed to February 1 by a January 17 court order. Then the trial court, on January 31, stayed, “till further orders” the execution of the four convicts as they had not exhausted all their legal remedies.

During the proceedings on Monday, Mukesh told the court that he does not want to be represented by advocate Vrinda Grover, after which it appointed advocate Ravi Qazi to represent him.

The court was also informed that Vinay is on hunger strike in Tihar jail.

Vinay was assaulted in jail and has head injuries, his lawyer told the court, adding that he was suffering from acute mental illness and hence the death sentence cannot be carried out.

The court directed the Tihar jail superintendent to take appropriate care of Vinay as per law.

Pawan’s counsel informed the court that he wanted to move curative petition before the Supreme Court and the mercy plea against the death sentence before the President.

Pawan is the only one among the four convicts who has not yet filed the curative petition — the last legal remedy available to a person, which is decided in-chamber. He has not filed the mercy plea either.

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Akshay’s counsel informed the court that he has prepared a fresh mercy petition to be moved before the President.

The court was hearing the applications by the victim’s parents and the Delhi government, seeking fresh death warrants for the convicts after the Supreme Court granted liberty to the authorities to approach the trial court for issuance of fresh date for the execution of these convicts.

Last Thursday, the court had appointed Qazi to represent Gupta after being informed by Tihar jail authorities that the death row convict refused to choose a lawyer offered by Delhi Legal Services Authorities (DLSA).

A day before that the court expressed displeasure over the delay in the process from Gupta’s side, after convict’s father informed it that he had removed his earlier lawyer and would need time to engage a new one.

Entire cities on lockdown. Armies of engineers mobilised to build entire hospitals in just days. The Kafkaesque tracking and surveillance of those who might be infected.

Faced with a crisis like coronavirus Covid-19, there are tools available to a totalitarian state like China that simply wouldn’t be options somewhere like the UK.

Yet there have now been more than 70,000 confirmed infections on the mainland, and all but five of the 1,775 deaths globally have occurred in China.

So why haven’t the country’s extreme measures worked?

Sarah Cook, senior research analyst for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House, told HuffPost UK: “If you look around the world, China is the only country so far where this has really gotten out of control.

“Granted, other countries had more notice so they were able to start containing the virus from a smaller scale, but that is exactly the problem.”

“The political system in China is actually making it harder to deal with this crisis in a way that reduces public panic.”

What is China’s political system?

China’s political system is vast and complex. In essence, though, it is a one-party communist state.

That party is the Communist Party of China, which exerts full control over the country and exercises power through a network of regional and local party offices as well as the state-run media.

Local officials are elected by the public but the people really in charge – President Xi Jinping and the Politburo (the Chinese equivalent of the cabinet in the UK government) – are not democratically elected.

There is an unwritten social contract between the Chinese public and its government that the state will provide security and economic prosperity and in return the people will let those in power remain in power.

How does it react to crises?

In a one-party state, the reputation of that one party comes first. 

The communist government’s rigid structure has long favoured officials that toe the party line and suppress negative information about China rather than speak out. 

Officials fear that flagging even legitimate worries will earn them nothing but a demotion – even though, of course, dealing promptly with a potential future disaster would help China save face in the long term.

Professor Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute, told HuffPost UK: ”[It is] a system that has an incentive for people to underplay the problems rather.”

China’s reactions to a number of crises over the last two decades amply demonstrate this.

During the Sars outbreak in 2003 it took months for Chinese officials to acknowledge the outbreak at all. 

The resulting global spread of that disease was due in part to a secretive government’s desperate fear of being shown up on the international stage.

Ultimately, China’s response backfired and it was forced to apologise.

Then, after a devastating earthquake in 2008 that killed nearly 70,000 people, it took nearly a year for the government to acknowledge that more than 5,000 schoolchildren had died because of shoddy construction standards.

In 2011, a train collision on the country’s much-vaunted new high-speed railway killed 38 people and was accompanied by a media blackout and allegations of a cover-up.

Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher with Human Rights Watch, told HuffPost UK: “We haven’t learned from the Sars outbreak, the 2008 earthquake or the 2011 train crash.

“Almost in every case they try to cover up the death toll or the way the government responded. It’s an authoritarian impulse – they’re not accountable to the people because they not elected.

