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Delhi authorities ordered a ban on the storage, use and sale of firecrackers in the Indian capital late on Wednesday ahead of the Diwali festival to curb air pollution levels which cause thousands of deaths each year. India is among the most polluted countries in the world, and air quality in Delhi and neighbouring northern states normally begins to deteriorate at the end of September as farmers set off crop fires to prepare for a new sowing season. Delhi recorded some of the worst pollution levels globally in its latest peak pollution period between October 2020 and January 2021.  "In view of the dangerous condition of Delhi's pollution during Diwali for the last 3 years, like last year, a complete ban is being imposed...so that people's lives can be saved," said the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Twitter.   Authorities imposed a similar ban last year but many revellers still burst crackers causing a toxic haze over the sprawling capital region of 18 million people. Kejriwal said he was cracking down on crackers much before Diwali so traders didn't stock up supplies. The comments come amid concerns that air pollution could pose an additional health risk at a time when the country is already grappling with the coronavirus pandemic.  The emissions of the dangerous PM2.5 particles per cubic metre of air in Delhi averaged 30.74 micrograms in the first two weeks of September, marginally above the 25 per cubic metre level deemed safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO). India's environment monitoring agency SAFAR deems a PM2.5 particle level of 60 as safe. Some Indian states have stepped up punishments for crop residue burning over the last couple of years to avert an expected spike in air pollution that brings smog every year during the low temperatures of winter as part of a federal drive to clean up Delhi's air. But local Uttar Pradesh officials said in August India's most populous state will drop legal proceedings against farmers accused of burning crop waste, a major source of pollution. The state is set to elect a new assembly next year and analysts say the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to placate farmers. 

India is considering resuming exports of Covid-19 vaccines soon, mainly to Africa, as it has partly immunised a majority of its adults and supplies have surged, a source with knowledge of the matter said. India, the world’s biggest maker of vaccines overall, stopped vaccine exports in April to focus on inoculating its own population as infections exploded. The government wants to vaccinate all of its 944mn adults by December and has so far given at least one dose to 61% of them. The resumption of exports deliberations come ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington next week where vaccines are likely to be discussed at a summit of the leaders of the Quad countries — the US, India, Japan and Australia. “The export decision is a done deal,” said the source, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to talk to the media on the matter. “India wants to help out Africa with both vaccines and its Covid operational model.” India’s ministry of external affairs, one of whose senior officials met with the chief of the World Health Organisation on Monday, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The ministry co-ordinates India’s vaccine exports. The WHO said on Tuesday it was in a constant dialogue with Indian officials to resume supplies to global vaccine-sharing platform Covax. “We have been assured that supply will restart this year,” senior WHO official Bruce Aylward said in a briefing. “We are hoping we can get an assurance it can start even faster than later this year, and in the coming weeks.” Before India stopped exports, it donated or sold 66mn doses to nearly 100 countries. India’s own inoculations have jumped since last month, especially as the world’s biggest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India, has more than doubled its output of the AstraZeneca shot to 150mn doses a month from its April levels. A government source said the US experience showed that vaccinations tend to slow down after a big majority of people get their shots. That might give India a chance to export excess output, said the source. The African Union on Tuesday accused manufacturers of denying them a fair chance to buy vaccines, and urged manufacturing countries — in particular India — to lift export restrictions. Out of 5.7bn doses of coronavirus vaccines administered around the world, only 2% have been in Africa.

India is worried that growing complacency as Covid-19 infection rates and deaths decline could lead to people skipping their second vaccine shots, leaving communities vulnerable to the coronavirus, said two health experts briefed on the matter. India has administered more than 744mn vaccine doses — with 60% of its 944mn adults getting a first shot and 19% fully vaccinated with the required two shots. At this rate, the country will be able to cover nearly 43% of its population by December. India has the most partly immunised people in the world, according to the Our World in Data website, mainly due to a long gap of between 12 and 16 weeks between doses, as prescribed by the government . “There’s a concern among the highest quarters of an impending vaccine hesitancy, in view of most taking a single dose already and disease incidence at its lowest,” said one of the sources, both of whom declined to be identified. Large numbers of people skipping their second dose would be particularly problematic in areas with low numbers of previously infected people, meaning more people with fewer antibodies so those communities would be more vulnerable, the first expert said. The second expert said the health ministry had told states to encourage people to get their second doses as soon as possible, so on the 12th week after their first dose, rather than waiting for the latest date, in a bid to ensure people don’t miss the second shot. The health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The government told a news conference last week that data gathered between April and August — when the Delta variant was spreading rapidly — showed one dose alone was 96.6% effective in preventing deaths, while two gave a 97.5% protection. But one of the experts said that message could inadvertently put people off getting their second shot, especially as for many poor workers time spent at the vaccination centre means a smaller pay packet. After being hit by the world’s biggest surge in coronavirus cases and deaths in April and May, India’s daily infections have settled at around 40,000 and deaths have come down sharply. India has reported 33.26mn infections and 442,874 deaths. The government estimated in July that more than two-thirds of India’s 1.35bn had contracted the virus. The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with healthcare workers getting inoculated in the first phase. Vaccination of frontline workers started from February 2.  The next phase of the vaccination drive commenced from March 1 for people over 60 years of age and those aged 45 and above with specified co-morbid conditions. The country launched vaccination for all people aged over 45 years from April 1. The government then decided to expand the vaccination drive by allowing everyone above 18 to be vaccinated from May 1.

