Singapore – For the first time in 20 years, Singapore will inaugurate a new prime minister, Minister for Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who will take the reins of power in a ceremony on Wednesday, May 15.
The 51-year-old will replace Lee Hsien Loong – the eldest son of the country’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew – who has been in the job since August 2004.
Wong is only the fourth leader in Singapore’s 59-year history as an independent nation. Like his predecessors, he is a member of the People’s Action Party (PAP), co-founded by the elder Lee and the only ruling party Singaporeans have ever known.
The stage is now set for a general election in the city-state of 6 million people, which observers say could be held as early as this year, although the term of the current government does not expire until 2025.
At the last election in 2020, the PAP secured more than 61 percent of the vote, losing just 10 seats in the 98-member parliament to the opposition, but this was considered a sub-par performance given the opposition had won only six seats in the previous parliament.
Lawrence Wong (left) has had less time than his predecessors to prepare for the top job [How Hwee Young/Pool via EPA]
The stakes are higher now, and a new leader is traditionally expected to gain a strong mandate from voters. Wong will be tasked with maintaining the dominance of the PAP in the face of an increasingly demanding electorate who want a greater say in governance and eschew the knuckleduster tactics and paternalistic politics of previous governments.
Among the most pressing issues on his plate: tackling the rising cost of living, an ageing population, a slowing economy and immigration. The PAP has also been rocked by a rare corruption scandal.
In addition, Wong must navigate the ever-present China-United States rivalry as the tiny island is a key ally to both superpowers.
Who is Lawrence Wong?
The mild-mannered Wong was selected by his peers among the “4G”, or fourth generation of leaders in Singapore’s political jargon, to be a successor to 72-year-old Lee in April 2022.
Something of a compromise candidate, he was not their first choice.
That was former central bank chief and Minister for Education Heng Swee Keat, 63, who had been appointed to succeed Lee in 2018. In a country renowned for its political stability, Heng sparked a mini political crisis by stepping aside two and a half years later, citing his age and admitting that he had not felt up to the task from the start.
Unlike many of his PAP peers, Wong did not come from the island’s establishment or attend its top schools. Going to university in the US on a government scholarship, he started out as an economist in the trade and industry ministry before entering politics in 2011.
After stints as a minister in less glamorous portfolios such as national development, he was not considered a potential prime minister, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything.
As co-leader of the country’s COVID-19 task force, Wong emerged as the public face of the government’s pandemic response, adroitly fielding questions from foreign media outlets in televised news conferences. Such events are a rarity in a country that performs dismally in the annual World Press Freedom rankings – Singapore was ranked 126th out of 180 countries and territories this year.
Heng Swee Keat, seen campaigning in the 2020 election, was the first choice of the ruling People’s Action Party but decided he no longer wanted the job and stepped aside [How Hwee Young/EPA]
“Mr Wong is seen as a technocrat, [who is] friendly and approachable. He delivered well for the COVID-19 crisis, so he can be viewed as competent,” said former PAP lawmaker Inderjit Singh, who served alongside Lee in his central Ang Mo Kio ward for two decades.
Noting that Wong was only chosen two years ago after a period of political uncertainty, he added: “Anyone in his position will have his work cut out to show that he is indeed the right leader. He has a big task to quickly show that he is indeed the right person who can deliver.”
Leadership succession
Historically, leadership succession in Singapore has been a well-oiled process, with the heir apparent announced well in advance and groomed for years. This has been facilitated by a sterling record of governance, the PAP’s longstanding parliamentary supermajority – at its peak, there were no opposition lawmakers – and its dominance of key institutions.
Heng’s sudden departure was therefore unprecedented. Wong will also have the shortest runway of all – he became Lee’s deputy just two months after being anointed his successor. By comparison, the younger Lee served as deputy prime minister for 14 years before taking over the top job.
This perhaps explains Minister of Law and Minister for Home Affairs K Shanmugam’s prickly response to what he termed a “sneering” commentary in The Economist last month, which labelled Wong a compromise candidate and the Singapore media “docile”. Weeks later, the United Kingdom weekly conducted a wide-ranging interview with Wong where he stressed that as prime minister, he would not shy away from making unpopular decisions.
“Wong comes across as being very personable. He doesn’t portray the image of a hardliner,” said former newspaper editor PN Balji, who interacted extensively with Wong’s predecessors. While he is optimistic that Wong will come to prove himself, he added: “If you look at the leadership from Lee Kuan Yew till now, the quality of leadership has declined somewhat.”
The social-media-friendly Wong is seen as approachable [File: Sport Singapore / Action Images via Reuters]
Perhaps this is why Lee Hsien Loong is not going away – he will remain in the cabinet with the title of senior minister, just as his predecessors did.
“Given the short runway, I think Wong will benefit from [Lee’s] presence, especially in helping keep [good] external relations,” said Singh.
What do Singaporeans think of him?
Despite his increased profile during the pandemic, the guitar-playing, dog-loving, social media-friendly Wong remains something of an unknown quantity to Singaporeans.
According to a recent YouGov poll, just more than half of respondents considered him competent, with less than a third agreeing that he was a strong leader. Some 40 percent said he seemed trustworthy, a number that was significantly higher among Gen Z respondents. A fifth felt hopeful about Wong’s appointment, while 36 percent stated indifference.
Many also indicated high expectations for the incoming prime minister, perhaps reflecting the fact that Singapore’s government leaders are the world’s highest-paid, with the prime minister taking home 2.2 million Singapore dollars ($1.6m) a year including bonuses.
“Wong’s biggest challenge in the short term will be to articulate an easy-to-understand, inclusive, and progressive political vision that will draw widespread support for his government in the upcoming elections,” Elvin Ong, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore’s political science department, told Al Jazeera.
Wong, who has stressed that he did not seek out the role or expect to become leader, is certainly working hard to win over the electorate. “Every ounce of my energy shall be devoted to the service of our country and our people,” he said in a post to his 200,000-odd Instagram followers after the handover date was announced. “Your dreams will inspire my actions.”
Calling Singapore the “improbable, unlikely nation”, he told The Economist: “My mission is to keep this miracle going for as long as I can.”
On October 19, Sarah Mahamid watched helplessly from a window as Israeli security forces shot her younger brother.
Taha, 15, had been playing with a friend outside their house in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem.
The 19-year-old screamed as her brother fell to the ground.
Their father, Ibrahim, ran out of the front door to get his son, but a sniper shot him too.
“I remember hearing my father shout that Taha might be alive, … but I knew that Taha was martyred. I knew he was dead,” Sarah told Al Jazeera.
Taha was killed instantly. Ibrahim fought for his life for five months in intensive care until he also died.
Footage seen by Al Jazeera shows Taha and Ibrahim were both unarmed and posed no threat.
“My other brother ran after my father out the door to stop him. He saw that Taha was dead, and he saw my father get shot.
“It seemed like steam or smoke was rising from my father’s body as the bullets hit him.”
Taha Mahamid, left, and his father Ibrahim, right, were shot and killed outside their home by Israeli forces during a raid in Tulkarem [Courtesy of Sarah Mahamid]
Unlawful, random killings
Nearly 1,500 Palestinians have been unlawfully killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in the past 16 years – 98 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Each of them, like Taha and Ibrahim, has a story and loved ones who mourn them.
The frequency of the killings have spiked in recent years with Israel killing 509 Palestinians in 2023. That is more than double the number recorded by OCHA in any previous year.
In the first three months of this year, 131 Palestinians were killed, a higher rate of killing than the previous year, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“Israel has a decades-long pattern of using lethal force against Palestinians, … but it seems that the Israeli government is taking even further steps in that regard,” said Omar Shakir, the Israel-Palestine director at HRW.
Israel says its operations in the West Bank are necessary for security reasons. It cites the same justification for its assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed 35,000 Palestinians in response to the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, which killed 1,139 people.
The killings in the West Bank are carried out during home raids or during stops and harassment at Israeli checkpoints.
Some Palestinian children have even been killed on their way to school, according to HRW.
“[The Israelis] are firing at people who don’t pose an imminent threat to life. They are also firing at people who are fleeing and at people who are injured and lying on the ground. Some of these trends have existed before, but it appears these incidents are happening more frequently,” Shakir told Al Jazeera.
Shoot to kill
Israeli officials have for years backed a shoot-to-kill policy regardless of whether the Palestinians being shot posed a threat. Israel has even authorised its army to shoot at stone throwers and has handed out assault rifles to Israeli Jews living in illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Settlers killed 17-year-old Omar Abdel Ghani Hamid when they attacked his village in the West Bank on April 13. Omar was one of several young men who had confronted the settlers to stop them from beating up Palestinians and attacking their homes.
Omar’s father, Ahmed, said his son and his friends scared the settlers away even though they were not carrying weapons. However, one of the settlers returned with a pistol and shot Omar.
“The bullet went through the right side of his head and out the left. He died immediately. Thank God he didn’t suffer much pain,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed learned about Omar’s death via a WhatsApp group that all the villagers use to notify each other of settler attacks. Later that morning, his son was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Omar Abdel Ghani Hamid, 17, was killed by an Israeli settler in April [Courtesy of Ahmed Abdel Ghani Hamid]
Ahmed said he is searching for justice but Jewish Israelis are almost never held accountable by the Israeli authorities.
From 2017 to 2021, less than 1 percent of all legal complaints that Palestinians filed against Israeli soldiers, including for extrajudicial killings, led to prosecutions, the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said.
In that time, only three Israeli soldiers were convicted of killing Palestinians and were given lenient sentences. Others were ordered to complete “military community service” for killing Palestinians, it said.
“There is a culture where Israeli units know that they can carry out grave abuses without being held accountable for their abuses,” Shakir from HRW said.
‘Colonising our minds’
Army raids and extrajudicial killings are part of a broader attempt to keep Palestinians in the West Bank “afraid”, said Zaid Shuabi, analyst and activist with the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq.
But it has ultimately led to the formation of a new generation of armed groups, often established by young people who are fed up with the occupation’s transgressions.
Israel’s response to this new wave of resistance has been to target entire communities to crush the morale of Palestinians, Shuabi said.
“They want to reshape the Palestinian mind into thinking that we shouldn’t even dare to resist. And if we do, then we will pay a high price,” he told Al Jazeera.
“This is about intimidating us. They want to put us down … and to colonise our minds.”
Sarah believes that was the purpose behind the Israeli attack on her family. She said that while her father and brother bled to death on the street, Israeli soldiers entered her house.
The Israeli army then cut off the water and electricity to their home. At one point, one of the Israeli soldiers began beating Sarah’s other brother with the butt of his rifle, telling him to keep silent.
Moments before the soldiers left, Sarah mustered up the courage to ask why they terrorised her family.
“He said, ‘To scare you,’” Sarah told Al Jazeera. “I couldn’t believe it. I wondered what was wrong with them.
“They killed my brother and my father just to scare me.”
Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan – As we make our way towards Pakistan’s first organic village, an intense one-hour trek along the rugged, steep and unfenced mountainside pathway from Mindoq-Khar, near Kharpocho Fort, my legs are shaking with a mix of fear and strain.
The sharp mountain edges stick out threateningly, and I am reminded of the soulful lyrics of Ali Zafar’s Paharon Ki Qasam (Oaths of the Mountains), a tribute to the late Pakistani climbing hero, Muhammad Ali Sadpara from Skardu, who tragically lost his life in February 2021 while climbing the notorious Bottleneck gully which is just 300 metres (984 feet) below the summit of K2.