“They’re accountable to their superiors.”

So how did it react to the coronavirus outbreak?

In exactly the same way, at least initially.

“In many places in China, it seems authorities are equally, if not more, concerned with silencing criticism as with containing the spread of the coronavirus,” says Wang.

“Among other things, authorities have taken away citizen journalists Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi who tried to document the situation in Wuhan under the name of ‘quarantine’.”

The most infamous case of stifling criticism is that of Li Wenliang, a medic at a hospital in Wuhan who tried to raise the alarm about the new strain of coronavirus in December.

At the start of January, he was warned by police to stop “spreading rumours” about the illness now known as Covid-19, with officers telling him he had “severely disrupted social order” and he would face criminal charges if he continued. 

Li died of the virus last earlier this month.

The way the Chinese authorities, at least on a local level, reacted to the emerging crisis severely hampered their ability to fight the virus. 

“When Dr Li and his colleagues first tired to alert people and the authorities, there were only a handful or a few dozen cases,” said Cook.

“And their efforts were quashed precisely because of the internal incentives and political priorities of the Chinese totalitarian system.”

Following an online uproar over the government’s treatment of Li, the Communist Party struck a conciliatory note, saying it was sending a team to “fully investigate relevant issues raised by the public”.

What should they have done?

Stamping out criticism and stamping out a virus are obviously two very different things.

Professor Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute, told HuffPost UK that if the Chinese government had truly learned lessons from the Sars outbreak then the first cases of animal to human transmission confirmed in early December should have triggered a different response.

“If the government that dealt with Sars and avian flu had learned anything, it would have acted decisively at that stage,” he said.

“They should have culled all the livestock, incinerated them and quarantined the staff who worked at that particular location.

“It didn’t happen.”

What about those massive building projects, though?

There’s no doubting that few states would have the resources and manpower to pull off the feats China has. 

The 1,000-bed Huoshenshan Hospital and a second facility with 1,500 beds were built by construction crews in 10 days who are working around the clock in Wuhan, the city in central China where the coronavirus outbreak was first detected in December.

The ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, sent 1,400 doctors, nurses and other personnel to staff the Wuhan hospital.

“The Chinese government is reporting it widely,” said Tsang. “They are showing how heroically they are confronting it, how they have built impressive new hospitals that no other countries could even imagine doing. They’ve reported how dedicated medical staff are, to the extent that some of them died fighting the virus.”

But it is all too little too late – at the time of writing 1,776 people have died and 71,356 are infected, practically all within China itself.

“Fundamentally, it’s this element of the [Chinese government] putting its political interests and ‘social and political stability’ over the basic rights of the people of China [...] and of public health,” concluded Cook.

PUNE, Maharashtra — The Maharashtra government refused to hand over the Bhima Koregaon case to the National Investigation Agency, until it did. The state home ministry under the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)’s Anil Deshmukh was opposed to the NIA, but the Shiv Sena Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray wasn’t.

Senior police officers in Maharashtra are suspected of having gone behind the back of the state government to send an “SOS” to the Union Home Ministry in Delhi, urging the NIA to take up the case. The Maharashtra state government tried to stop the NIA from seizing the case-files in a Pune court, only to reverse its stance a day before the court was scheduled to rule in the matter. 

In June 2018, the Pune police launched a series of country-wide raids targeted at lawyers and human rights defenders involved in fighting politically-charged legal cases involving Dalit issues, Adivasi rights, and those accused of supporting the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). Those arrested soon after the raids included celebrated Dalit rights lawyer Surendra Gadling, lawyer, and trade unionist Sudha Bhardwaj, Ambedkarite activist Sudhir Dhawale, Adivasi rights activist Mahesh Raut, writer Arun Ferreira, and retired university professor Vernon Gonsalves.

In November 2019, it emerged that a “state-actor” — most likely the Government of India — had deployed the controversial Pegasus snooping software developed by the Israeli NSO Group to break into the electronic devices of several individuals associated with those arrested. The Israeli government classifies Pegasus as a cyberweapon and doesn’t allow its sale without a valid export license.