Plans to make vaccine passports mandatory across England in nightclubs and other crowded spaces later this month have been dropped, the health secretary has announced. In a major climbdown branded “shambolic” by Labour, Sajid Javid said he “never liked the idea” but that it was “right to properly look at it, to look at the evidence”. Ahead of an announcement tomorrow on how ministers plan to tackle Covid and the pressure on the NHS this winter, he signalled a U-turn on the measures. Javid told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “What I can say is that we’ve looked at it properly, and while we should keep it in reserve as a potential option, I’m pleased to say we will not be going ahead with plans for vaccine passports.” Dozens of Tory MPs had been vocal about their strong opposition to the policy – enough to wipe out the government’s large majority in the Commons, meaning they expected that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, would find it impossible to mandate vaccine passports through legislation anyway. However, Downing Street had continued to insist they would be introduced before October. The Vaccines Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, told parliament last week: “It is part of our armoury to help us transition over the winter months from pandemic to endemic status.” Javid even refused to say whether vaccine passports would be axed in an appearance on Sky just an hour before his announcement on the BBC, telling Trevor Philips yesterday: “I’m not here today to rule it out.”  On the Andrew Marr Show, however, Javid insisted the decision not to press ahead with requiring people to prove their double-vaccination status in some settings had not been made “overnight” and added that there were other “defences we need to keep in place, because this virus hasn’t gone anywhere”. “We shouldn’t just be doing things for the sake of it or because others are doing it, we should look at every possible intervention properly,” the health secretary explained. “So you ask about vaccine passports. I think it’s fair to say most people instinctively don’t like the idea. “I’ve never liked the idea of saying to people, ‘You must show your papers for … what is an everyday activity.’ But we were right to properly look at it, to look at the evidence.” Javid hinted at what some have suspected – that the idea was touted by Johnson in a bid to drive up the lower vaccination rates among younger people. Scrapping the need for travellers arriving in England to get a PCR test – as some newspapers reported the government was preparing to announce – was also not ruled out by Javid, who said the cost burden was “horrendous” and that he wanted to “take that away as soon as I can”. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said the U-turn on vaccine passports was the latest evidence that the government’s approach to them had been “shambolic from the start”, and that ministers had never given clarity about what they were meant to achieve, how they would work and how businesses should prepare to implement them. “This is the culmination of a summer of chaos from ministers and they urgently need to get a grip before winter,” she added. Alistair Carmichael, the home affairs spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, called the U-turn a victory for those “who stood up for our civil liberties against these deeply illiberal and unworkable plans”. He said the Conservatives would not be readily forgiven for “needlessly sowing confusion among businesses for months”. Industry figures also welcomed the news. Sacha Lord, the founder of Parklife festival and night-time economy adviser for Greater Manchester, called vaccine passports “untenable and illogical”, while the Music Venues Trust said there were serious issues around “deliverability, practicality, equality and potential discrimination”. However, Conservative MPs remained wary that the government was simply pausing its introduction of vaccine passports. Mark Harper, the chair of the Covid Recovery Group, said: “They shouldn’t be kept in reserve – they are pointless, damaging and discriminatory.” The issue of vaccine passports has divided ministers for months. A review was set up in February to look into Covid status certificates that would allow people to prove their inoculation status, a recent negative test result, or presence of antibodies through prior natural infection.

A pilot’s failure to follow operating procedures led to a deadly passenger plane crash in southern India last year, an investigation by the civil aviation regulator has found. Air India Express Flight 1344, a Boeing 737, crash-landed at Kerala state’s Kozhikode airport with 190 passengers and crew abroad in August last year. The Boeing 737 was repatriating Indians stranded in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic when it crashed  in heavy rain on August 8, 2020. The jet overshot the runway in a storm, plunged down a bank and was destroyed, with its fuselage breaking up. Some 21 people, including 19 passengers and the flight’s two pilots, died in the crash. Another 75 passengers and one crew member were seriously injured, the report said. “The probable cause of the accident was the non-adherence to standard operating procedures (SOP) by the PF (pilot flying),” the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau under India’s civil aviation ministry said in its report. The regulator said the pilot had “continued an unstabilised approach and landed beyond the touchdown zone, halfway down the runway, in spite of ‘go around’ call by PM (pilot monitoring)”. The report added that the pilot monitoring had failed to take over the controls of the aircraft and execute a “go around”, where a landing approach is aborted. The pilots had made two attempts to land in the fierce winds and rain before the crash. The report added that the pilot flying the jet was “highly experienced” and had operated 36 flights “in and out of Kozhikode during the last one year prior to the accident”. “This experience probably resulted in complacency due to overconfidence that affected his decision making,” it said. Even before the accident, critics had raised questions about potentially dangerous conditions at the airport.