Above us, the sky is a brilliant shade of blue, adding to the surreal beauty of the landscape. As we gain a wider view of the Indus River Valley below us, our 44-year-old guide, Abbas Jaan, stops and draws our attention to the colour of the water.
“You can see the water turning a murky grey, carrying with it the particles from the retreating glaciers,” he says, his eyes scanning the slow-flowing waves of this vital drinking water supply. “And even though it’s grey,” he adds, “the glacial water is mineral-rich and incredibly pure.”
“But, year by year, these glaciers are melting fast. They are decreasing,” he says, pointing towards the thousands of smaller glacier peaks that surround us in the far distance; some mountains are snow-covered while others are dry and brown.
The city of Skardu, from where we have departed, sits some 2,228 metres (7,310 feet) above sea level. It is the gateway to the Karakoram mountain range and some of the world’s highest peaks such as K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum, making it a popular destination for trekkers and mountaineers who come to marvel at the breathtaking scenery.
Following the rugged, fenceless path to the organic village, Khari Nangsoq [Anam Hussain/Al Jazeera]
With a population of more than 200,000, the city boasts a rich cultural blend influenced by Tibetan, Balti and other Central Asian traditions, where diverse Islamic sects, including Noor Bakshi, Sunni and Shia, coexist.
But this region of Pakistan is also home to more than 7,000 glaciers – the largest number outside the earth’s polar regions.
These icy giants are far more than just a breathtaking natural spectacle; they are vital to the local ecosystem.
They serve as a crucial source of freshwater, sustaining agriculture and powering electricity generation through the meltwater that feeds into rivers.
Now, however, their existence is under threat.
A 2019 study (PDF) published in the Pakistan Geographical Review by Lahore College for Women University, highlights the increasingly unusual behaviour of glaciers in the Karakoram range, compared with glaciers in other parts of the world.
The Baltoro Glacier is a particular example. Spanning some 63km (39 miles) in length, the Baltoro is one of the longest glaciers in the world outside the polar regions. Its width varies, but generally ranges from two to three kilometres. The meltwater from the Baltoro Glaciers feeds the Shigar River, which is the main right-bank tributary of the Indus River Valley in the Skardu Valley.
It is an essential source of freshwater for this region and beyond, but the study showed that the glacier has been decreasing in size by 0.9 percent each year between 2003 and 2017.
The immediate effect of the shrinking glacier is a rise in water levels and even dangerous flooding in the Shigar River.
The position of the Baltoro and Sachien glaciers in Pakistan (AJ Labs)
Locally, roads have been known to have become completely submerged when water levels rise too high, says Chris Lininger, founder and director of US-based travel company Epic Expeditions, who has been travelling across Pakistan’s intricate terrains, including the Baltoro Glacier, since 2018.
“I actually had a problem coming out of a trip when the floods happened in 2022 because the road was just gone,” he says over a Zoom call. “Many [locals] are already in a low socioeconomic state, and when this happens, it’s catastrophic for them.”
But the extreme long-term effect will be even more deadly – the water will eventually dry up when the glacier is gone.
Mexico City, Mexico – Walking through Mexico City’s historic Zocalo district, Dario Solano-Rojas points to signs of a subterranean catastrophe that is under way.
The roads are uneven in the city’s central plaza, the streets and walkways are sloped and twisting. Many building foundations have sunk dramatically while others have a visible lean, resulting in cracks in the surrounding pavement. Two of the city’s most iconic structures – The Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Metropolitan Cathedral (built from the stones of the Aztec temple that once stood there) – seem to be disappearing into the earth.
Inside the cathedral, Solano-Rojas, a professor of geological engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, points to a glass-encased box connected to the ceiling by a taut wire. At the centre of the nave hangs a heavily-weighted point, which charts a line indicating how the cathedral has shifted unevenly over the centuries, with the worst-impacted section dropping by some 2.5 metres (8.2 feet).
At the centre of the Metropolitan Cathedral’s nave hangs a weight that tracks the cathedral’s motion across the centuries [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
Mexico City is sinking, as are its greatest monuments. Parts of the city of nearly 9 million people are descending into the earth by as much as 40cm (15 inches) annually – all driven by a deepening water crisis with roots that go back 500 years, and that reveals itself today in stunning ironies.
One of Mexico City’s most renowned attractions, the canals of Xochimilco, with their lush lagoons and colourfully decorated boats, date back to the precolonial lake that once satiated the city’s thirst. Today, its adjacent neighbourhoods have run out of water.
To its north is Iztapalapa, one of the city’s most notoriously impoverished, dangerous colonias (neighbourhoods), where the water supply has been inconsistent for years. It frequently slows to a trickle or stops entirely for days and even weeks.
While it is, sadly, not surprising that a disenfranchised district would experience breakdowns in essential services, perhaps more unanticipated are the water shortages in the adjacent region of Coyoacan, an upper-crust neighbourhood best known as the once-home of painting power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
A boy carries home buckets filled from barrels of drinking water loaded from tanker trucks in the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa [Yuri Cortez/AFP]
At the heart of the city’s struggle – and its sinking – is its reliance on underground water. As the underground aquifer drains and the ground above it settles, the city sinks deeper and deeper. “There’s one solution: Stop taking water from underground,” says Solano-Rojas. “But that’s not going to happen.”
The situation in Mexico City shows how the rich and the poor are both ill-prepared for when water supplies run dry – and money can only go so far.
A problem for the ages
“I was born with this problem existing,” says Solano-Rojas. “I thought it was normal everywhere, but it’s not.”
To understand the “subsidence” of the city and the water shortage causing it, it is necessary to look back half a millennium. The Aztecs had already erected a civilisation atop and amid the local network of lakes, most notably the capital of Tenochtitlan, which stood on the site of Mexico City’s present-day central district.
Had the penultimate Aztec ruler Moctezuma’s empire been allowed to continue expanding, it is possible that it would have eventually run into similar water supply issues. But the arrival of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and his colonial forces disrupted all that – they levelled Tenochtitlan and built their own city in its place.
“It’s a historical problem,” explains Elena Tudela Rivadeneyra, a professor of architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the co-founder of the Office of Urban Resilience, which develops strategies to help cities weather climate change. “Ever since we decided to dry out the lake system that we had here – and that started [shortly after the Spanish arrived] around 1608 – we started having a difficult relationship with water.”
Draining the lakes and building over them created two major issues. First, it diminished the local water supply, requiring the city to import much of its fresh water – a significant portion of which must be pumped at great expense more than 100 metres (328 feet) up the sierra where the city perches. Second, as the city grew and consumed what water remained, the subsidence began. Problems snowballed from there.
The camera is level but the buildings in the Zocalo are not. Riot police stand at the bottom behind the barriers – the building to the right is the National Palace where protests are frequent [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
A sinking city
One of the first things you notice as you land in Mexico City is that the airport runway is unusually bumpy. The increasingly uneven tarmac is a consequence of subsidence.
Listing buildings and uneven roads may be the most obvious impact of the subsidence, but bigger problems lurk out of view.
A recent study found that the integrity of the metro is progressively compromised – and there is more, “It also breaks the pipes,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra.
When Mexico City began modernising its municipal water supply during the 1940s – an event that Diego Rivera celebrated with the creation of stunning underwater murals you can visit at the Cárcamo Museum in Chapultepec Park – its population was only a few million. As that number exploded to the 22.5 million living there today, the water infrastructure not only failed to keep up with the rising demand, but was continually torn apart by subsidence.
Now, the city is losing some 40 percent of its water due to leaks in broken pipes.
The murals of Deigo Rivera commemorating the construction of the municipal water system at the Cárcamo Museum in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
“The leakages are quite difficult to deal with,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Even if you replace them with new materials and more elastic and technical and technological solutions, you still have quite an issue.”
Water infrastructure has become a top consideration among voters in the city’s upcoming mayoral elections, and while candidates have made bold claims about fast fixes, Tudela Rivadeneyra says these are unrealistic. She notes that even if the city had the money for it – and it does not – the sheer amount of construction required for a rapid infrastructure rebuild is untenable in a city where people are forced to commute sometimes for hours each day. The increase in the city’s already notorious traffic would grind it to a standstill.
As Mexico City runs out of water, for many, the taps are already running dry.
The stones around Bellas Artes are cracking and require frequent repair [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
Day Zero is already here
In the discussion of the city’s water crisis, the term “Day Zero” is frequently thrown around to describe the presumed date when wells will run dry. Many have set it for late June. But the situation is complicated.
“I don’t think a Day Zero is going to come,” says Solano-Rojas. “Day Zero has already happened.”
While popular central districts like Condesa and Roma are still relatively unscathed by the situation – though many of their once-majestic fountains now stand dry – residents in areas like Iztapalapa and Coyoacan will tell you that the concept of Day Zero is practically meaningless.
“Day Zero has been here for a lot of people around the whole metropolitan area,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Twenty-five percent of the population does not receive enough water. Technically speaking, 98 percent of the population has the infrastructure to get it, but that doesn’t mean that you open up the tap and there’s water.”
The issue extends beyond Mexico City proper.
“We don’t have water at home on Saturdays and Sundays,” says Israel, a resident of the nearby town of Toluca. “Monday to Friday, the situation is irregular. There may be a day or two with water and the rest of the weekdays, we only get a very small amount.”
And in Cuernavaca, roughly an hour south of Mexico City, residents have blocked the highway to protest water shortages.
Standing at the high rear of the Church of San Francisco, it is clear that the nave floor is sinking [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
The situation has forced the use of stopgap solutions that can only go so far. “People can ask for trucks with water in those areas in which the situation is critical,” says Israel. “But the common solution with some people and local businesses I’ve talked with is that they are paying for private trucks to deliver them water.”
These water trucks – frequently accompanied by armed guards – are becoming ubiquitous throughout the city. Unsurprisingly, there has been talk about the cartel moving into the private water racket. In Mexico, if something can be commodified, the cartel runs it.
So, Day Zero has already come for many in the city, and for those who have not yet experienced it, the issue is more complicated than a date on a calendar.
This theoretical timeline refers specifically to the depletion of the Cutzamala Water System, which draws from neighbouring basins that are currently at approximately 30 percent capacity and provide about 30 percent of the city’s water. But that represents less than a third of the water supply: The rest is in the aquifer directly beneath the city.
“What’s really scary is the possibility of Day Zero for the aquifer, because it provides 70 percent of the water we consume,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “That is catastrophe. Right now, people are suffering and it’s not something to take lightly. Thirty percent is like 5 million people – a quarter of the population of the metropolitan area – not having enough water”, she says, adding that “the aquifer is not replaceable. That is not something you can pull off with water trucks”.
Experts disagree on how much longer the aquifer can last at current consumption rates, placing the number anywhere between five to 20 years. What is certain is that dramatic action must be taken to avoid a total water disaster.
“It’s like a glass where you sip water every day,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Eventually, it will run out.”
The iconic Bellas Artes Palace is sinking to its left. Here, the camera is level and flat but the ground is not [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
The need for long-term solutions
While the city scrambles for quick solutions like water rationing, water trucks, individual conservation advocacy and rain-collecting (collection setups have been distributed to many businesses and homes but only recently, Mexico City saw its first drizzle in months), the crisis has been a long time in the making and solutions cannot happen overnight.