In this context, the conflicting signals emerging out to Maharashtra reveal Bhima Koregaon case encapsulate many separate strands of India’s current state of political crisis: the continued politicisation of the Indian police, the arrest and prolonged detention of citizens without charges or sufficient evidence, the unregulated, and possibly illegal, use of cyber-weapons against Indian citizens, the Narendra Modi government’s use of central agencies to overrule state authorities, and the fractured state of the political opposition to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Police Problems

In January 2020, NCP Supremo Sharad Pawar had a press conference calling for the creation of a Special Investigation Team of the Maharashtra police to re-evaluate the Bhima Koregaon case and the Elgar Parishad case.

The two cases are intrinsically linked together, with the Pune police claiming that an investigation into a violent clash at Bhima Koregaon in December 2017-January 2018 led them to a conspiracy orchestrated by the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).  

As HuffPost India has previously reported, one section of the Pune police is investigating the role of two BJP-affiliated Hindutva activists — Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide — in fomenting the violence, while another section of the Pune police is investigating the so-called urban Naxal angle.

“Overall 22 FIRs were filed for the Bhima Koregaon violence which clearly pointed out Bhide and Ekbote’s involvement but there was no action on it and all these activists were arrested on one FIR filed by Bhide’s disciple,” said Advocate Rohan Nahar, who is representing Varavara Rao and some other activists in this case.

In his press conference, Pawar questioned the intent, attitude, and behaviour of some IPS officers associated with this case and sought action against these officers.

“The actions of the Pune police commissioner and some of his associates, in the Elgar Parishad case, were vengeful and a clear misuse of power,” Pawar had said, as he justified his demand for a special probe. “ The actions of Pune police, in this case, were extremely suspicious. The Pune police commissioner and his associates have misused their powers to jail these people and encroached on their fundamental freedom which should be investigated.”

Pawar said his government could not stand by as fundamental freedoms were snatched.

“People, in this case,  were booked for sedition only for expressing strong views over some issues and jailed for months and years. It was clearly an encroachment on fundamental freedom,” he said. “The police administration will misuse its powers if it gets a sense that they can do such things and the government of the day acts as a mute spectator.”

As Pawar’s party controls the Maharashtra Home Ministry through Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, who is from the NCP, political watchers expected this SIT to be formed.

The Pune police were asked to brief Deshmukh and Maharashtra deputy CM Ajit Pawar, but hours after their briefing the NIA — which reports to the Union Home Ministry controlled by the BJP’s Amit Shah — announced it was taking over the case. The Maharashtra state government was not consulted before this decision was made.

Police sources told HuffPost India that the Union Home Ministry had been tipped off by a senior police officer in Maharashtra, but refused to name the officer.

“The newly formed three-party government is still to tighten its grip and the BJP is already planting reports that this government could go. As long as it does not survive for 6 or so months, the bureaucracy won’t fall in line which explains these IPS officers’ actions,” said a political observer close to Sharad Pawar. “Even after Pawar criticized the Pune police commissioner, he continues to be in the contention for the post of Mumbai city police commissioner.”

Bhima Koregaon’s political significance

Speaking on background, police officers in Maharashtra admitted to  HuffPost India that the Bhima Koregaon case appears to be politically motivated. On the one hand, the case was an attempt protect the right wing-affiliates involved in the violence, on the other it formed a vital part of the BJP’s attempts to fracture Maharashtra’s Dalit polity by raising the spectre of national security.

“The previous Fadnavis government tactically used Bhima Koregaon. Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar was given limelight and promoted in the media as the face of the Dalit protest which took place after the Bhima Koregaon incident,” a police officer said, offering a worryingly prescient grasp of Maharashtra politics and the police’s role.  “The result was there for you to see. Ambedkar’s party walked away with over 41 lakh votes in the Lok Sabha election with its ally AIMIM and garnered over 21 lakh votes in assembly elections.”

The rise of Prakash Ambedkar damaged the Congress and the NCP. He damaged Congress-NCP prospects at more than 12 seats in Lok Sabha and more than 23 seats in assembly polls. 

Pawar’s position on the case could be viewed as an attempt to win back support amongst the constituencies captured by Ambedkar. On Jan 1, 2020, Pawar’s nephew Ajit visited the Bhima Koregaon memorial — a visible indication that Sharad Pawar and the NCP want to sideline Prakash Ambedkar by openly batting for the Bhima Koregaon accused. 