A pilot's failure to follow operating procedures led to a deadly passenger plane crash in southern India last year, an investigation by the civil aviation regulator has found. Air India Express Flight 1344, a Boeing 737, crash-landed at Kerala state's Kozhikode airport with 190 passengers and crew abroad in August last year. The jet overshot the runway in a storm, plunged down a bank and was destroyed, with its fuselage breaking up. Some 21 people, including 19 passengers and the flight's two pilots, died in the crash. Another 75 passengers and one crew member were seriously injured, the report said. "The probable cause of the accident was the non-adherence to standard operating procedures (SOP) by the PF (pilot flying)," the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau under India's civil aviation ministry said in its report released late Saturday. The regulator said the pilot had "continued an unstabilised approach and landed beyond the touchdown zone, halfway down the runway, in spite of 'go around' call by PM (pilot monitoring)". The report added that the pilot monitoring had failed to take over the controls of the aircraft and execute a "go around", where a landing approach is aborted. The pilots had made two attempts to land in the fierce winds and rain before the crash. The report added that the pilot flying the jet was "highly experienced" and had operated 36 flights "in and out of Kozhikode during the last one year prior to the accident". "This experience probably resulted in complacency due to overconfidence that affected his decision making," it said.   Even before the accident, critics had raised questions about potentially dangerous conditions at the airport. Kozhikode is considered a tricky airport as it is built on a hill with a "table-top" runway with a steep drop at one end. In 2017, a Spicejet Bombardier Q-400 plane carrying 75 people came off the same runway when it was wet. The last major plane crash in India was in 2010, when an Air India Express Boeing 737-800 from Dubai to Mangalore overshot the runway, killing 158 people.

India’s foreign minister has urged Australia to ease coronavirus (Covid-19) travel restrictions for thousands of students who have been unable to get into the country since the pandemic started 18 months ago. India sends tens of thousands of students to top international universities worldwide with Australia among the key destinations. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said he raised the issue “in some detail” with his Australian counterpart Marise Payne alongside talks between defence ministers from both countries dominated by Afghanistan. “We have heard a lot from the students and I think their frustrations, their feelings, are completely understandable,” he told reporters. “Many of them would like to be at the institutions where they want to study,” he said, adding that students are “a very high priority” for his government, which has also faced hurdles with the US and Canada. “We have been having some problems with some other countries as well. We had initially with the US, we are still having some issues with Canada,” he added. India also made approaches to Britain before it eased travel restrictions. Videos of Indian medical students enrolled in China went viral recently as they pleaded with the government to help them return to their universities. University education is now a multi-billion dollar industry and Australia is one of several countries to have aggressively campaigned to attract Indian students. “I am one of the most enthusiastic proponents of welcoming back our much-loved Indian students back to the Australian education system as soon as it is possible for us,” Payne said at a press conference alongside Jaishankar. She added that there were around 60,000 Indians currently studying in Australia. “The Covid-19 restrictions have impacted travel to and from Australia, not just the students that you have raised but for Australians themselves,” she said. However, Payne stressed that higher vaccination levels of Australians are required to “give us the confidence to begin a sort of reopening” that will enable foreign students to return. “I look forward to being one of the people at the airport to welcome the first arrivals of Indian students coming back,” she said.

More than 250,000 people were evicted across India during the coronavirus pandemic, and millions more are at risk of being uprooted as authorities eye projects for faster economic growth, housing rights campaigners warned yesterday. From March 2020 to July 2021, authorities demolished more than 43,000 homes and evicted about 21 people every hour, according to the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), an advocacy group in Delhi. In nearly all cases, officials did not follow due process including giving sufficient notice, and a majority of those evicted did not receive compensation from the government, it said in an annual report. “During this lethal pandemic — when people are struggling greatly to survive — acts of eviction and demolition of housing have contributed to a grave human rights and humanitarian crisis,” said Shivani Chaudhry, HLRN’s executive director. “At a time when people were ordered to stay at home, authorities resorted to unlawful demolitions, probably taking advantage of curfew-like conditions when movement of people and access to remedy, including to courts, was limited,” she said. There is no official data on evictions in India. In Delhi, where thousands were uprooted in the past year, authorities only demolished “illegal encroachments”, said Amrish Kumar, a director of the land management unit at the Delhi Development Authority, a federal government agency. “They were on government land, which is meant for public purposes,” he said. “Some of the informal settlements were eligible for resettlement and rehabilitation, but not all — and they were dealt with according to due process,” he added. The world over, homeless people and those living in slums have borne the brunt of restrictions to contain the coronavirus and are at heightened risk of infection because of their dire living conditions, housing experts said. Human rights experts at the United Nations in July appealed to the Indian government to end evictions during the pandemic. More than 4mn people in India are homeless, according to official data, with about 75mn living in slums and informal settlements in urban areas. The government’s Housing for All plan aims to create 20mn urban homes and 30mn rural homes by 2022. But implementation has been slow, and activists say it does not address the issue of homelessness. Nearly 16mn people are at risk of being evicted and displaced, according to HLRN, including about 2mn whose claims to forest land have been rejected. Last year alone, more than 170,000 people were removed from their homes, it said, compared to about 107,000 people the previous year.