“There’s not much that can be done in the short term,” Tudela Rivadeneyra admits, “because there’s not enough time or money for it”. She is more hopeful about longer-term solutions but does not “think politicians are being practical about them or investing in them enough”.
Many significant changes must occur, but according to Solano-Rojas, one of the key adjustments is mental. “We’re using water thinking it’s a renewable resource,” he says. “We had this big push against single-use plastic like straws but we still have single-use water.”
In addition to pumping in tremendous quantities of fresh water, Mexico City also pumps out the vast majority of its used water as sewage to the nearby state of Hidalgo. This pipeline – a huge infrastructure undertaking called the Tunel Emisor Oriente – required substantial resources to build, and critics argue that it exacerbates rather than palliates the water crisis by evacuating water from the city rather than retaining it.
“We only treat 15 percent of the water,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “That’s a very low percentage, and almost all of the water we use goes to the sewage. So we’re just importing water and exporting all of the problems without dealing with it locally.”
Soldiers place a water treatment plant in San Lorenzo Park in Mexico City, on April 11, 2024. The inhabitants of a sector of Mexico City have been affected by the contamination of a water well with an oily substance, in the midst of an extreme drought that affects several parts of the country [Alfredo Estrella/AFP]
With a presidential election looming, the incumbent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (AMLO) party, Morena, is desperate to appear to be addressing the growing water emergency. One of its primary proposals involves establishing new water wells in the hardest affected areas, but Tudela Rivadeneyra is doubtful, agreeing that in order to construct actual solutions, there must first be a major shift in mindset.
“If we do end up getting all of the water wells, bringing water trucks from wherever we can, from other basins – people will suffer anyways. The demand is too high,” she explains. “What we should be focusing on is what to do next and how to change the way we understand water in the city, and the way that water relates to urban development.”
Privatisation and climate change
One oft-cited contributor to the dearth of water is privatisation. Beer, soft drink, paper and chemical manufacturers have significant operations throughout Mexico City and the adjacent State of Mexico, and are granted enormous water concessions. What water regulations they do face are lax in enforcement or circumvented by corruption.
Experts note that these water rights can be revoked legally and that a precedent has been set by similar actions taken in the past.
“What they should be doing is what they did with the fossil fuel industry,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Just make them go out of the city, because there’s not enough water for them here. They should move to other parts of the country where they have more opportunities to obtain water without drying out the few resources we have.”
She’s referring to a plan established by López Obrador to decentralise the government by relocating Mexico City-based agencies to less populated areas across the country in an effort to ease pollution and infrastructure strain in the megalopolis. While critics have pointed out that this goal was only partially met, it did move the state-owned Pemex petroleum company from its 51-storey tower in the city to the more sparsely populated coast of the state of Campeche, where most of Mexico’s fossil fuels are produced.
This sort of decentralisation, emphasises both Solano-Rojas and Tudela Rivadeneyra, is essential to solving the water crisis. Unfortunately, says the latter, relocating water-intensive industry will require prodigious political capital, but there is little willingness to expend it.
She notes that while the government has engaged in campaigns to raise awareness for the need for individual responsibility – shorter showers and the like – these efforts are not sufficient.
“But even if we all did that, it wouldn’t be enough if we still have these concessions,” she says.
And then, of course, there is climate change. On April 15, Mexico City saw its hottest day on record, amid a historic drought.
Rain is essential for renewing the aquifer and leveraging the city’s catchment strategies. In recent years, Mexico City has received less rain but more intense bursts of it. This complicates harvesting because sudden, short-lived eruptions of precipitation require larger gathering surfaces.
At the same time, it makes the city more prone to flooding, exacerbated by a lack of open and green spaces that would otherwise allow moisture to seep into the earth.
“We should be removing asphalt from parts of the city that don’t really need it, like peripheries,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra.
Asphalt blocks water seepage, which not only drives flooding but prevents rain from reaching the aquifer. The removal of asphalt is especially important in areas like Iztapalapa, which rests on porous basalt rather than an impervious lake bed like the rest of the city, and may prove vital to replenishing the underground reservoir.
“We need to be recharging the aquifer in order to not have a general Day Zero,” Tudela Rivadeneyra emphasises.
On the right of the Metropolitan Cathedral, it is evident that its foundation is sinking [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
Collective action
Recently, it rained in Mexico City for the first time in a long while. This correspondent watched a tiny, very wrinkled elderly woman gaze up at the sky with unguarded delight that verged on relief, her arms spread towards the heavens.
If Mexico City is going to overcome this crisis, she and everyone else who lives there – industrial inhabitants in particular – will have to change how water is considered.
According to Tudela Rivadeneyra, that means “focusing on solutions that have more to do with collectivity. So, instead of having a building just demanding water because it exists, it’s like, what kind of water is it producing? How can we connect it to another building or area that requires that type of water?”
She encourages understanding where water originates and where it goeswhy streets become rivers.
“Know what’s going on below your feet,” she urges, “because water is very invisible. Making it visible changes the way we relate to it. Dealing with water in different ways that are more circular makes a lot of sense, and it’s not that tough.”
Can Mexico City achieve the ecosystemic circularity necessary to surmount its water emergency? With the worst yet to come, it seems it is not a matter of can but must.
Viewed from above, it is difficult to tell, but the iconic Bellas Artes Palace is sinking to its left [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
As news of Russia’s spring offensive in Kharkiv started to spread through Kharkiv on Friday, Ukraine’s second biggest city did not descend into panic. No caravans of cars with people evacuating have been seen; the conversations in Kharkiv’s cafes are the only sign of concern about the heavy fighting going on north of the city.
Yevgen Shapoval, the head of the military administration of the Vil’khuvatka community in Kharkiv’s Kupiansk district, passed through the city on Friday on the way back to his village, which is next to the border with Russia. The situation there has been more tense.
“Some people are panicking, but not like the occupiers would like them to. Yes, explosions are heard close up and the situation is not easy. It is difficult especially psychologically,” Shapoval says.
The Russian army has reportedly concentrated about 50,000 troops just across the border, likely in an effort to extend the front towards the south and to create a buffer zone that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised earlier this year as a means of halting Ukrainian attacks on Russian border regions.
But Shapoval does not believe that the Russian army will achieve much with its planned offensive. “We must be consistent and believe in Ukraine’s defence forces. So even if they try to do something, to attack, they will get the response they deserve,” he tells Al Jazeera by telephone.
“Yes – some local tactical movements and even some larger-scale offensive operations are possible. But as for Kharkiv, I don’t believe it can be captured.”
Kharkiv, a traditionally Russian-speaking city close to the border, had strong economic and cultural ties with Russia for decades until the start of the war. It has also been a vibrant economic and educational hub as well as the capital of Ukraine’s heavy and defence industries. Its importance for Russia has thus been both symbolic and strategic.
Russia failed to capture Kharkiv in its 2022 offensive, but it did manage to make life for residents hard to bear. In all, since the beginning of the war, Russia has destroyed about 44,000 buildings and pieces of infrastructure in the city.
Tulips bloomed in front of Kharkiv’s city administration building on Freedom Square in April, bringing some normality to the war-torn city [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera]
Towards the end of last year, Russia intensified its attacks against Kharkiv and the surrounding region, targeting in particular its energy infrastructure as well as roads and residential areas, which experienced daily bombings with an array of weapons including long-range glide bombs, drones and ballistic missiles.
“Russia did not advance so it applied a new tactic of particularly fierce shelling, including in the historic centre of the city. The goal is to destroy the territory, put psychological pressure on people, and terminate all work and life,” Yevgen Ivanov, deputy head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, told Al Jazeera in April.
“The tactic is not logical. It focuses on making the territory unliveable.”
With this new Russian offensive has come more intensified fighting northwest of Kharkiv. But it is unclear what the strategy is likely to be.
“A direct attack on Kharkiv is quite unlikely because it is a big city,” says Jakub Palowski, a military expert and deputy editor in chief of Defence24.pl website. “Ukraine currently has a mobilised army and, in the absence of a surprise, the defence of such a city would be quite effective.”
It is hard to tell what Russia wants to achieve in the Kharkiv region, he adds. “It might be the opening of a new full-scale front, similar to the Donbas region; actions that would aim at capturing a limited area and accumulating Ukrainian troops in one place, so that they cannot be used elsewhere; or creating conditions for further offensives.”
‘The dance floor is a safe space’
Meanwhile, Kharkiv keeps calm and carries on. Tulips planted in April in front of the city’s administration building on Freedom Square are in full bloom and the city’s cultural and social life continues uninterrupted.
Local museums host exhibitions. Schools took to operating underground in metro stations and one has recently been constructed underground. Life goes on.
According to official data, Kharkiv has lost some 700,000 residents since the war began, but those who stayed behind say they care about the city and want to keep investing in its development, said Anton Nazarko, a 37-year-old singer, entrepreneur and activist.
Anton Nazarko, a local activist and entrepreneur, wants to promote Kharkiv as a city of culture, not war [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera]
Together with a group of friends, who came together to form the “Some People” collective, Nazarko opened a sneaker store where customers can get their shoes styled and decorated and a small music venue for friends to chill out at. Its first location was destroyed in a Russian strike, but the new one in the city centre has so far remained intact.
As he walks through Kharkiv’s modernist streets, Nazarko says he takes pride in his city. He wants to invest in its culture, develop the arts scene and make Kharkiv famous for its creative industry, not just for war.
Crucially, he wants to promote the arts in the Ukrainian language, a departure from Kharkiv’s Soviet and post-Soviet past, dominated by the Russian language.
His most recent undertaking is the Center of New Culture, a place where Ukrainian art, he hopes, will flourish. Located in a former factory, the vast venue hosts a bar and a large dance floor and will also act as a location for art exhibitions, theatre, a co-working and workshop space, a small cinema, a bookshop and a music studio.
“We want people to stay in and to return to Kharkiv. We also want to reach out to young people who have been resettled here from the occupied areas of Donbas,” Nazarko says. “We organise independent theatre performances, concerts and raves for up to 300 people. But only during the day, because the curfew starts at 11pm.”
Nazarko’s group made sure that partying in their venue would be safe. The dance floor in the Centre of New Culture also functions as a bunker.
“There is a saying in rave culture that ‘the dance floor is a safe space’. With us it takes on a literal meaning,” he says.
Nazarko tries not to think about the upcoming Russian offensive. Just like other residents of Kharkiv, he has adapted to living with war. He has not even considered leaving the city and he will not do so, he says, unless Russia occupies the city.
“Maybe our events’ schedule will slightly change depending on the situation,” Nazarko says. “But we will continue to support our people”.
Ghaziabad, India – It is close to midnight. Ruchika Sharma sits in her makeshift studio at her home in Ghaziabad, a city just outside India’s capital, New Delhi, a small mic hooked to her shirt. The 33-year-old historian and former professor is getting ready for her latest YouTube video show.
The recording hours are odd, but it is a considered decision. There is little ambient noise at this time, she reasons. For an independent creator like Sharma, a studio with fancy audio setups and soundproofing is beyond reach – especially since she knows that each video she puts out makes it harder for her to land a job.