Glaring fault lines in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government 

This incident has again highlighted the fault lines within this three-party government. 

Pawar was visibly upset when Thackeray gave the approval to transfer the case to NIA overruling the state home department.

“It was not right for the Centre to hand over the investigation into the case to the NIA. But it was even more wrong for the state government to support the transfer of the case,” Pawar said in Kolhapur on February 14.

But Uddhav Thackeray could be seen mellowing his stand on the issue.

During an interview with Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana earlier this month, the CM had said that he did not see anything wrong in NIA taking over the case but objected to the state police not being consulted while doing so.

On Monday, Pawar cut short his Nashik trip and chaired a meeting of senior NCP leaders and NCP ministers in the Uddhav Thackeray cabinet in Mumbai.

After this meeting, home minister Deshmukh told reporters that the NCP was still in favour of a parallel inquiry of the Bhima Koregoan-Elgar Parishad case. 

“As per section 10 of the NIA Act, the state has the power to conduct a simultaneous investigation. We will take legal opinion and see how an  SIT can be announced for this case,” Deshmukh said.

Congress’s Mallikarjun Kharge and Balasaheb Thorat also expressed displeasure over Thackeray transferring the case to NIA “without consulting the allies”. 

Even as the case will now be tried in the NIA court, the state government appointed SIT is likely to look into the alleged role of the then BJP government in the Bhima Koregaon riots.

As Maharashtra cabinet minister and NCP’s chief spokesperson Nawab Malik put it on Monday, “From day one our position is very clear on Bhima Koregaon and Elgar case that Bhima Koregaon incident was a pre-planned conspiracy by BJP people. Elgar Parishad’s case is a false one. To stop this falsehood from getting exposed, the central government transferred the case to NIA when Sharad Pawar wrote a letter to the CM demanding an inquiry. There is no rift among three parties that are a part of this government.”

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia would not legalise gay marriage as long as he was in the Kremlin.

He made clear he would not allow the traditional notion of mother and father to be subverted by what he called “parent number 1” and “parent number 2.”

“As far as ‘parent number 1’ and ‘parent number 2’ goes, I’ve already spoken publicly about this and I’ll repeat it again: as long as I’m president this will not happen. There will be dad and mum,” Putin said.

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During his two decades in power, Putin has closely aligned himself with the Orthodox Church and sought to distance Russia from liberal Western values, including attitudes towards homosexuality and gender fluidity.

He made the comments as he met a state commission to discuss changes to Russia’s constitution.

The commission was set up last month after Putin announced sweeping changes to Russia’s political system that are widely seen as being designed to help him extend his grip on power after his scheduled departure from office in 2024.

Other proposals have since been put forward and Putin was asked to comment on a proposal to add a line in the constitution defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

“We need only to think in what phrases and where to do this,” he replied.

In separate comments during the meeting, Putin said he backed an idea to make it unconstitutional for Russia to giveaway any part of its territory, a move likely to irritate Japan and Ukraine that have land disputes with Moscow.

Russia annexed the peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014and has been in a decades-long dispute with Tokyo over ownership of a chain of islands in the Pacific that Moscow seized from Japan at the end of World War Two.

Russia and Japan have been holding talks on the latter dispute which has prevented the countries formally signing a peace treaty after World War Two.

“We have talks under way with our partners on certain questions, but I like the idea itself,” Putin said. “So let’s instruct the lawyers, ask them to formulate this in the right way.”(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Beijing — For decades, the Uighur imam was a bedrock of his farming community in China’s far west. On Fridays, he preached Islam as a religion of peace. On Sundays, he treated the sick with free herbal medicine. In the winter, he bought coal for the poor.

But as a Chinese government mass detention campaign engulfed Memtimin Emer’s native Xinjiang region three years ago, the elderly imam was swept up and locked away, along with all three of his sons living in China.

Now, a newly revealed database exposes in extraordinary detail the main reasons for the detentions of Emer, his three sons, and hundreds of others in Karakax County: their religion and their family ties.

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The database obtained by The Associated Press profiles the internment of 311 individuals with relatives abroad and lists information on more than 2,000 of their relatives, neighbours and friends. Each entry includes the detainee’s name, address, national identity number, detention date and location, along with a detailed dossier on their family, religious and neighbourhood background, the reason for detention, and a decision on whether or not to release them. Issued within the past year, the documents do not indicate which government department compiled them or for whom.

