New Delhi: Hopes of an India-US thaw are slowly becoming reality. US President Donald Trump hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi “for doing a tremendous job” as the two leaders spoke on the phone on Modi’s 75th birthday.
But the tariffs imposed on India loom large and their “impact is being felt across India, threatening jobs, GDP growth, and years of diplomacy,” report Andres Schipani, Chris Kay and Haohsiang Ko in Financial Times, highlighting the tangible losses.
Through a series of charts, FT shows that India’s GDP growth might slip to 6 per cent in the next financial year, that the US accounts for one-fifth of India’s total exports and that in the month of August alone, India’s exports to the US declined by 14 percent.
“Modi had set a target of achieving developed country status by 2047, the centenary of India’s independence from Britain, a target that would require average GDP growth of 7.8 per cent annually over the next two decades,” says the report.
“But Trump’s trade war could weigh on growth, which before the introduction of the tariffs the Reserve Bank of India had forecast at 6.5 percent for the 2025-26 fiscal year.”
The industries worst hit by the tariffs are also India’s biggest employers, it notes.
“The most directly affected industries employ an estimated 21mn people, as well as many more informal workers, according to analysts at Nomura, who warned that small- and medium-size businesses would struggle to weather the impact of the tariffs,” the report says.
In The New York Times, Salman Masood and Pragati K.B. report that India and Pakistan’s historic on-field cricket rivalry saw a “planned snub” Sunday during an Asia Cup match in Dubai. The Indian cricket team, after cruising to victory, waltzed off the field––without handshakes, without “pleasantaries”.
“We were ready to shake hands,” Pakistan’s coach, Mike Hesson, a New Zealander, tells the NYT. “But they had already gone in.”
This refusal to shake hands may also say something about the place India occupies in the cricketing world.
“In a way, it was the heavyweight of the sport throwing its weight around. India is the economic engine of cricket and is home to one of the richest leagues in all of sports, the Indian Premier League. India’s cricket authorities also have links to the government—Jay Shah, chairman of the sport’s worldwide governing body, the International Cricket Council, is the son of Amit Shah, a powerful lieutenant of Mr Modi,” says the report.
Meanwhile, The Guardian has a deep dive by Tora Agarwala into how locally sourced, foraged ingredients in school lunches are helping tackle chronic malnutrition in Meghalaya.
“Across the remote state of Meghalaya—originally part of Assam and home to the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo communities—fresh, locally sourced ingredients such as millet, fruit and wild greens are used to supplement the carbohydrate-heavy fare of rice, lentils and the occasional egg that dominate the (mid-day meal) programme’s menus,” the report says.
These meals are courtesy the North East Society for Agroecology Support (Nesfas), “which aims to make school lunches healthier, more sustainable and climate-resilient”. “Experts say the model is promising,” adds the report.
Justice B.V. Nagarathna is currently the only female judge in the Supreme Court of India—which is back to being a “boy’s club”, reports Geeta Pandey in the BBC, noting that in September 2021, a photograph of then Chief Justice N.V. Ramana flanked by his four female colleagues had gone viral. It was the highest-ever tally of female judges in the 34-member top court, three of whom have since retired.
“This is alarming. It’s nothing short of catastrophic,” Sneha Kalita, member of an association of female advocates who have filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding fair representation of women in courts, tells the BBC.
“This low representation of women has come into sharp focus in recent weeks after the latest batch of appointments was made to the Supreme Court,” reads the report.
“The court had two vacancies to fill and it was expected that the Supreme Court collegium—which includes the chief justice and four senior-most judges and recommends names to the government—would use the opportunity to correct the acute gender imbalance.”
But in the end of August, two male high court judges were elevated to the role.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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