Sharma looks at a phone that doubles as a teleprompter. Another phone serves as her recording rig. On two small wooden racks hung on the cream-coloured wall behind Sharma, sit a dozen history books. Also on the wall are a picture of Indian revolutionary icon Bhagat Singh, who was hanged by the British colonial regime in 1931, and a copy of the 17th-century painting of the Sasanian king Khosrow Parviz’s first sight of his Christian wife Shirin, bathing in a pool.
On her wooden table, alongside tripods and ring lights is an eclectic mix of cosmetic products: brushes, mascara, concealer, powder puff, and, most important of all, eyeshadow.
She hits the record button.
Sharma starts with an introduction to Nalanda, a sixth-century Buddhist university in northern India that was home to nine million manuscripts and was burned down in a major fire in the 12th century. A widely held belief – promoted by sections of India’s Hindu right, amplified by a government-run modern-day version of Nalanda University, and referenced in multiple news articles – suggests that Nalanda was destroyed by a Muslim general named Bakhtiyar Khilji.
Sharma calls this one of the “biggest myths of Indian history” before citing a slew of historical sources that she says buttress her assertion. These sources, which she says are often cited by those who paint Khilji as Nalanda’s villain, don’t actually refer to the university at all, she points out. Instead, she says, the sources suggest Khilji attacked another Buddhist university, where many people were killed in his attack.
Midway through the narration, she picks up a bottle of concealer and applies it under her eyes. She drops a sarcastic joke – telling her viewers that she is citing the very same sources that WhatsApp forwards pushing dubious or fake history tend to quote. A sponge comes out to blend with the skin tone, and soon, a lilac eyeshadow is in place.
At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and its Hindu nationalist allies face allegations of rewriting history, turning the past into a political battleground for the future, these unconventional history lessons, laced with makeup and satire, are Sharma’s attempt at setting the record straight.
With more than 200 YouTube videos in just over two years, the historian is building a growing audience: Her YouTube channel, Eyeshadow & Etihaas, has nearly 20,000 subscribers, while on X, where she amplifies the arguments she makes in her videos, she has 30,000 followers.
But perhaps the biggest testament to her mounting influence lies in the threats and abuse she routinely receives for her videos. They’re a badge of honour she shrugs off, but would rather not have to wear.
“I often get such death threats. Rape remarks keep coming,” she says. “They no longer work on me.”
A spread of makeup palettes, brushes and mascara in front of Sharma, which she uses during her recording [Md Meharban/Al Jazeera]
Eyeshadow and history
Sharma grew up surrounded by history, in a family shaped – like millions of others – by India’s modern tumult.
A grandchild of partition refugees, Sharma spent her childhood in Mehrauli, New Delhi’s oldest surviving inhabited area. After India’s cleavage at independence in 1947, her grandparents, both Punjabis from present-day Pakistan, found sanctuary in the neighbourhood and bought land on which they built a home.
She thinks of the stories of partition she heard from them as her first brush with history. From her terrace, she would watch Qutb Minar, a five-story red and buff sandstone tower built in the 12th and 13th centuries by Muslim rulers that is as much a landmark of New Delhi as the Eiffel Tower is of Paris. “I have a strong emotional connection with it. I think that monument is beautiful,” Sharma says.
When she was 13, her parents decided they needed more space and moved out of the family house to Ghaziabad, a neighbouring district of Delhi, where she lives with her elder sister and her 61-year-old mother, a retired government official who worked at Indian Oil, a government oil and gas corporation. Sharma lost her father to cancer in 2017.
Sharma says she was always interested in eye makeup. She would wear kohl in high school. She began using lip gloss in college, and during her PhD in 2020, she started applying eye makeup and lipstick to cope with an abusive relationship.
“I was in a physically and mentally abusive relationship for 10 years, battling PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], and scary thoughts of self-harm. I was in therapy for it,” she explains.
Sharma saw an eyeshadow YouTube video that caught her attention. “Watching eyeshadow videos, seeing the colours arranged in palettes, and putting them on my eyelids was incredibly therapeutic for me. It would calm me down,” remarked Sharma.
She was teaching in a college at the time and would buy eyeshadow palettes, though her mother disapproved of it.
“I’ve never worn makeup in my life, even to parties or weddings. I don’t like her makeup and clothing style. I’m conservative and religious, and I come from a different generation and period,” said her mother, who requested anonymity.
Her mother’s other concern was that Sharma was spending too much money on expensive eyeshadow palettes.
As with makeup, Sharma’s academic pursuit of history was not something her parents supported initially.
Sharma was in eighth grade when a history teacher who she remembers as “Sheila ma’am” changed her view of the subject. Until then, she says, teachers would ask students to underline important dates and moments in history in their textbooks, and then memorise them.
“However, at our first lesson with Sheila ma’am, she said that history could not be taught using a single textbook and that she would give us lectures like they do in colleges, and that we would have to take notes,” Sharma says. “Initially, I thought I would fail the history exam.”
Sharma began to visit the school library frequently and study any history books she came across, finding the process fascinating. Sharma got 94 percentile in 10th grade and took up humanities in high school.
Sharma got into Lady Shri Ram College, one of New Delhi’s top arts institutions, for her undergraduate studies, but her parents believed there was no future in history and pressured her into taking up an undergraduate programme in business studies.
Fresh out of college at the age of 21, she was recruited by a high-paying corporate firm. She left her job after just four months. She was bored. “I realised I needed to return to history. My parents were not very enthusiastic about my change of plans,” she says.
Sharma had continued to read history as a hobby during her undergraduate years. One book influenced her above all others – The Hindus: An Alternative History, by American historian Wendy Doniger, who was targeted by the Hindu right-wing who claimed that her book vilified the Hindu religion. Publishers subsequently pulled the book from the Indian market in 2014, raising widespread concerns about the state of free speech in India.
Making the leap from a corporate life to go back to school, she joined Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which regularly ranks as among India’s top research universities, for her master’s and PhD in history.
Sharma took up a contractual teaching position at Indraprastha College For Women in Delhi University. And in mid-2022, as physical classes resumed after COVID-19 cases dipped, Sharma started wearing eyeshadow to campus. “My students were very piqued by it and encouraged me to start a YouTube channel where I could provide makeup tutorials,” she says. “I declined. but then a student proposed that I talk about history while putting on eye makeup”.
That intrigued her. She read up online on how to start a YouTube channel. And two weeks later, she recorded her first episode where she matched her blue outfit with blue eyeshadow.
Her first video was a trip down memory lane: a 28-minute episode about Qutb Minar, where she discussed the monument’s history and construction, its architecture, and the history of architecture and design in Islam.
That first video, which she described as an experiment, brought her over 400 subscribers in the first few days.
Sharma, the YouTube historian, was born.
Sharma shooting a YouTube live for her history channel from Humayun’s tomb, a Mughal-era monument in New Delhi, India [Md Meharban/Al Jazeera]
‘Cannot let these myths slide’
Myth-busting was not the idea behind her YouTube channel initially, she says. She wanted to introduce people to aspects of Indian history that they were unfamiliar with.
She soon started recording videos on architectural reuse, non-vegetarian food in Indian history, homosexual and interfaith relationships in the Mughal period, and Sati, an ancient Hindu practice in which widows would burn to death by sitting atop their deceased husbands’ funeral pyres.
But the comments she saw under her videos often had little to do with the content of what she had said.
“People used to comment a lot on videos about the Mughals breaking temples and oppressing Hindus. This is how I learned about the widespread myths, which I compiled into a video debunking the 10 biggest myths about Mughals,” she explains.
With each video, the responses alerted her to more historical myths, half-truths and instances of complex themes from the past that were often presented publicly without context.
“Initially, the trolling and abuse I received for my videos affected me greatly,” she says. Her past mental health struggles compounded the hurt, she said. “But over time, I became immune.”
Since then, she has had no shortage of material to work with: from the razing of Hindu temples, ostensibly by medieval Muslim rulers; to stories of atrocities committed by these rulers that eliminate nuance.
These are subjects that are often invoked by leaders of Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and their allies to paint India’s history as one filled with the oppression of Hindus by Muslims – a narrative that critics have long warned feeds into the demonisation of India’s 200 million Muslims. In an animated Instagram video in late April that the platform later took down, the BJP portrayed India as a Hindu land pillaged by Muslim raiders for centuries. In fact, Islam arrived in the Indian subcontinent as early as the 7th century – much before Khilji, the Mughals and other Muslim rulers and commanders.
Under Modi, school textbooks have been changed to incorporate this Hindu nationalist reading of history – including suggestions that a Vedic sage was the “father of aviation” and that atomic science was known to ancient Hindus.
“I cannot just let these myths slide,” Sharma says.
“Lines were always blurred in India between history, faith and politics. But what has changed is that blurring of lines has led to violence,” she adds, arguing that the portrayal of Indian Muslims as historical villains has helped make it easier for Hindu majoritarian politicians and mobs to target them. Since Modi came to power in 2014, hate crimes – including lynchings – against Muslims have skyrocketed.
No figure in Indian history evokes the kind of hatred in Hindu nationalist historical accounts that Aurangzeb, the last major Mughal emperor does. He is accused of having killed hundreds of thousands of Hindus, committing unimaginable atrocities on his ‘kafir’ (infidel) subjects, and razing down religious sites of ‘non-believers’.
Sharma believes this portrayal of Aurangzeb ignores the time he lived in.
“Aurangzeb arrived at a critical juncture in the history of the Mughal Empire when the empire was on the verge of disintegration,” she says. The wars he waged had “little to do with religion”, and were “all about political conquest”.
Breaking temples built or patronised by defeated kings was the norm at the time, she says – one that Hindu kings too had long followed. The idea was simple: Such temples were seen as manifestations of the former sovereign’s authority. Aurangzeb followed that practice, while at least 25 new Hindu temples also came up under his reign, Sharma says.
Yet, the widely held image of Aurangzeb as a particularly evil king has real-world consequences for those who differ. The Mughal king is also eulogised by some for having practised a humble lifestyle and for his religious knowledge. This landed a 14-year-old Muslim boy in trouble. In June 2023, police arrested a teenager for putting up a social media status praising Aurangzeb, after receiving complaints.
“This idea is that because Aurangzeb broke a temple, so I will break this person’s house because he is a Muslim and because I think Aurangzeb and this person are the same,” Sharma says.
According to Abhilash Mallick, an associate editor of the fact-checking unit of The Quint, an India-based digital news organisation, history is challenging to fact-check because “we are unable to provide a yes or no answer”.
“So we must cite historians and their research and then allow the reader to draw their own conclusions,” he says. “We need people who can simplify history in videos and give all kinds of proofs in the same link. Videos work best. People consume them the most.”
That is where Sharma comes in. “She removes the historical jargon and makes videos in Hindi which is what I like about Ruchika’s approach,” he says.
As India votes in its seven-phase national election, the race between the politicisation of history and attempts to counter myth-making has only grown in intensity.
In late April, Sharma decided to take on a particularly powerful opponent – Prime Minister Modi himself.
Who is an ‘outsider’?
Speaking at an election rally in the western Indian state of Rajasthan on April 21, Modi appeared to describe Indian Muslims as “infiltrators” in trying to suggest that the opposition Congress wanted to take the private property of Hindus and distribute them among Muslims.