Taken as a whole, the information offers the fullest and most personal view yet into how Chinese officials decided who to put into and let out of detention camps, as part of a massive crackdown that has locked away more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Muslims.

The database emphasizes that the Chinese government focused on religion as a reason for detention — not just political extremism, as authorities claim, but ordinary activities such as praying, attending a mosque, or even growing a long beard. It also shows the role of family: People with detained relatives are far more likely to end up in a camp themselves, uprooting and criminalizing entire families like Emer’s in the process.

Similarly, family background and attitude is a bigger factor than detainee behaviour in whether they are released.

“It’s very clear that religious practice is being targeted,” said Darren Byler, a University of Colorado researcher studying the use of surveillance technology in Xinjiang. “They want to fragment society, to pull the families apart and make them much more vulnerable to retraining and reeducation.”

The Xinjiang regional government did not respond to faxes requesting comment. Asked whether Xinjiang is targeting religious people and their families, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said “this kind of nonsense is not worth commenting on.”

Beijing has said before that the detention centres are for voluntary job training, and that it does not discriminate based on religion.

China has struggled for decades to control Xinjiang, where the native Uighurs have long resented Beijing’s heavy-handed rule. With the 9/11 attacks in the United States, officials began using the spectre of terrorism to justify harsher religious restrictions, saying young Uighurs were susceptible to Islamic extremism.

After militants set off bombs at a train station in Xinjiang’s capital in 2014, President Xi Jinping launched a so-called “People’s War on Terror”, transforming Xinjiang into a digital police state.

The leak of the database from sources in the Uighur exile community follows the release in November of a classified blueprint on how the mass detention system really works. The blueprint obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which includes the AP, showed that the centres are in fact forced ideological and behavioural re-education camps run in secret. Another set of documents leaked to the New York Times revealed the historical lead-up to the mass detention.

The latest set of documents came from sources in the Uighur exile community, and the most recent date in them is March 2019. The detainees listed come from Karakax County, a traditional settlement of about 650,000 on the edge of Xinjiang’s Taklamakan desert where more than 97 percent of residents are Uighur. The list was corroborated through interviews with former Karakax residents, Chinese identity verification tools, and other lists and documents seen by the AP.

Detainees and their families are tracked and classified by rigid, well-defined categories. Households are designated as “trustworthy” or “not trustworthy,” and their attitudes are graded as “ordinary” or “good.” Families have “light” or “heavy” religious atmospheres, and the database keeps count of how many relatives of each detainee are locked in prison or sent to a “training centre.”

Officials used these categories to determine how suspicious a person was — even if they hadn’t committed any crimes.

“It underscores the witch-hunt mindset of the government, and how the government criminalizes everything,” said Adrian Zenz, an expert on the detention centres and senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Reasons listed for internment include “minor religious infection,” “disturbs other persons by visiting them without reasons,” “relatives abroad,” “thinking is hard to grasp” and “untrustworthy person born in a certain decade.” The last seems to refer to younger men; about 31 percent of people considered “untrustworthy” were in the age bracket of 25 to 29 years, according to an analysis of the data by Zenz.

When former student Abdullah Muhammad spotted Emer’s name on the list of the detained, he was distraught.

“He didn’t deserve this,” Muhammad said. “Everyone liked and respected him. He was the kind of person who couldn’t stay silent against injustice.”

Even in Karakax county, famed for its intellectuals and scholars, Emer stood out as one of the most renowned teachers in the region. Muhammad studied the Quran under Emer for six years as a kid, following him from house to house in an effort to dodge the authorities. Muhammad said Emer was so respected that the police would phone him with warnings ahead of time before raiding classes at his modest, single-story home of brick and mud.

Though Emer gave Party-approved sermons, he refused to preach Communist propaganda, Muhammad said, eventually running into trouble with the authorities. He was stripped of his position as an imam and barred from teaching in 1997, amid unrest roiling the region.

When Muhammad left China for Saudi Arabia and Turkey in 2009, Emer was making his living as a doctor of traditional medicine. Emer was growing old, and under heavy surveillance, he had stopped attending religious gatherings.