As India’s financial capital, Mumbai, gets ready for its biggest festival of the year, daily coronavirus cases have surged, rising more than two-fold in less than a month, even as authorities imposed curbs to prevent a further spike. Markets were bustling and streets were crowded as people prepared for the 11-day Ganesh Chaturthi festival which begins today. Coronavirus cases in the city, which were at a low of 190 on August 16, rose to 530 daily infections on Wednesday, according to government data. Mumbai recorded a peak of 11,000 cases during India’s devastating second wave this year, but won accolades for the way it recovered and curbed infections. Most coronavirus-related restrictions have been lifted in the city, including on its famed local trains, which are now open to fully vaccinated travellers. But as the festival approaches, authorities have imposed fresh curbs on public processions and restricted crowding. “The third wave is not coming. It is already here,” Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar told reporters this week, urging citizens to stay home and celebrate the festival. As the festival season gets under way in India, several states are preparing for a possible third wave of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the health ministry said one Covid vaccine dose alone is 96.6% effective in preventing Covid deaths in India, and two doses are 97.5% effective. The health ministry was speaking yesterday after analysing data between April and August. India yesterday reported 43,263 Covid-19 cases, and 338 deaths related to the infection in 24 hours span as per the data by the health ministry.

Indian authorities are restricting major festivals that start this week and attract huge crowds, warning that a new Covid-19 wave had already begun in the financial capital Mumbai. State governments across the country of 1.3bn people, which saw a devastating coronavirus surge in April-May, are clamping down on mass gatherings. “The third wave is not coming, it is already here,” Mumbai’s mayor Kishori Pednekar told reporters. “We can celebrate festivals later. Let us first prioritise the lives and health of our citizens,” added Uddhav Thackeray, the chief minister of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. He was speaking ahead of the 11-day Hindu Ganesh Chaturthi festival, which starts on Friday. The last Covid-19 wave overwhelmed India’s hospitals and was known to have killed more than 200,000 people. It struck after one of the world’s biggest religious gatherings, the Kumbh Mela, which attracted some 25mn people. That gathering, large state election rallies and the infectious Delta virus variant — first detected in India — were blamed by experts for fuelling the surge. Authorities said a recent spike in cases in the southern state of Kerala after the Onam festival in August should be cause for alarm. But festive crowds have still packed markets in Maharashtra and other states in recent days, ignoring the warnings. Processions on the Ganesh Chaturthi’s first and last days will be banned. Restrictions on movements and activities are expected to be introduced this week as cases rise in another major Maharashtra city, Nagpur. In the neighbouring state of Karnataka, a night curfew will remain in place and districts posting higher positive test levels will be banned from holding celebrations. Karnataka health minister, K Sudhakar, said officials were also concerned the recent resumption of high school classes could increase cases. Viti Kumar, a resident of Lucknow in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said she feared people would let down their guards during the festivals. “I cannot take chances with my daughter. I am not sending her to school,” she said. The southern state of Tamil Nadu has banned public festival celebrations, while the eastern state of West Bengal was expected to impose curbs on a nine-day festival in October.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday set out plans to raise taxes on workers, employers and some investors to try to fix a health and social care funding crisis, angering some in his governing party by breaking an election promise. After spending huge amounts of money to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, Johnson is returning to an early pledge to address Britain’s creaking social care system, where costs are projected to double as the population ages over the next two decades. He also moved to try to tackle a backlog in Britain’s health system, which has seen millions waiting months for treatment from the state-run National Health Service, after resources were refocused to deal with those suffering from the coronavirus. “It would be wrong for me to say that we can pay for this recovery without taking the difficult but responsible decisions about how we finance it,” Johnson told parliament. “It would be irresponsible to meet the costs from higher borrowing and higher debt,” he said, outlining tax increases that broke a promise made in the Conservative Party’s election manifesto not to increase such levies to fund social care. British politicians have tried for years to find a way to pay for social care, though successive Conservative and Labour prime ministers have ducked the issue because they feared it would anger voters and their own parties. Ignoring loud disquiet in his party, Johnson outlined what he described as a new health and social care levy that will see the rate of national insurance payroll taxes paid by both workers and employers rise by 1.25 percentage points, with the same increase also applied to the tax on shareholder dividends. Johnson has tried to cool anger within his Conservative Party, for decades seen as a defender of low taxes, over the hikes, which several lawmakers fear could lose them support at the next election, due to take place in 2024. He explained that elderly Britons would no longer face crippling costs that have forced many to sell their homes to pay for their care, and said he could never have predicted the coronavirus pandemic which has further stretched services. “You can’t fix health and social care without long term reform. The plan I’m setting out today will fix all of those problems together,” he said, to jeers and laughter from opposition Labour Party lawmakers. “I accept that this breaks a manifesto commitment which is not something I do lightly, but a global pandemic was in no one’s manifesto.” Labour leader Keir Starmer was quick to pounce on the fears which have swept through the Conservatives since snippets of the new policy found their way into the media.