Within hours, Sharma posted a link on X, referencing a video of Modi’s comments and pointing to a YouTube episode of her show, challenging common beliefs about the Mughal empire that ruled India from 1526-1719 AD, though weaker kings from the dynasty continued to control an ever-shrinking empire all the way up to 1857.
The Mughal video, like all of Sharma’s history videos, begins with a more than one-minute preview of the video, followed by her introduction, in which she lists her credentials and tells viewers that her channel is a “passion project”.
Sharma applies a reddish eyeshadow that matches her red top. Throughout the video, she combines memes and Bollywood music to inject humour. Three minutes into the video, she picks up a skin serum and pours a few drops on her right palm as she takes on the first myth – that the Mughals were outsiders.
She discusses how, with the exception of Babur, the dynasty’s founder, and his son Humayun, the remainder of the Mughal rulers were born in India. Mughal food and clothing, she claims, are now commonplace in most Indian households. She discusses modern borders and the idea of nations and how they emerged centuries after the Mughals, and how by today’s notions of nationhood, most of the dynasties that ruled India would have had roots that could make them “outsiders”.
Sharma then picks up a concealer and begins applying it to her left eye as she debunks the second myth: that the Mughals were especially violent.
She refers to suggestions that the Mughals burned all documents prior to their rule. She explains how the Mughals preserved the histories and texts of the ancient Indian period through translations, such as Razmnama, a Persian translation of the Hindu epic Mahabharata.
A provocative question follows: “If documents were not burned, did they burn people?” she asks, before answering herself.
“Maybe as much as some other kings in India burned,” she says, explaining that the Mughals, while violent, had a track record no worse than many other rulers of the time.
But fighting historical battles in India’s present, surcharged political environment has risks. Doing so while wielding an eyeliner as a weapon is even harder – as Sharma has learned.
Sharma filming b-rolls of a Mughal-era monument for use in her YouTube broadcasts [Md Meharban/Al Jazeera]
‘I don’t want to rot in jail’
From labelling her a pseudo-historian and questioning her credentials to hypersexualised slander, the online abuse that Sharma faces is as wide-ranging as the makeup tools on her table and the slices from history she clinically dissects.
Sharma admits that when she first started creating the videos, she worried she wouldn’t be able to withstand the trolling. “They call me ugly. They assume I’m a [religious] convert. They call me a mulli and a jihadi,” she says. Mulli is a derogatory word used to slander Muslim women.
“But I’ve come to realise now I have a thicker skin.”
Still, she feels let down by her own peers. Sharma often hears from members of academia – including female historians – that she is cheapening history by talking about it while putting on makeup in front of a camera. “Women have internalised this idea that if they want to be taken seriously, they need to invisibilise their body and desexualise themselves,” Sharma says. “You shouldn’t have to choose between femininity and academia.”
Meena Bhargava, a retired history professor at Delhi University’s Indraprastha College for Women, believes that few academics are willing to speak out in India’s current political climate, where many universities have cracked down on critics of the Modi government.
“Some historians simply give up. We’ve talked so many times and then grown tired that people aren’t changing. Despite the harassment, Ruchika routinely posts historical videos on her YouTube account, which is encouraging,” says Bhargava.
Academics “who appear simple and dressed in a saree may be speaking nonsense”, she says.
“Then there’s Ruchika, who is flashy, fashionable, and wears trendy clothes. Despite all this, she knows what she is talking about.”
Sharma says Indian historians have a “social responsibility” to convey accurate history to the public – but that for the most part, they’ve failed. “Historians are happy writing journals that only five people read,” Sharma says.
She chooses to make her videos in Hindi, rather than English, to reach a larger Indian audience.
But as her viewership grows, so does – she believes – the target on her back. Sharma has applied for assistant professor positions at more than two dozen Delhi University colleges since 2022, after her short-term contract job at Indraprastha College was over, but has not been able to land a job. That is no coincidence, she says.
Often, she says, questions asked during interviews are attempts to tease out the interviewee’s ideology. She speaks of an incident where the interviewer turned out to be a senior historian aligned with the current government, whom she had confronted in a separate panel discussion earlier. During the job interview, she says, he inquired about recent archaeological excavations at a Mughal palace and mentioned the discovery of temple remains there.
“He asked me why they discovered temple remains there. I told him that one can find many things during excavation and that archaeology is very layered,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Why is it that only under mosques do you find remains of temples?’”
Sharma knew then that she wouldn’t get the job.
Now, she says, she goes to interviews without any expectations that she might be selected. “One Google search and anyone will know about my ideology and the government does not want somebody like me.”
It is not just her career that is on the line: Dozens of critics of the Modi government, including journalists and academics, have been arrested over the past decade, many on charges that rights groups have described as excessive or motivated.
Sharma doesn’t want to join them.
“I don’t want to rot in jail. I don’t see the point of it. I’d rather say what I can rather than say something that could eventually land me in jail,” she says before turning to the humour that often marks her videos too. “I can do much better work if I stay outside.”
Her mother worries about her daughter. “I keep telling her to quit this work. I feel scared,” she says.
Sharma has asked her mother not to share her videos in family WhatsApp groups and worries about being recognised in public. “I usually don’t tell her that I get death threats but she also has it in her brain that people are getting to know me and she tells me that I should wear a mask when I go outside,” says Sharma.
But despite her fears, Sharma is not ready to give up yet.
In her makeshift studio, it is time for a retake, so she sifts through brushes and picks the eye-shadow palette. She gently brushes the eyeshadow on her left eyelid. “I will continue making videos as long as they let me.”
New Delhi, India – It is close to midnight. Ruchika Sharma sits in her makeshift studio at her home just outside India’s capital, New Delhi, a small mic hooked to her shirt. The 33-year-old historian and former professor is getting ready for her latest YouTube video show.
The recording hours are odd, but it is a considered decision. There is little ambient noise at this time, she reasons. For an independent creator like Sharma, a studio with fancy audio setups and soundproofing is beyond reach – especially since she knows that each video she puts out makes it harder for her to land a job.
Sharma looks at a phone that doubles as a teleprompter. Another phone serves as her recording rig. On two small wooden racks hung on the cream-coloured wall behind Sharma, sit a dozen history books. Also on the wall are a picture of Indian revolutionary icon Bhagat Singh, who was hanged by the British colonial regime in 1931, and a copy of the 17th-century painting of the Sasanian king Khosrow Parviz’s first sight of his Christian wife Shirin, bathing in a pool.
On her wooden table, alongside tripods and ring lights is an eclectic mix of cosmetic products: brushes, mascara, concealer, powder puff, and, most important of all, eyeshadow.
She hits the record button.
Sharma starts with an introduction to Nalanda, a sixth-century Buddhist university in northern India that was home to nine million manuscripts and was burned down in a major fire in the 12th century. A widely held belief – promoted by sections of India’s Hindu right, amplified by a government-run modern-day version of Nalanda University, and referenced in multiple news articles – suggests that Nalanda was destroyed by a Muslim general named Bakhtiyar Khilji.
Sharma calls this one of the “biggest myths of Indian history” before citing a slew of historical sources that she says buttress her assertion. These sources, which she says are often cited by those who paint Khilji as Nalanda’s villain, don’t actually refer to the university at all, she points out. Instead, she says, the sources suggest Khilji attacked another Buddhist university, where many people were killed in his attack.
Midway through the narration, she picks up a bottle of concealer and applies it under her eyes. She drops a sarcastic joke – telling her viewers that she is citing the very same sources that WhatsApp forwards pushing dubious or fake history tend to quote. A sponge comes out to blend with the skin tone, and soon, a lilac eyeshadow is in place.
At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and its Hindu nationalist allies face allegations of rewriting history, turning the past into a political battleground for the future, these unconventional history lessons, laced with makeup and satire, are Sharma’s attempt at setting the record straight.
With more than 200 YouTube videos in just over two years, the historian is building a growing audience: Her YouTube channel, Eyeshadow & Etihaas, has nearly 20,000 subscribers, while on X, where she amplifies the arguments she makes in her videos, she has 30,000 followers.
But perhaps the biggest testament to her mounting influence lies in the threats and abuse she routinely receives for her videos. They’re a badge of honour she shrugs off, but would rather not have to wear.
“I often get such death threats. Rape remarks keep coming,” she says. “They no longer work on me.”
A spread of makeup palettes, brushes and mascara in front of Sharma, which she uses during her recording [Md Meharban/Al Jazeera]
Eyeshadow and history
Sharma grew up surrounded by history, in a family shaped – like millions of others – by India’s modern tumult.
A grandchild of partition refugees, Sharma spent her childhood in Mehrauli, New Delhi’s oldest surviving inhabited area. After India’s cleavage at independence in 1947, her grandparents, both Punjabis from present-day Pakistan, found sanctuary in the neighbourhood and bought land on which they built a home.
She thinks of the stories of partition she heard from them as her first brush with history. From her terrace, she would watch Qutb Minar, a five-story red and buff sandstone tower built in the 12th and 13th centuries by Muslim rulers that is as much a landmark of New Delhi as the Eiffel Tower is of Paris. “I have a strong emotional connection with it. I think that monument is beautiful,” Sharma says.
When she was 13, her parents decided they needed more space and moved out of the family house to a district neighbouring Delhi, where she lives with her elder sister and her 61-year-old mother, a retired government official who worked at Indian Oil, a government oil and gas corporation. Sharma lost her father to cancer in 2017.
Sharma says she was always interested in eye makeup. She would wear kohl in high school. She began using lip gloss in college, and during her PhD in 2020, she started applying eye makeup and lipstick to cope with an abusive relationship.
“I was in a physically and mentally abusive relationship for 10 years, battling PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], and scary thoughts of self-harm. I was in therapy for it,” she explains.
Sharma saw an eyeshadow YouTube video that caught her attention. “Watching eyeshadow videos, seeing the colours arranged in palettes, and putting them on my eyelids was incredibly therapeutic for me. It would calm me down,” remarked Sharma.
She was teaching in a college at the time and would buy eyeshadow palettes, though her mother disapproved of it.
“I’ve never worn makeup in my life, even to parties or weddings. I don’t like her makeup and clothing style. I’m conservative and religious, and I come from a different generation and period,” said her mother, who requested anonymity.
Her mother’s other concern was that Sharma was spending too much money on expensive eyeshadow palettes.
As with makeup, Sharma’s academic pursuit of history was not something her parents supported initially.
Sharma was in eighth grade when a history teacher who she remembers as “Sheila ma’am” changed her view of the subject. Until then, she says, teachers would ask students to underline important dates and moments in history in their textbooks, and then memorise them.
“However, at our first lesson with Sheila ma’am, she said that history could not be taught using a single textbook and that she would give us lectures like they do in colleges, and that we would have to take notes,” Sharma says. “Initially, I thought I would fail the history exam.”
Sharma began to visit the school library frequently and study any history books she came across, finding the process fascinating. Sharma got 94 percent in her 10th grade examination and took up humanities in high school.
Sharma got into Lady Shri Ram College, one of New Delhi’s top arts institutions, for her undergraduate studies, but her parents believed there was no future in history and pressured her into taking up an undergraduate programme in business studies.
Fresh out of college at the age of 21, she was recruited by a high-paying corporate firm. She left her job after just four months. She was bored. “I realised I needed to return to history. My parents were not very enthusiastic about my change of plans,” she says.