That didn’t stop authorities from detaining the imam, who is in his eighties, and sentencing him on various charges for up to 12 years in prison over 2017 and 2018. The database cites four charges in various entries: “stirring up terrorism,” acting as an unauthorized “wild” imam, following the strict Saudi Wahhabi sect and conducting illegal religious teachings.

Muhammad called the charges false. Emer had stopped his preaching, practised a moderate Central Asian sect of Islam rather than Wahhabism and never dreamed of hurting others, let alone stirring up “terrorism,” Muhammad said.

“He used to always preach against violence,” Muhammad said. “Anyone who knew him can testify that he wasn’t a religious extremist.”

None of Emer’s three sons had been convicted of a crime. But the database shows that over the course of 2017, all were thrown into the detention camps for having too many children, trying to travel abroad, being “untrustworthy” or “infected with religious extremism,”or going on the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. It also shows that their relation to Emer and their religious background was enough to convince officials they were too dangerous to let out from the detention camps.

“His father taught him how to pray,” notes one entry for his eldest, Ablikim Memtimin.

“His family’s religious atmosphere is thick. We recommend he (Emer) continue training,” says another entry for his youngest son, Emer Memtimin.

Even a neighbour was tainted by living near him, with Emer’s alleged crimes and prison sentence recorded in the neighbour’s dossier.

The database indicates much of this information is collected by teams of cadres stationed at mosques, sent to visit homes and posted in communities. This information is then compiled in a dossier called the “three circles”, encompassing their relatives, community, and religious background.

It wasn’t just the religious who were detained. The database shows that Karakax officials also explicitly targeted people for activities that included going abroad, getting a passport or installing foreign software.

Pharmacist Tohti Himit was detained in a camp for having gone multiple times to one of 26 “key” countries, mostly Muslim, according to the database. Former employee Habibullah, who is now in Turkey, recalled Himit as a secular, kind and wealthy man who kept his face free of a beard.

“He wasn’t very pious, he didn’t go to the mosque,” said Habibullah, who declined to give his first name out of fear of retribution against family still in China. “I was shocked by how absurd the reasons for detention were.”

The database says cadres found Himit had attended his grandfather’s funeral at a local mosque on March 10, 2008. Later that year, the cadres found, he had gone to the same mosque again, once to worship and once to celebrate a festival. In 2014 he had gone to Anhui province, in inner China, to get a passport and go abroad.

That, the government concluded, was enough to show that Himit was “certainly dangerous.” They ordered Himit to stay in the centre and “continue training.”

Emer is now under house arrest due to health issues, his former student, Muhammad, has heard. It’s unclear where Emer’s sons are.

It was the imam’s courage and stubbornness that did him in, Muhammad said. Though deprived of his mosque and his right to teach, Emer quietly defied the authorities for two decades by staying true to his faith.

“Unlike some other scholars, he never cared about money or anything else the Communist Party could give him,” Muhammad said. “He never bowed down to them — and that’s why they wanted to eliminate him.”

NEW DELHI — For Dina M. Siddiqi, a professor of anthropology at New York University, the women of Shaheen Bagh have changed who speaks for Muslims in India.

“What has really been undermined is going to the usual guys about what Muslims think in India and what they prioritise,” said Siddiqi, an expert in gender and feminism in South Asia. “I think that has really gone. These women are very eloquent about what they think should be done and what they want.”

The women of Shaheen Bagh — Muslim women who challenged the Narendra Modi government and Parliament over a problematic citizenship law — have passed into folklore for galvanising lakhs of people who oppose the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). 

Hundreds of women have sat on a public road in a locality called Shaheen Bagh in south Delhi, demanding lawmakers to repeal the CAA, which critics say makes religion the basis of granting Indian citizenship. When combined with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), an exercise to identify people living without documents, critics say, the CAA discriminates against Indian Muslims. Women of all ages have sat, sang, spoken and sloganeered, day and night since December, even on nights when the temperature dropped to 2 degrees Celsius. They have moved thousands, and, on some days, lakhs of people into making their way to the vibrant protest site in the nation’s capital. They have inspired other Muslim women to lead the anti-CAA protests in cities across the country. 