Many top Indian epidemiologists and social scientists are urging authorities to reopen in-person school classes for all age groups, saying the benefits outweigh the risks especially as poor rural children are missing out on online education. The recommendation comes as experts say another Covid-19 wave in India this year could be far less deadly, because a dramatic rise in cases in April and May means a big majority of the population have been infected already, while more than half of its adults have been at least partly vaccinated. India last month approved its first Covid-19 shot for people under 18, though as of now only adults are being immunised. As new infections have stabilised around 40,000 a day in the past few weeks, some Indian states have restarted face-to-face teaching, mainly for middle school and above. Experts say that is not enough. “Schools are an essential service. It has been wisely said that they should be the last to close and the first to reopen,” said a report released on school education by a group of scholars, including economist and social scientist Jean Dreze, that warned of a “looming disaster”. “In India, the opposite has been happening: soon after the Covid-19 crisis struck in early 2020, all schools were closed without batting an eyelid and most of them are still closed today.” The health and education ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The federal government has largely left it to states to decide when to reopen schools. An August survey of nearly 1,400 school children done by the scholars’ group found that in rural areas, only 8% were studying online regularly, 37% were not studying at all, and about half were unable to read more than a few words. Most parents wanted schools to reopen as soon as possible, it said. The reasons were that many children did not have their own smartphone, mobile connectivity was poor, they did not have the money to pay for mobile Internet, schools were not sending study material or online education was too hard to grasp for some. The Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine, whose roughly 6,000 members are doctors who have studied epidemiology, told the government in a report it was safe to resume all offline classes after taking precautions such as improved ventilation, physical distancing and masking. Epidemiologists also say that as India’s last serological survey estimated that more than half of the country’s population of six-17 years had already been infected, without any particular severity, there was no reason to worry that a future wave will specifically target the unvaccinated ones among them. “The risk of moderate to severe disease in children is really low and vaccination is not a prerequisite,” said epidemiologist and public health expert Chandrakant Lahariya. “Therefore, I believe that the technical experts should not rush to recommend vaccination of adolescents in India. The focus has to continue to be on achieving high coverage for all adult age groups,” he said in an e-mail. India has administered 701.9mn vaccine doses — at least one dose in 57% of its 944mn adults and two doses in 17%. India reported 31,222 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, taking the total to 33.1mn. Daily deaths rose by 290 to 441,042.