Sharma had continued to read history as a hobby during her undergraduate years. One book influenced her above all others – The Hindus: An Alternative History, by American historian Wendy Doniger, who was targeted by the Hindu right-wing who claimed that her book vilified the Hindu religion. Publishers subsequently pulled the book from the Indian market in 2014, raising widespread concerns about the state of free speech in India.
Making the leap from a corporate life to go back to school, she joined Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which regularly ranks as among India’s top research universities, for her master’s and PhD in history.
Sharma took up a contractual teaching position at Indraprastha College For Women in Delhi University. And in mid-2022, as physical classes resumed after COVID-19 cases dipped, Sharma started wearing eyeshadow to campus. “My students were very piqued by it and encouraged me to start a YouTube channel where I could provide makeup tutorials,” she says. “I declined. but then a student proposed that I talk about history while putting on eye makeup”.
That intrigued her. She read up online on how to start a YouTube channel. And two weeks later, she recorded her first episode where she matched her blue outfit with blue eyeshadow.
Her first video was a trip down memory lane: a 28-minute episode about Qutb Minar, where she discussed the monument’s history and construction, its architecture, and the history of architecture and design in Islam.
That first video, which she described as an experiment, brought her over 400 subscribers in the first few days.
Sharma, the YouTube historian, was born.
Sharma shooting a YouTube live for her history channel from Humayun’s tomb, a Mughal-era monument in New Delhi, India [Md Meharban/Al Jazeera]
‘Cannot let these myths slide’
Myth-busting was not the idea behind her YouTube channel initially, she says. She wanted to introduce people to aspects of Indian history that they were unfamiliar with.
She soon started recording videos on architectural reuse, non-vegetarian food in Indian history, homosexual and interfaith relationships in the Mughal period, and Sati, an ancient Hindu practice in which widows would burn to death by sitting atop their deceased husbands’ funeral pyres.
But the comments she saw under her videos often had little to do with the content of what she had said.
“People used to comment a lot on videos about the Mughals breaking temples and oppressing Hindus. This is how I learned about the widespread myths, which I compiled into a video debunking the 10 biggest myths about Mughals,” she explains.
With each video, the responses alerted her to more historical myths, half-truths and instances of complex themes from the past that were often presented publicly without context.
“Initially, the trolling and abuse I received for my videos affected me greatly,” she says. Her past mental health struggles compounded the hurt, she said. “But over time, I became immune.”
Since then, she has had no shortage of material to work with: from the razing of Hindu temples, ostensibly by medieval Muslim rulers; to stories of atrocities committed by these rulers that eliminate nuance.
These are subjects that are often invoked by leaders of Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and their allies to paint India’s history as one filled with the oppression of Hindus by Muslims – a narrative that critics have long warned feeds into the demonisation of India’s 200 million Muslims. In an animated Instagram video in late April that the platform later took down, the BJP portrayed India as a Hindu land pillaged by Muslim raiders for centuries. In fact, Islam arrived in the Indian subcontinent as early as the 7th century – much before Khilji, the Mughals and other Muslim rulers and commanders.
Under Modi, school textbooks have been changed to incorporate this Hindu nationalist reading of history – including suggestions that a Vedic sage was the “father of aviation” and that atomic science was known to ancient Hindus.
“I cannot just let these myths slide,” Sharma says.
“Lines were always blurred in India between history, faith and politics. But what has changed is that blurring of lines has led to violence,” she adds, arguing that the portrayal of Indian Muslims as historical villains has helped make it easier for Hindu majoritarian politicians and mobs to target them. Since Modi came to power in 2014, hate crimes – including lynchings – against Muslims have skyrocketed.
No figure in Indian history evokes the kind of hatred in Hindu nationalist historical accounts that Aurangzeb, the last major Mughal emperor does. He is accused of having killed hundreds of thousands of Hindus, committing unimaginable atrocities on his ‘kafir’ (infidel) subjects, and razing down religious sites of ‘non-believers’.
Sharma believes this portrayal of Aurangzeb ignores the time he lived in.
“Aurangzeb arrived at a critical juncture in the history of the Mughal Empire when the empire was on the verge of disintegration,” she says. The wars he waged had “little to do with religion”, and were “all about political conquest”.
Breaking temples built or patronised by defeated kings was the norm at the time, she says – one that Hindu kings too had long followed. The idea was simple: Such temples were seen as manifestations of the former sovereign’s authority. Aurangzeb followed that practice, and patronised at least 25 Hindu temples, Sharma says.
Yet, the widely held image of Aurangzeb as a particularly evil king has real-world consequences for those who differ. The Mughal king is also eulogised by some for having practised a humble lifestyle and for his religious knowledge. This landed a 14-year-old Muslim boy in trouble. In June 2023, police arrested a teenager for putting up a social media status praising Aurangzeb, after receiving complaints.
“This idea is that because Aurangzeb broke a temple, so I will break this person’s house because he is a Muslim and because I think Aurangzeb and this person are the same,” Sharma says.
According to Abhilash Mallick, an associate editor of the fact-checking unit of The Quint, an India-based digital news organisation, history is challenging to fact-check because “we are unable to provide a yes or no answer”.
“So we must cite historians and their research and then allow the reader to draw their own conclusions,” he says. “We need people who can simplify history in videos and give all kinds of proofs in the same link. Videos work best. People consume them the most.”
That is where Sharma comes in. “She removes the historical jargon and makes videos in Hindi which is what I like about Ruchika’s approach,” he says.
As India votes in its seven-phase national election, the race between the politicisation of history and attempts to counter myth-making has only grown in intensity.
In late April, Sharma decided to take on a particularly powerful opponent – Prime Minister Modi himself.
Who is an ‘outsider’?
Speaking at an election rally in the western Indian state of Rajasthan on April 21, Modi appeared to describe Indian Muslims as “infiltrators” in trying to suggest that the opposition Congress wanted to take the private property of Hindus and distribute them among Muslims.
Within hours, Sharma posted a link on X, referencing a video of Modi’s comments and pointing to a YouTube episode of her show, challenging common beliefs about the Mughal empire that ruled India from 1526-1719 AD, though weaker kings from the dynasty continued to control an ever-shrinking empire all the way up to 1857.
The Mughal video, like all of Sharma’s history videos, begins with a more than one-minute preview of the video, followed by her introduction, in which she lists her credentials and tells viewers that her channel is a “passion project”.
Sharma applies a reddish eyeshadow that matches her red top. Throughout the video, she combines memes and Bollywood music to inject humour. Three minutes into the video, she picks up a skin serum and pours a few drops on her right palm as she takes on the first myth – that the Mughals were outsiders.
She discusses how, with the exception of Babur, the dynasty’s founder, and his son Humayun, the remainder of the Mughal rulers were born in India. Mughal food and clothing, she claims, are now commonplace in most Indian households. She discusses modern borders and the idea of nations and how they emerged centuries after the Mughals, and how by today’s notions of nationhood, most of the dynasties that ruled India would have had roots that could make them “outsiders”.
Sharma then picks up a concealer and begins applying it to her left eye as she debunks the second myth: that the Mughals were especially violent.
She refers to suggestions that the Mughals burned all documents prior to their rule. She explains how the Mughals preserved the histories and texts of the ancient Indian period through translations, such as Razmnama, a Persian translation of the Hindu epic Mahabharata.
A provocative question follows: “If documents were not burned, did they burn people?” she asks, before answering herself.
“Maybe as much as some other kings in India burned,” she says, explaining that the Mughals, while violent, had a track record no worse than many other rulers of the time.
But fighting historical battles in India’s present, surcharged political environment has risks. Doing so while wielding an eyeliner as a weapon is even harder – as Sharma has learned.
Sharma filming b-rolls of a Mughal-era monument for use in her YouTube broadcasts [Md Meharban/Al Jazeera]
‘I don’t want to rot in jail’
From labelling her a pseudo-historian and questioning her credentials to hypersexualised slander, the online abuse that Sharma faces is as wide-ranging as the makeup tools on her table and the slices from history she clinically dissects.
Sharma admits that when she first started creating the videos, she worried she wouldn’t be able to withstand the trolling. “They call me ugly. They assume I’m a [religious] convert. They call me a mulli and a jihadi,” she says. Mulli is a derogatory word used to slander Muslim women.
“But I’ve come to realise now I have a thicker skin.”
Still, she feels let down by her own peers. Sharma often hears from members of academia – including female historians – that she is cheapening history by talking about it while putting on makeup in front of a camera. “Women have internalised this idea that if they want to be taken seriously, they need to invisibilise their body and desexualise themselves,” Sharma says. “You shouldn’t have to choose between femininity and academia.”
Meena Bhargava, a retired history professor at Delhi University’s Indraprastha College for Women, believes that few academics are willing to speak out in India’s current political climate, where many universities have cracked down on critics of the Modi government.
“Some historians simply give up. We’ve talked so many times and then grown tired that people aren’t changing. Despite the harassment, Ruchika routinely posts historical videos on her YouTube account, which is encouraging,” says Bhargava.
Academics “who appear simple and dressed in a saree may be speaking nonsense”, she says.
“Then there’s Ruchika, who is flashy, fashionable, and wears trendy clothes. Despite all this, she knows what she is talking about.”
Sharma says Indian historians have a “social responsibility” to convey accurate history to the public – but that for the most part, they’ve failed. “Historians are happy writing journals that only five people read,” Sharma says.
She chooses to make her videos in Hindi, rather than English, to reach a larger Indian audience.
But as her viewership grows, so does – she believes – the target on her back. Sharma has applied for assistant professor positions at more than two dozen Delhi University colleges since August 2023, after her short-term contract job at Indraprastha College was over, but has not been able to land a job. That is no coincidence, she says.
Often, she says, questions asked during interviews are attempts to tease out the interviewee’s ideology. She speaks of an incident where the interviewer turned out to be a senior historian aligned with the current government, whom she had confronted in a separate panel discussion earlier. During the job interview, she says, he inquired about recent archaeological excavations at a Mughal palace and mentioned the discovery of temple remains there.
“He asked me why they discovered temple remains there. I told him that one can find many things during excavation and that archaeology is very layered,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Why is it that only under mosques do you find remains of temples?’”
Sharma knew then that she wouldn’t get the job.
Now, she says, she goes to interviews without any expectations that she might be selected. “One Google search and anyone will know about my ideology and the government does not want somebody like me.”
It is not just her career that is on the line: Dozens of critics of the Modi government, including journalists and academics, have been arrested over the past decade, many on charges that rights groups have described as excessive or motivated.
Sharma doesn’t want to join them.
“I don’t want to rot in jail. I don’t see the point of it. I’d rather say what I can rather than say something that could eventually land me in jail,” she says before turning to the humour that often marks her videos too. “I can do much better work if I stay outside.”
Her mother worries about her daughter. “I keep telling her to quit this work. I feel scared,” she says.
Sharma has asked her mother not to share her videos in family WhatsApp groups and worries about being recognised in public. “I usually don’t tell her that I get death threats but she also has it in her brain that people are getting to know me and she tells me that I should wear a mask when I go outside,” says Sharma.
But despite her fears, Sharma is not ready to give up yet.
In her makeshift studio, it is time for a retake, so she sifts through brushes and picks the eye-shadow palette. She gently brushes the eyeshadow on her left eyelid. “I will continue making videos as long as they let me.”
Athens, Greece – On the evening of April 1, a Monday, 28-year-old Kyriaki Griva’s ex-partner stabbed her to death outside a police station in northern Athens.