This unprecedented sit-in has also triggered commentary about the empowerment of Muslim women in India. What that means and will these two months on the frontline wrought any change for them were among the questions that HuffPost India asked Professor Siddiqi, who has family roots in Bangladesh, and who visited Shaheen Bagh in January.

While pointing out that there cannot be one voice that speaks for a community as diverse as Indian Muslims, and there is “no one Muslim woman’s voice in India,” she said that future voices will no longer be the monopoly of religious men and politicians, who, more often than not, are picked by their political masters to do their bidding. 

“That is an enormous step forward for women who are Muslim in India. That is terrific. Nobody is going to go back to those men who were not necessarily representative at all,” she said.

Here in India, we are talking a lot about how the women leading the Shaheen Bagh movement is unprecedented in terms of Muslim women exercising agency. 

This is an interesting moment. But there are all kinds of things that Muslim women in India have been doing that somehow don’t get counted as Muslim women exercising agency. In the controversial teen talaq movement, there were Muslim women who went to the courts. Even when you think about Shah Bano, Muslim women have been using courts to change laws for a while now. They are trying to change nikah halala. There is a lot happening.  

But this is a moment of hope for Muslim women movements as well as other movements. When I was at Shaheen Bagh, I heard a speaker say that we did not come out on the streets when the teen talaq thing happened, we did not come out on the streets when the Babri Masjid judgment happened, but we could stand back no longer. And the assumption seems to be that this time it is because of the Constitution and because the Constitution is so sacred. My reading would be that this is a particular moment in India in which Muslims simply cannot stay quiet because their very existence and subjectivity is at stake in the CAA. I heard one woman say that I’m doing this for our children’s future. I don’t even think they are thinking of this as a great feminist thing. It’s about the children, the sons and the daughters. I think they are thinking that if they don’t speak out as Muslims now then they will never speak out. 

What did you think of Shaheen Bagh?

I saw three speakers. One was a young Muslim man from JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University), who was very outspoken. There was lawyer from Patna and there was a Muslim woman community leader. I had never seen such an Islamised way of talking in India. The way that mubarak was being offered to these women was very openly Muslim. I think a lot of Muslims in India have realised that it is now or never to create a space where you can be a citizen and not be apologetic about being a Muslim citizen. I think the Shaheen Bagh movement feeds into that. There is an emerging Islamophobia which makes it hard for Muslims to be heard. This is a moment where Muslim hopefully can confront those issues of Islamophobia while standing as Muslim citizens of India. I see people calling out Islamophobia without having to apologise for being Muslim.   

Muslim women, at least in Lucknow, are leading the sit-in protest as a matter of strategy. They feel the police will pause before resorting to violence when faced with women. 

I’ve only been to Shaheen Bagh, but I’ve read a lot about the other places. Knowing what is happening in India, and knowing the long and dangerous history of being young, male and Muslim in India, it makes total sense. I don’t think it’s just about minimising the violence that comes down on bodies that resist the state, I think it’s also about the realisation that young Muslim men are particularly vulnerable. Muslim men would be the first to be labelled as terrorists, to be picked to up some kind of mob, and to be disappeared. I think the strategy is one that one sees elsewhere. When young men are vulnerable in a particular kind of way, the women come forward. A friend of mine, who was talking about former Yugoslavia and Argentina as well, said that when the men were being disappeared, the women would come in front. It is a strategy. It is a protective strategy of the young men. 

There is a lot of talk in India about how Muslim women have been politically empowered. What does that mean?

That’s a good question. What does it mean? It is true that women who are out there would have never imagined leaving their homes and husbands and sitting out in the open for days. These are not working women for the most part. Leaving their identities as wives and mothers — that experience will change anybody. In that way, it has got to be transformative for the consciousness of these women. And maybe other women of the same background will perhaps find a voice that they have not had before. It’s probably quite a coming into the consciousness for a group of women who are Muslim, in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise.  Will this mobilise into a classical definition of political empowerment — what does it mean — more women in education, in the political sector. If you’ve read the Sachar Committee report, there has got to be more structural changes to make those things happen. When we think Muslim women, we only think religious issues. And that’s just not true. Muslim women don’t just think about Muslim issues. 

(According to the Sachar Committee report published in 2007, the literacy rate among Muslims was 59.1%, lower than the national average of 65.1%, but Muslim women were at 50%, at par with women from other communities).

