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No easy way out

February 05, 2021
Balance of Power
Bloomberg

You know you're losing the media war when your supporters start burning effigies of teenage environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg on the streets of New Delhi.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was already on the back foot over his administration's contentious new agriculture laws, with tens of thousands of protesting farmers dug in for months on the outskirts of the capital.

Modi's offer to defer the laws for 18 months — a significant move by a leader unused to compromise — was rejected by the farmers, who say the legislation will boost the role of corporations in the agricultural sector, which employs around 60% of the population.

Now his government's moves to restrict Internet and phone access at the protest sites have attracted criticism from celebrities and activists alike, and drawn a rebuke from the U.S. in the first public comment on India from President Joe Biden's administration.

Earlier in the week, Thunberg and pop star Rihanna tweeted their support for the farmers, spurring an online barrage from the ruling party's hardline digital army, followed by pro-government rallies.

Modi, who has a big parliamentary majority, is left with no good options. Farmers are an influential voting bloc and have shown their determination through Delhi's bitterly cold winter to see these laws overturned. Now the weather's warming and they're still there, with fresh protests planned for tomorrow.

It's not clear where Modi can turn next. — Ruth Pollard

Pro-government activists in New Delhi yesterday.

Source: Hindustan Times

Click here for this week's most compelling political images and tell us how we're doing or what we're missing at balancepower@bloomberg.net.

Global Headlines

Just in: The U.S. Senate voted 51-50, after Vice President Kamala Harris broke her first tie, to adopt a budget blueprint for Biden's $1.9 trillion virus relief package.

Russia reset | European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell met Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov today in Moscow as the 27-nation bloc seeks to reboot relations with Russia after years of confrontation. The first visit by a top EU official since 2017 came as President Vladimir Putin conducts a crackdown on protesters over the jailing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, whose case Borrell called "a low point in our relationship."

Shifting sands | Biden announced a major reversal of key Trump-administration foreign policy initiatives, including support for the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen and U.S. troop cuts in Germany that stunned European allies. Declaring that "diplomacy is back," he told the State Department the U.S. will take a firm stand in dealing with China and Russia and raise the cap on refugee admittance.

  • Attorneys for Donald Trump rejected a request from House impeachment managers for the former president to testify under oath about his conduct on Jan. 6 when his supporters stormed the Capitol.

Pro-China classrooms | Hong Kong ordered schools to adopt a new national education curriculum that aims to instill "an affection for the Chinese people" and weed out teachers who breach a security law imposed by Beijing last year. Primary and secondary school students will be required to memorize the law's offenses, which include subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign powers, Kari Lindberg reports.

Mysterious graffiti | "The people's savior" is the way Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's Colombian financier Alex Saab is being described in new graffiti across the capital, Caracas. Its appearance ahead of a court hearing today in Cape Verde, where Saab is detained pending a U.S. extradition request, suggests the government is trying to drum up popular support for him.

Photographer: Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg

Open up | The United Nations Security Council urged Ethiopia to allow  greater access to its war-stricken Tigray region where as many as two million people need humanitarian aid. The U.K.'s permanent representative to the UN said there's agreement that progress so far "is not enough." Diplomats said countries including Kenya, China and Russia are reluctant to put pressure on Ethiopia at this stage.

What to Watch

  • U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering using his Group of Seven presidency to forge an alliance on carbon border taxes, sources say.
  • Japanese brewer Kirin says it will end its joint-venture partnership with Myanmar's largest beer maker in one of the first responses by a global company to this week's military coup.
  • Ecuadorians vote for a new president on Sunday with a binary choice: whether to accept potentially harsh economic reforms or return to a Venezuela-style model of heavy state involvement in the economy.

And finally ... Many nations are struggling to persuade citizens to get Covid-19 inoculations, but the challenges are particularly daunting in Pakistan, where mistrust is fueled by anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and the legacy of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. As Chris Kay, Faseeh Mangi and Ismail Dilawar explain, suspicion deepened when it emerged that a fake vaccination drive was used to hunt down bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, where he was assassinated in 2011 by American special forces.

A banner paying tribute to health workers for their fight against Covid-19 in Islamabad in July.​​​​​​

Photographer: Aamir Qureshi/AFP

 
 

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