She was the fifth woman to be killed by an ex or partner this year in Greece.
Griva had just left her local police station, which she visited in fear of her former boyfriend, who had been loitering near her house.
She had previously filed formal complaints against him but on this occasion, declined to do so. While her reasoning is not clear, victims of domestic violence often choose not to make formal complaints because they are terrified of repercussions, worry the process may be triggering and have little faith in agencies that are meant to provide security.
Griva requested a police escort back home that night. She was directed to a police hotline, which she called. An operator reportedly told her that “patrol cars are not a taxi service”.
Griva was then killed shortly afterwards in the vicinity of Agioi Anargyroi station.
The 39-year-old suspect was imprisoned awaiting trial; he is reportedly being monitored in a psychiatric ward.
In response to the murder, the Minister for Civil Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis promised an in-depth investigation and expressed support for including the term femicide within the Greek penal code – a point campaigners have long pushed for – although he added that this would ultimately be up to the Ministry of Justice.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis rebutted criticism of his police minister saying, “the fault cannot always lie at the top when something goes wrong in the state”, but acknowledged that the government needed to do more.
Meanwhile, lawyers representing Griva’s family have since called for the officers who spoke to Griva that day to be investigated for potential negligence and manslaughter.
A woman holds a sign saying ‘We are not all here, the murdered are missing’ during protests against femicides in Athens [Anna Pantelia/Al Jazeera]
Charities and families of victims have long accused Greek authorities of not taking domestic violence seriously enough.
In December 2023, the same month a woman was shot dead on the island of Salamina by her partner at her mother’s house having reported him to the police, a Greek artist’s work alluding to femicide was removed from the Greek consulate in New York.
A government spokesperson said Georgia Lale’s “Neighbourhood Guilt”, which depicted the Greek flag made with pink bedsheets, was taken down because the consulate space should remain neutral and “there are some things that are sacred above all, one of them is our flag”.
Lale said in response that they were “saddened” that their work was misinterpreted.
“Victims of femicide are heroes of the fight for freedom and life in Greece and internationally,” they said.
Katerina Kotti, the mother of Dora, sits in the living room of the family’s house in Rhodes [Anna Pantelia/Al Jazeera]
Katerina Kotti, the mother of 31-year-old Dora Zacharia, who was killed by her partner on the island of Rhodes in September, 2021, told Al Jazeera that she felt “rage, anger and disappointment” at the news of each new femicide.
Zacharia was killed outside her parents’ home.
“This cannot happen again, how often will this keep happening?” Kotti asked. “My soul bleeds that another girl who was full of dreams, in love with life, was lost, another family have lost the ground under their feet and will have to struggle to put the pieces back together, this is very hard to do, they will never get over the loss of their child.”
Of Griva’s killing outside a police station, she said: “Of course, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions or generalise but the authorities should pay more attention and evaluate each case more meticulously.”
Kotti said that boys especially should be taught from a young age that “they’re not entitled to anyone and that no means no, no one belongs to anyone else”.
Protests and vigils have sprung up across Greece in recent weeks, with some carrying protest banners written with the alleged words of the police officer before Griva was murdered: “The patrol car is not a taxi.”
There has also been an uptick in reporting of domestic violence cases – and arrests.
Anna Vouyioukas, a social scientist, gender equality expert and advocacy officer at Diotima, a centre for gender rights and equality in Greece, told Al Jazeera that it was “obvious that femicides may be the result of institutional violence as the state does not provide guarantees to women, and does not create conditions of safety in the community, at home, at work, in the public space and not even in the close vicinity of a police station”.
Vouyioukas said despite a spike in domestic violence cases as shown in the police’s own data, “gender-based crimes are not taken seriously by law enforcement authorities, at least not in all cases”.
She said that from 2020 to 2021, the number of women domestic violence victims increased by almost 73 percent, and from 2021 to 2022 there was a rise of 37 percent.
Vouyioukas urged Greece to adopt a legal recognition of femicide in the penal code, which she said would “make the phenomenon visible and give prominence to its social and gender dimension”.
“It is a crime committed on the basis of gender discrimination and unequal power relations,” she said, as she also called for further support for survivors and more training for police officers.
Kotti is part of a group of grieving families that have lost female relatives to domestic violence.
They would like to see life sentences for convicts that offer no prospect of release.
“We should tell it as it is,” she said. “Those who have had a life sentence are the women themselves and then the families who are forced to live in their absence.”
A framed photo of Dora next to a vigil lamp, a traditional Greek memorial practice for the dead [Anna Pantelia/Al Jazeera]
Araku Valley, India – Gemmala Sita is proud of the coffee beans she grows on what is among the world’s largest organic, fair-trade plantations. Her Arabica beans end up as steaming cups of coffee in the chic cafes of Paris and Dubai, Stockholm and Rome.
But the 29-year-old’s own life is a struggle for the basics. She must bathe in a makeshift washroom made of bamboo and covered with used household cloths.
Sita and her 45-year-old husband G Raja Rao are among 450 members of a tribal community that lives in Gondivalasa village in Araku Valley, on India’s eastern highlands facing the Bay of Bengal. The region in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is dotted with coffee fields renowned for its Arabica beans that are grown as an intercrop along with black pepper. When leaders from G20 nations visited New Delhi for the grouping’s annual summit last September, the Indian government gifted them this coffee.
Yet in Araku Valley, it is a protest that is brewing.
In India’s 2019 national election, the coffee hub grabbed headlines after more voters picked ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) from a long list of candidate options than the combined votes secured by the nation’s two biggest parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress party, in the constituency.
Only one other constituency in all of India registered more NOTA votes than Araku’s 47,977 votes – a direct message from voters that they did not find any candidate worth supporting. In 2014, too, Araku notched up the highest NOTA tally of 16,352 votes for any constituency in Andhra Pradesh.
And since then, the disillusionment among voters like Sita has only grown – as India’s ongoing national election rolls around to Araku Valley, which is scheduled to vote on May 13. In October 2019, Modi declared India open defecation-free. Sita knows that’s not true.
“It would have been better had there been toilets in the houses, but we have to go out in the open every morning to defecate,” she said. “We have no other option.”
Coffee farmer Gemmala Sita, whose beans reach cafes in global capitals – even as she must struggle without a toilet [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]
Sip of desperation
A British civil servant, NS Brodie, introduced coffee to Andhra Pradesh in 1898. Two decades later, in 1920, British revenue officers along with Maharaja of Jeypore – a now-abolished kingdom in present-day Odisha state – introduced coffee to Araku with seeds brought from the Nilgiris, a hill range in southern India.
Since then, the region’s coffee has emerged as a brand in its own right. Samala Ramesh, a deputy director at the local office of India’s coffee board, says the valley’s altitude – 3,000 feet above sea level – in a tropical region gives it a rare combination of hot days and cool nights. That, along with the medium levels of acidity in the region’s iron-rich soil, serve as ingredients that give Araku coffee a unique taste, he said.
The valley itself has 156 villages with a total population of 56,674 people, of which an estimated 20,000 people work in the coffee industry. The district it belongs to has a total of 230,000 coffee farmers. Most people involved in coffee farming come from tribal communities.
The annual unroasted coffee bean production of the entire district was around 15,000 metric tonnes in 2023-24. About 90 percent of Araku’s coffee is exported to Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Switzerland and other nations, according to the Trade Promotion Council of India. It is sold as gourmet coffee in Paris.
The government buys about 10 percent of the coffee from Araku farmers, while private firms buy the rest of it and process it, mostly for exports. The district’s coffee exports bring in 4 billion rupees ($48m) in annual revenue, said Ramesh. Overall, India is Asia’s third-largest coffee producer.
But while global audiences sip on Araku coffee, 33-year-old coffee farmer Buridi Samba said the region’s villagers don’t even have access to clean drinking water. They rely on natural springs.
The men in Gondivalasa bathe in a manhole they’ve built. There’s no drainage system. While the administration has built some public toilets, it has not provided water connections or septic tanks for human waste. The result: The toilets lie unused.
About 96 villages in the valley depend on one primary health centre (PHC) that is desperately short of medical staff. “We have just one general physician here and no specialist,” said Majji Bhadrayya, who heads the PHC.
While the health centre can do normal deliveries, it does not have the resources to carry out caesarean procedures. Patients often need to walk up to 10km (6 miles) to get to the clinic. Villagers carry those who can’t walk on makeshift stretchers made of clothes and tied to sticks. The health centre refers more serious cases to a larger hospital 7km (4.3 miles) away, said Bhadrayya. But that hospital too, a doctor there said on condition of anonymity, is missing specialists in key fields, as well as MRI and CT scan facilities.
Some villages have no proper roads connecting them to the clinic and hospital. In other cases, the roads are littered with potholes. Many parts of the region have no streetlights – so travelling after dusk is even more dangerous. And there’s only one college in the valley that offers degrees.
Tummidi Abhishek, an assistant executive engineer in the state government’s Tribal Welfare Department acknowledged that these shortages are “severe” in parts of the valley. But he insisted that the state government, under the regional YSR Congress Party, was “taking steps to improve the conditions in the valley and also in interior areas that had no accessibility before”.
These steps include the construction of so-called “multiple purpose centres” that would serve both as venues for community events and basic medical facilities – with labs for medical tests, midwives to help with deliveries and a room for doctors to examine patients. Abhishek said the government was also committed to building roads connecting remote villages to these facilities.
But the farmers of Araku have heard similar promises before. And it is not just the government that they feel bitter towards.
The coffee plantation fields of Araku Valley [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]
Earning a pittance
Since 1999, the Small and Marginal Tribal Farmers Mutually Aided Cooperative Society (SAMTFMACS), a cooperative of 100,000 coffee farmers families across 2,000 villages in the region, has tried to help the community produce better – and more sustainable – coffee. It is backed by the nonprofit Naandi Foundation. The cooperative supplies farmers with bio-inoculants to regenerate the soil, new varieties of seedlings and trains farmers in what is known as “terroir classification” – in essence, GPS mapping of each plot to help understand how the soil type, shade, elevation and other factors add to the unique taste of the coffee produced.
The cooperative also runs a modern processing unit in Araku, said Tamarba Chittibabu, the president of the cooperative society. Chittibabu said the cooperative usually sells the coffee to Araku Originals Private Limited (AOPL), a private firm that exports roasted beans to Belgium, France and China, among other countries.
But there’s a wide chasm between what the exporters make and what farmers earn.
Chittibabu said the cooperative buys coffee berries at 50 rupees ($0.60) per kilogramme – which he said was fair and based on the global price of coffee at the moment.
Ram Kumar Varma, the founder of Native Araku Coffee, a firm based in Visakhapatnam city in Andhra Pradesh, said his company tries to pay farmers a little more – 70 rupees ($0.80) per kilogramme. Many other coffee exporters buy berries from middlemen, who pay farmers even less than $0.60 per kilogramme for their produce. Varma and Chittibabu blamed middlemen for suppressing the earnings of farmers. “The middlemen have to be eliminated,” Varma said.
But Nava Roja, a 24-year-old coffee farmer, told Al Jazeera that even what SAMTFMACS or Native Araku pay producers is a pittance. She has around one acre of land that produces around 300kg (660 pounds) of berries. That gets her 15,000 rupees ($180) in a year, she said, at $0.60 per kilogramme.