India aims to ramp up its medical oxygen production capacity to 15,000 tonnes per day before a potential third wave of coronavirus infections that is expected to hit the country as soon as mid-September, an industry executive said. The target implies a 50% jump from the maximum output of almost 10,000 tonnes reached earlier this year during the peak of the second Covid-19 wave, when hospitals ran short of the gas and relatives of patients had to search out oxygen cylinders. Linde India supplied nearly one-third of the total oxygen demand during the peak. Moloy Banerjee, head of Linde South Asia, said that while the government is targeting 15,000 tonnes of medical oxygen per day, Linde and other manufacturers were hoping to hit production of at least 13,500 tonnes per day ahead of the third wave. As of yesterday, India’s total Covid-19 cases had reached 33.03mn, with the death toll at 440,752, according to health ministry data. While demand for medical oxygen in India has considerably reduced since the peak, reaching near pre-Covid levels, gas companies along with the government are gearing up for a scenario where the third wave could be worse than the previous one. The New Delhi government said last month it will increase oxygen production by setting up new manufacturing units or expanding the production capacity of existing units for uninterrupted oxygen supply during a health crisis. Shares of Linde India rose to record levels in the days following the Delhi government’s notification and have more than doubled for the year as of yesterday’s closing price. “There have been discussions with the Delhi government since the second wave of Covid-19. We are still reviewing the policy and trying to see if it is workable for Linde,” Banerjee added. The company has not entered any formal agreement with the government. Linde has also been in touch with the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh states to support setting up of additional oxygen storage capacities and manufacturing units. Meanwhile, the Indian government is going ahead to reciprocate the help it received during its second coronavirus wave. India has delivered 100 metric tonnes of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) and 300 oxygen concentrators to Vietnam to help the country battle Covid-19. INS Airavat, an indigenously built landing ship tank based in Visakhapatnam under India’s Eastern Naval Command, was deployed to southeast Asia for trans-shipment of Covid-19 relief material. India is also helping Thailand to fight against Covid and has provided the country will 300 oxygen concentrators to deal with the pandemic. Indian Naval Ship (INS) Airavat arrived in Thailand on Friday with a consignment of 300 oxygen concentrators sought by the Thai government to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. India has sent about 150 tonnes oxygen to Sri Lanka to help the island nation combat the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sri Lanka is witnessing a Covid spike and there is a mounting pressure on the healthcare system. During April-May last year, India had provided 26 tonnes of essential medical supplies to the neighbouring country. India has also provided vaccine this year to Sri Lanka.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers gathered in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh yesterday, the biggest rally yet in a months-long series of demonstrations to press Narendra Modi’s government to repeal three new agricultural laws. More than 500,000 farmers attended the rally in the city of Muzaffarnagar, according to local police. The demonstration in Uttar Pradesh, a predominantly agricultural state that’s home to 240mn people, will breathe fresh life into the protest movement, said Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farmers’ leader. “We’ll intensify our protest by going to every single city and town of Uttar Pradesh to convey the message that Modi’s government is anti-farmer,” he added. Over the past eight months, tens of thousands of farmers have camped on major highways to the capital, New Delhi to oppose the laws, in India’s longest-running farmer’ protest against the government. The measures, introduced last September, allow farmers to directly sell their produce, outside government-regulated wholesale markets, to big buyers. The government says this will unshackle farmers and help them get better prices. Farmers, however, say the legislation will hurt their livelihood and leave them with scant bargaining power against big private retailers and food processors. Farming is a vast sector that sustains almost half of India’s more than 1.3bn people, and accounts for about 15% to the country’s $2.7tn economy. Balbir Singh Rajewal, another farmers’ leader, said yesterday’s rally was a warning for Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, which next year will a contest state assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, often seen as a barometer of the popularity of the federal government.

The family of a separatist leader from Kashmir have been booked for police investigation under a sweeping anti-terrorism law for chanting anti-New Delhi slogans and wrapping his body with Pakistan’s flag after he died, officials said. Tensions in the territory have heightened since Syed Ali Geelani died on Wednesday at the age of 92 in the main city of Srinagar. Police in Kashmir said a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) — which effectively allows people to be held without trial indefinitely — was registered on Saturday against Geelani’s family. The family were accused of “raising anti-national slogans and resorting to other anti-national activities” at the influential resistance leader’s home soon after his death. They have not yet been detained by police. In India a booking may not necessarily lead to a formal charge, but is an incident that is officially recorded. Critics say bookings have been used by police to intimidate locals in the region. The separatist leader’s son Naseem Geelani did not deny the allegations but repeated earlier claims that police took his father’s body away to be buried in the middle of the night just hours after his death, and did not allow the family to perform last rites. Police have refuted those allegations. “We told the visiting police officers that they had taken control of everything after my father’s death and that we were mourning. We had no way of knowing who was doing what,” the son said yesterday. A video widely shared on social media showed the leader’s body wrapped in a Pakistani flag before police officers took it away amid a scuffle with his family members. Chants of “we want freedom” were heard in the background during the mayhem. Authorities yesterday eased a lockdown imposed to maintain calm after his death across Kashmir, allowing for limited movement. An Internet and mobile phone shutdown was partially eased on Saturday. Geelani, a popular figure in the region, spent over five decades fighting for self-determination for people in Kashmir. Islamabad observed a day of national mourning after Geelani’s death and funeral prayers for the leader were held across Pakistan and in Turkey. In Srinagar, Indian troops are guarding Geelani’s grave and no-one is allowed to approach it. Anger has simmered in the territory since 2019 when New Delhi controversially revoked the region’s semi-autonomy and brought it under direct rule. Residents say repression has intensified in the two years since the changes. India has used the vaguely-worded UAPA legislation against thousands of Kashmiri residents, journalists and dissidents, according to activists. Rebel groups have been fighting Indian forces for decades. Tens of thousands have died in the fighting, most civilians.