(While overall about 44% of women are engaged in economic activity, the figure for Muslim women is 25% overall and as low as 18% in urban areas, according to the report). 

(Muslim women are 6.9% of India’s 1.2 billion people. There are three Muslim women in the current Lok Sabha, 0.5% of the lower house, and zero in Rajya Sabha, the upper house). 

What will be the impact of the Shaheen Bagh movement?

One really good thing that has happened, which is about women’s empowerment, is that the usual people who used to be representatives of the so called Muslim community — which is really really diverse, of course — people like (Syed) Shahabuddin — I think, that time has gone. That’s really really important. 

These women just speaking with so much confidence and eloquence and clear headed analysis. I think that is a huge shift. Politicians using Muslims as a vote bank, and then putting their cherry-picked people as spokespersons, and then deciding what are the women’s questions, I think those days are gone. That is an enormous step forward for women who are Muslim in India. That is terrific. Nobody is going to go back to those men who were not necessarily representative at all. They are just men with a particular kind of political capital. I think this is a huge step forward for a Muslim women’s movement or any kind of women’s movement.

(Syed Shahabuddin, an Indian Foreign Service officer turned politician, had sided with the orthodox Muslims cleric who opposed giving maintenance to a divorced woman named Shah Bano beyond the three-month long iddat period). 

Has the voice for the Indian Muslims changed because of  this movement, perhaps forever?

Well, I don’t know perhaps forever. But what has really been undermined is going to the usual guys about what Muslims think in India and what they prioritise. I think that has really gone. These women are very eloquent about what they think should be done and what they want. I think it will be much harder to go back to a former time when journalists and politicians would rush to particular faces and ask what do Muslims want.

What about Shaheen Bagh stood out for you?

I saw some posters at the back, the last poster was Rokeya Sakawat Hossain, a Bengali Muslim. She is a real icon for us (in Bangladesh). 

When I went and spoke to the women, in my semi broken Hindi and Urdu, I said that I bring solidarity from Bangladesh. They were so warm and welcoming. I was so impressed by the general feel of it. I was trying to find a word for solidarity and the woman next to me said, ‘you mean, himmat.’ We feel these things across the border. 

(Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, born in 1880, is remembered by people as India’s first Bengali feminist. The school she set up in Kolkata in 1911 remains one of the most popular schools for girls and is now run by the government of West Bengal).  

Does this moment have to translate into something?

Well, what they want is to get rid of the CAA. I think that would be an incredible and most empowering achievement for Muslim women in India. That would give people a new kind of voice and hope. It would be incredibly empowering to individual women. It’s really hard to do these things. But if they can keep a sustained pressure on the government and they can generate the protests that are coming up all over the country, that’s an achievement. If they can get the government to respond in any kind of way, including the newly elected Aam Aadmi government, which has pretty much refused to acknowledge this, that would be a real achievement. Beyond that, how women choose to organise really depends on local issues. It was really clear that very few women thought that teen talaq was a huge issue, but then it became a national issue. The nikah halala is definitely an issue. 

What if it does not translate into something CAA-related? The Supreme Court could ask the Shaheen Bagh protests to wrap up? Would this moment then be forgotten? What will be its legacy?

I think the moment will not only not be forgotten, but this moment will become a memory that galvanises, a memory that gives hope, a memory that shows you can leave certain domestic structures behind. These are women challenging the state, and it’s an authoritarian state right now. Even if they don’t get what they want, this will not be a failure. Even if nothing outstanding or iconoclastic comes out of it, the stories around Shaheen Bagh will be important as a mobilising force for whatever happens in the future. These women will be remembered for being the first people to take to the streets against the CAA. That’s really a story of courage.

(Editor’s note: This interview is part of The Idea of India, HuffPost India’s monthly newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here). 

Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, is pledging $10 billion to help fight climate change.

On Monday, the richest man in the world announced on Instagram that he would be launching “the Bezos Earth Fund.”

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet. I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share,” Bezos wrote in the caption.

“This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world,” he continued. “We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals. ”

The 56-year-old, who is worth nearly $130 billion, ended the post by saying he plans to “begin issuing grants this summer.”

Bezos’ commitment comes on the heels of Amazon telling its employees they could be fired for trying to publicly pressure the online retail giant to more urgently address climate change.