“It is very difficult to survive with such a meagre amount in the face of growing inflation. We want at least 150 rupees [a little less than $2] per kilogramme as the roasted beans are sold at a very high price in the international market.”
Indeed, Varma confirmed that Araku’s coffee fetches between 2,500 and 6,000 rupees ($30-$72) per kilogramme in the international market.
Election officials prepare to seal the Electronic Voting Machines as the voting ends at a polling station in Chennai, southern Tamil Nadu state, Friday, April 19, 2024. The machine lists all candidates in that constituency and has the option of ‘None of the Above’ for voters not convinced about any candidate [Altaf Qadri/AP Photo]
Ballot or bullet
That sense of neglect from the government and the feeling of exploitation by the coffee industry have all made Araku fertile terrain for India’s Maoist rebels – who lead a far-left, armed movement spanning several states aimed at overthrowing the Indian state.
In 2018, Maoists shot dead two politicians hailing from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), a regional political party in the state. In the past, Maoist fighters have also called on the valley’s people to boycott elections, said Vundrakonda Haribabu, a political scientist at Andhra University.
Yet, Araku’s coffee farmers have defied the Maoists to vote – tens of thousands of them instead choosing NOTA in 2019 as a way of registering their protest.
And five years later, many are convinced that remains their best bet at being heard.
“We are completely justified in pressing NOTA because it gives a clear message to the political parties that they have failed,” said 30-year-old Gemmela Vasu, a villager in Gondivalasa. “It is better to go for NOTA rather than boycotting the elections.”
The farmers insist that they are not asking for much – better prices for their coffee berries, roads and medical facilities – and toilets. On May 13, said Sita, the farmer who must defecate in the open, she will again queue up at a polling booth to vote. She still hopes democratic India will wake up and smell the coffee.
Islamabad, Pakistan – It’s summertime, and mango season in Pakistan. But 25-year-old Amber* can’t stand the sight of the fruit, one of the country’s most famous exports.
Mangoes remind her of her jailed husband, Mohammad Zameer*. “My husband loves mangoes,” says the mother of three children from her home in Faisalabad, Pakistan’s third-largest city in the province of Punjab.
On May 9, 2023, Zameer was on his way home after lunch with his brother late in the afternoon when he became one among thousands of people who were caught up in a maelstrom of protests that exploded on Pakistan’s streets after former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s arrest. Khan’s supporters attacked government buildings and even military installations, after the former prime minister accused the country’s army of orchestrating his removal from power a year earlier.
The military cracked down on protesters, who were accused of what Pakistan’s government later described as an “attempted coup.” But rights groups say that many of the more than 9,000 people arrested across the country in the wake of the May 9 riots were not political activists, and some were bystanders picked up because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Zameer, 33, was among those arrested in Faisalabad. His family was confident he would be released soon. So Amber bought her husband’s favourite fruit to greet him with a mango shake when he returned home.
A year later, Amber — who was pregnant at the time — is effectively a single parent to their five-year-old son, three-year-old daughter and their youngest daughter, who was born after her husband’s arrest. And she’s still waiting to make a mango shake for Zameer.
“That summer ended, then the winters came and went, and now a new mango season is here, but my husband is yet to return home,” she says.
‘Dark chapter’
On May 9, nationwide protests erupted after Khan, the cricketer-turned-founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was arrested during a court appearance in capital Islamabad over corruption charges.
His supporters stormed the house of a military commander in Lahore, partially burning it. That night, a mob tried to enter the heavily secured military headquarters in Rawalpindi town.
Faced with a scenario that Pakistan’s security establishment had never faced its history, law enforcement officials fired on attackers. At least 10 people were killed in the protests. And a country already reeling under a severe economic crisis found itself grappling with deepening political instability.
The PTI supporters’ anger stemmed from Khan’s allegation that the “establishment” – a euphemism for the army – was behind his sacking in April 2022 when he lost a no-confidence vote in parliament and had to cede power to a coalition headed by current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Pakistan’s powerful military, which has directly ruled over the country for three decades and has enjoyed significant influence even under civilian governments, has consistently denied Khan’s allegations.
The military called the May 9 protests a “dark chapter” in Pakistan’s history and pledged to take strict action against the protesters.
Meanwhile, Khan — who was released on bail on May 12 — was eventually arrested in August, and has since been convicted in a spate of cases linked to corruption, state secrets and even the religious validity of his marriage. Those convictions in turn led to his disqualification from electoral politics. Khan could not contest in the national elections held in February this year, and remains in custody. The former prime minister has denied the charges against him, and has said they are politically motivated.
In the aftermath of the May 9 riots, 105 out of those who were arrested were charged under a section of the Official Secrets Act (OSA), which the government amended to broaden its scope. The amended law punishes anyone who “approaches, inspects, passes over or is in the vicinity of, or enters, attacks, destroys or otherwise undermines any prohibited place”.
These cases were heard in military courts, where the accused do not have the right to appeal verdicts in civilian courts. Access to lawyers in such cases is often at the discretion of the military, which otherwise provides a “friend of the accused” — a military official from the army’s legal department tasked to assist an accused person.
All 105 of them were convicted. In April, under instructions by Supreme Court of Pakistan, 20 of them were pardoned since their convictions were of less than a year.
The remaining 85 convictions — including Zameer’s — are currently on hold, due to a restraining order from the Supreme Court, which is currently hearing a case regarding the constitutionality of the military courts. But these 85 are still behind bars.
‘It’s my birthday next month’
It all began on the afternoon of May 9, Amber says. Zameer was almost home when he saw a large gathering of people outside a building near their house, which he realised was the local office of the Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan’s military intelligence agency). They were Khan’s supporters, protesting his arrest.
Amber says Zameer took a video of the protest on his phone, then came back home. Later that day, Zameer, a real estate dealer who also owns a mobile phone shop, shared the video he had shot with some of his friends on WhatsApp.
A week later, Zameer was at his shop when four officials, two of them in police uniform, arrested him. His family was still grieving the loss of Zameer’s father in March 2023. Now they had a new shock to deal with.
“Zameer used to do a lot of social work and people in the area knew him,” Amber says. “He had never thought he could be arrested.” She said the officers were courteous during the arrest and the family believed Zameer would likely be released soon.
Zameer was kept in a Faisalabad jail where his brothers would visit him, while Amber stayed at home. “He [Zameer] would send messages for me, asking me to stay strong and look after myself since I was pregnant at the time,” she said.
Soon, however, Zameer was moved out of Faisalabad and for more than a month, the family had no idea where he had been taken. “Those days were the worst and the most difficult time of my life. We had no clue about his whereabouts or safety,” says Amber. Eventually, authorities told the family in July, Amber says, that Zameer had been taken to Sialkot, a major industrial hub in Punjab, about 250km (155 miles) from Faisalabad.
Amber, who gave birth to their daughter in July, says her life has been “a living hell” since her husband was taken away.
“Next month is my birthday,” she says. “But it will be the second consecutive year when he won’t be here with us.”
‘Don’t expect me to come save you’
Some 180 kilometers (111 miles) east of Faisalabad in Lahore, 26-year-old Asif Ali* remembers the firm warning he gave his brother Faran*, who is two years younger, on May 9.
Originally from Shangla district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a PTI stronghold, Ali had moved to Lahore in 2019 while Faran joined him two years later for an undergraduate degree in zoology from Punjab University.
Though avowed Khan supporters, Ali said the brothers were not politically active. However, as soon as Khan was arrested, Faran told his brother he wanted to join a PTI protest in Lahore.
“I repeatedly told him not to do that, but my brother is very stubborn. I warned him of the consequences, told him if you ever get arrested, don’t expect me to come save you,” Ali recalled.
When Faran did not return home by midnight, Ali started calling him on his mobile phone but was unable to connect. Faran, Ali learned later, had been among the protesters who had entered the Lahore residence of a military commander, known locally as Jinnah House, a building named after Muhammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, who used to lived there. Protesters set fire to the building.
Faran was arrested with hundreds of others on the night of May 9.
They were taken to a local jail. Faran asked Ali to bring his textbooks — he had his annual college exams in less than a week. But the next day, Ali learned that Faran had been taken into the military’s direct custody. Ali did not hear from Faran for weeks.
“For the first few days, I kept lying to my parents about his disappearance. Then, I stopped taking their calls to avoid talking to them about Faran,” says Ali, who works as a marketing agent for a small business.
Faran never managed to appear for his exams and remains in military custody.
‘Where are the judgements?’
From mid-December through January, lawyer Khadija Siddiqui would visit, daily, the Lahore military court where the trials were being held for those accused of May 9 violence. She was representing three of those on trial.
But, she says, the process in the court left her with more questions than answers. In each case, she was given access to details of the accusations against her clients only 30 minutes before the hearing, giving her little time to prepare.
All of her clients were convicted under the colonial-era OSA. “The trial under military court basically targeted people for merely approaching the premises of what they called a prohibited area,” she says. And in none of cases was she given copies of the final conviction judgments, she says. That means lawyers like her do not know the duration of the prison sentences handed out to their clients.
Siddiqui says Pakistan’s criminal procedure allows for the punishment of crimes, such as vandalism and rioting. “So why this segregation of trying them under a military court, and not a civilian one?”
Al Jazeera sent a detailed questionnaire to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani military’s media wing, on Monday, May 6, seeking responses to the questions and allegations raised by family members of people still under arrest, and by lawyers like Siddiqui who are representing them. The questionnaire was also shared with Pakistan’s Ministry of Information. Al Jazeera also followed up on its request on Tuesday. Neither the ISPR nor the Ministry of Information has responded yet.
However, an army official pointed Al Jazeera to a news conference on May 7 by Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the chief of the ISPR, where he spoke — among other things — on the military’s response to May 9.
Chaudhry said that those involved in the acts of violence on May 9 needed to be punished — and their convictions were critical for the credibility of Pakistan’s legal system. “We believe that to keep trust in the judicial system of the country, both perpetrators and those physically involved in all such acts would have to be taken to task,” he said.
“In which country it happens that house of founder of the nation [Jinnah] is attacked and sensitive installations of armed forces are attacked?” Chaudhry asked “If one believes in Pakistan’s justice system and its framework of accountability, then according to the Constitution, those responsible for the events of May 9, including both perpetrators and masterminds, must face legal repercussions.”
‘There is nothing we can do’
But those “repercussions” also affect the families of those behind bars. Ali in Lahore says his mother became “mentally unstable” and has only seen Faran, in jail, twice in the last year.
“It is so difficult for them [his parents] to see him like that,” he says.
Ali visits his brother in Lahore’s cantonment once every week, where he is allowed to spend 30 to 60 minutes with him.
“I try to bring whatever I think he likes, but there are so many restrictions. We are told by the military to only bring boneless curries. We are not allowed to bring anything liquid either,” he says.
In Faisalabad, Amber says she has not met her husband since March. They spoke on the phone in April.
“My son misses his father so much,” she says. When the family visited Zameer in March, the father played with his children for a few minutes. But as they were leaving, “my son could not stop crying”.
“I never thought something like this would happen to us. To spend your life without your husband, and your children keep asking you questions you don’t have answers [to].”
*Some names have been changed to protect the identity of individuals.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
![The coffee plantation fields of Araku Valley [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/coffee-plantation-fields-1715313596.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C348)