• The death of Syed Ali Geelani at the age of 92 heightened tensions in the region after authorities refused to let him have a public funeral Thousands of Indian security forces maintained a lockdown across Kashmir yesterday after the death of a separatist political leader sparked clashes with protesters. The death of Syed Ali Geelani at the age of 92 heightened tensions in the region after authorities refused to let him have a public funeral. Authorities said an Internet and mobile phone shutdown ordered after Geelani died late Wednesday would continue and there was tight security around the main city of Srinagar yesterday. Many mosques in the region have announced that they would say special prayers for Geelani. Thousands of police and troops manned barricades and patrolled streets to keep people indoors following clashes between residents and government forces in Srinagar late Thursday. Public movements were restricted in the city and elsewhere in Kashmir, a government official said. “More troops have been deployed in sensitive areas and more roads have been barricaded,” the official said on condition of anonymity. Police fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing protesters but no injuries were reported. Shops were shut across parts of Srinagar, with many streets deserted and coils of barbed wire strung across them. Soldiers with assault rifles manned checkpoints. Health worker Shakeel Ahmad said he had to navigate more barricades yesterday to get to his hospital than a day ago. “I was stopped at around a dozen places,” he said. Authorities accused Geelani’s son of taking his father’s body away to be buried in the middle of the night, hours after his death. The family said no relatives were allowed at the burial but police rejected the allegations as “false propaganda”. A video widely shared on social media showed police in a scuffle with Geelani’s relatives before taking away his body. Geelani, who had spent much of the past five decades in jail or under house arrest, had infuriated successive Indian governments with his pro-Pakistan stance and demands for a self-determination vote. Pakistan observed a day of official mourning for Geelani on Thursday. India imposed a similar internet shutdown and other restrictions for nearly a year after stripping the territory of its semi-autonomy in 2019. Authorities have also brought a slew of new laws, which critics and many Kashmiris fear could change the region’s demographics.

Indian Kashmir veteran separatist politician Syed Ali Shah Geelani was laid to rest early yesterday in Srinagar, as authorities blanketed the region with troops and clamped down on communications to prevent protests. Geelani, 91, was buried in a graveyard near his home before dawn with only a few hundred people, including his family and neighbours, allowed to attend the funeral, a government official said. “There was heavy security at the funeral, including plain clothes policemen,” the official said. Geelani, who died on Wednesday, had been unwell for some time, his family said. Among the most prominent political leaders in Kashmir, Geelani for years led an umbrella alliance of secessionists known as the Hurriyat Conference. But the group split in 2003, when hardliners led by Geelani, who advocated Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, walked out after moderates decided to hold talks with New Delhi. Geelani, who had spent much of the last five decades in jail or under house arrest, had wanted to be buried at the Martyrs Cemetery in Srinagar along with other Kashmiri separatists. But authorities rejected the request, the police source said. “At about 3am, police barged inside our home and took our father’s body,” one of his sons, Naseem Geelani, said. “We insisted that we would perform his funeral after morning prayers and bury him according to his wish at the Martyrs Cemetery.” Police “snatched my father’s body and did not allow anyone from our family to participate in the burial”, the son added. “We heard later that police undertook washing rituals for my father’s body and had him buried.” The police source acknowledged that security forces “took control of the arrangements”. The official said the family were given choices but did not respond. He said two sons were present but did not name them. Mehbooba Mufti, a former Kashmir chief minister, said on Twitter: “We may not have agreed on most things but I respect him for his steadfastness and standing by his beliefs.” Around Geelani’s home and elsewhere in Srinagar, armed troops lined main roads and manned checkpoints, a witness said, as authorities sought to prevent protests in the wake of his passing. The city’s main business area remained deserted, with most shops closed, and the movement of vehicles restricted, the witness said. Authorities also cut Internet connections and mobile networks in the Kashmir valley since late on Wednesday. The clamp down echoes restrictions that were imposed in August 2019 when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi split Jammu and Kashmir  into two federally-administered territories. The shock move was opposed within Kashmir, including by the likes of Geelani who quit his hard line Hurriyat Conference faction, saying that it had failed to counter New Delhi’s efforts to tighten its grip on the region.

• Densely populated Kerala, on India’s southern tip, accounted for nearly 70% of the 47,092 new infections India reported the biggest single-day rise in Covid-19 cases in two months yesterday, as the government worries about the virus spreading from the most-affected Kerala state, schools reopening, and the start of the festival season. Densely populated Kerala, on India’s southern tip, accounted for nearly 70% of the 47,092 new infections and a third of deaths, a week after it celebrated its biggest festival during which family and social gatherings were common. “With cases rising in Kerala, adequate steps should be taken to contain the inter-state spread of Covid-19,” Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in a statement after speaking with his state counterparts in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which border Kerala. The minister also asked the neighbouring states to increase vaccination in the districts close to Kerala. India has so far administered 662mn doses, with at least one dose in 54% of its 944mn adults and the required two doses in 16%. Vaccinations have soared in recent days as supplies have improved. And as more than two-thirds of Indians already have Covid-fighting antibodies, mainly through natural infection, experts think another national surge in cases will be less deadly than the last one in April and May when tens of thousands of people died and hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen. Also offering hope is a recent non-peer-reviewed study done in Kerala that showed that one dose of the AstraZeneca shot, the mainstay of India’s immunisation drive, generates 30 times more antibodies in previously infected people than fully inoculated ones who never contracted the virus. “A decently managed vaccination programme, along with the hybrid immunity we’re seeing now, makes a massive third wave unlikely,” said clinical immunologist and rheumatologist Padmanabha Shenoy, who led the study and was referring to the immunity from natural infection and one vaccine dose. The federal government, nevertheless, has warned that like in Kerala, the rest of India could also see a rise in infections around the festival season starting this month and ending in early November. Some parents are also worried about the reopening of physical classes – voluntary and mainly for middle school and above – in the capital Delhi and states like Gujarat. The country has so far reported about 32.9mn infections, the most in the world after the US. Deaths went up by 509 yesterday to a total of 439,529, which experts say is a massive undercount. India interests before  vaccine exports: govt India would resume exports of Covid vaccines only after its own interests are taken care of, a health ministry official said yesterday, as a recent surge in immunisations raised hopes of foreign sales that have been barred since mid-April. “Every country works with an aim of keeping its people, economy and social system safe,” Rajesh Bhushan told a weekly news conference. “Even the public health response to Covid is governed by those goals. So we will also try to achieve those goals and see when would be the right time to export vaccines.”

More than 3mn people have been affected by the annual monsoon deluge as torrential rains pummel eastern India, officials said yesterday, with villagers fleeing to higher ground and wildlife sanctuaries underwater. Monsoons are crucial to replenishing water supplies after the scorching summer season but also cause widespread death and destruction across South Asia each year. The storms have been worsened by climate change, experts say. India’s poorest state Bihar and wildlife-rich Assam have been hit by incessant rains for a week, with swollen rivers bursting their banks and stranding thousands of people in villages. In Assam, water levels for the Brahmaputra — a mighty transborder Himalayan river system — have risen above their “danger levels”, a water resource department official said. Villager Amshar Ali said locals were struggling with basic needs. “We are in great suffering. It is difficult to get food, drinking water and other essential items,” Ali said. “Many villagers do not have their own boats, so people are suffering.” Farmer Liyakat Ali said he had to move his livestock to a friend’s property after his house was submerged. “The floodwaters have risen to above four to five feet in the last two days,” he added. Up to 80% of the Kaziranga National Park and Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary — both along the Brahmaputra and home to rare one-horned rhinoceroses — were underwater, officials said. “All the wild animals are taking shelter on higher lands in the sanctuary,” Pobitora ranger Nayanjyoti Das said. Assam officials said at least 11 animals — including two swamp deer, eight hog deer and one capped langur — have been killed in the floods. “We have been surviving on dry food grains as our kitchen is in chest-deep water,” villager Prem Yadav said from his rooftop, where he and his family have been sleeping since Saturday in Bihar’s Gopalganj district. The homes of villagers in other low-lying areas were also inundated with floodwaters, forcing them to take shelter at nearby embankments and roads. More than 3.2mn people in over 2,200 villages in 17 districts in Bihar have been impacted by the rising waters since last week, authorities said. Some 215,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Since the start of the monsoon season in June, some 43 people have died in Bihar, according to official data. The India Meteorological Department said the heavy downpours could continue in the two states until today.

Flood waters yesterday rose across northeastern India, where hundreds of thousands of people are stranded on the roofs of their homes or have fled to higher ground as more torrential rain fell. Incessant downpours for more than a week forced the Brahmaputra and other major rivers to burst their banks across Assam and Bihar states. Up to 6.6 feet of water has submerged many villages. Experts say annual floods which hit the region are getting worse because of climate change. At one dam, authorities released water fearing the walls would collapse. The floods have also threatened a Unesco World Heritage-listed reserve that is home to the largest concentration of one-horned rhinos. Tens of thousands of people are stuck in villages cut off by the floods and the state governments said more than 400,000 had been moved to higher ground. Sixteen-year-old Anuwara Khatun said she and her family have spent nearly a week on the roof of their home at Ghasbari in Assam’s Morigaon district. “The water level has been rising for five days now,” she said by telephone from her stricken village on the banks of the Brahmaputra. “A lot of families are stuck on their roofs. There is a shortage of essential supplies so we only eat once a day. There is no hygiene here.” Santosh Mandal moved his family to a sandbank in Bihar’s Supaul district after his village was flooded. “There is no clean water to drink, food to eat and the children are crying for milk. We are praying for help because the government has yet to send relief,” Mandal said. The Bihar government has sent rescue boats to get people to safety but these are concentrated in the worst-hit districts.