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2 Years Into Russia-Ukraine War, U.S. Campaign to Isolate Putin Shows Limits

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Many nations insist on not taking sides in the war in Ukraine, while China, India and Brazil are filling Russia’s coffers.The Biden administration and European allies call President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a tyrant and a war criminal. But he enjoys a standing invitation to the halls of power in Brazil.The president of Brazil says that Ukraine and Russia are both to blame for the war that began with the Russian military’s invasion. And his nation’s purchases of Russian energy and fertilizer have soared, pumping billions of dollars into the Russian economy.The views of the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, encapsulate the global bind in which the United States and Ukraine find themselves as the war enters its third year.When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration activated a diplomatic offensive that was as important as its scramble to ship weapons to the Ukrainian military. Wielding economic sanctions and calling for a collective defense of international order, the United States sought to punish Russia with economic pain and political exile. The goal was to see companies and countries cut ties with Moscow.But two years later, Mr. Putin is not nearly as isolated as U.S. officials had hoped. Russia’s inherent strength, rooted in its vast supplies of oil and natural gas, has powered a financial and political resilience that threatens to outlast Western opposition. In parts of Asia, Africa and South America, his influence is as strong as ever or even growing. And his grip on power at home appears as strong as ever.The war has undoubtedly taken a toll on Russia: It has wrecked the country’s standing with much of Europe. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Mr. Putin’s arrest. The United Nations has repeatedly condemned the invasion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    War in Ukraine Deepens Divide Among Major Economies at G20 Gathering

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    Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen urged her counterparts at a summit in India to condemn Russia’s actions, and she defended the cost of supplying aid to Kyiv.A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war is deepening the division among the world’s major economies, threatening fragile recoveries by disrupting food and energy supply chains and distracting from plans to combat poverty and restructure debt in poor countries.Those fissures were evident this past week as top economic policymakers from the Group of 20 nations gathered for two days at a resort in Bengaluru, a city in southern India, where efforts to demonstrate unity were overshadowed by flaring tensions over Russia. During the summit, Western nations imposed a barrage of new sanctions on Moscow and unveiled more economic support for Ukraine, while developing countries like India, which have been reaping the benefits of cheap Russian oil, resisted expressing criticism.The differing views left officials struggling to cobble together the traditional joint statement, or communiqué, on Saturday, forcing senior representatives from the Group of 7 nations, the world’s most advanced economies, to try to convince reluctant counterparts that defending Ukraine was worth the cost.“Ukraine is fighting not only for their country, but for the preservation of democracy and peaceful conditions in Europe,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Saturday in an interview, explaining the case that she had made to the more reluctant countries. “It’s an assault on democracy and on territorial integrity that should concern all of us,” she added.The summit took place at a pivotal moment for the global economy. The International Monetary Fund last month upgraded its global output projections but warned that Russia’s war in Ukraine continued to cast a cloud of uncertainty. The fund also noted that increasing “fragmentation” in the world could be a drag on growth in the future.Ms. Yellen was among the most forceful critics of Russia during the two-day meeting. At one point, she directly confronted senior Russian officials in a private session and called them “complicit” in the Kremlin’s atrocities.The grappling over how to characterize Russia’s actions led Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, to publicly vent his frustration with some countries that would not assail Russia in writing. He noted that when the leaders of the Group of 20 nations met in November, in Bali, Indonesia, their statement had asserted that most members strongly condemned the war, and he said on Friday that he was opposed to watering down that sentiment.“I want to make it very clear that we will oppose any step back from the statement of the leaders in Bali on this question of the war in Ukraine,” Mr. Le Maire, who declined to name the holdouts, said at a news conference. “We strongly condemn this illegal and brutal attack against Ukraine.”India’s close economic ties with Russia have made its role as the host of the Group of 20 this year especially challenging. Moscow is a major supplier of energy and military equipment to India, while the United States is India’s largest trading partner.To remain neutral, India has tried to avoid describing the conflict as a “war” and instead focused on other issues. In an opening address to the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid out the threats facing the global economy, but he made no mention of Russia, pointing instead to “rising geopolitical tensions in many parts of the world.”Some of the resistance to condemning Russia is because of concern about the United States’ use of its economic might to isolate a member of the Group of 20.“The fact that the U.S. clearly has so much power to take action against a geopolitical rival is a significant concern,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University who speaks to both American and Indian officials. “There’s clearly been a splintering of the G20.”Mr. Prasad added that the aggressive use of sanctions by the United States had raised anxiety among other nations — even if they disagreed with Russia’s actions — that they could someday be exposed to Washington’s wrath.That use of economic warfare was on display on Friday, when the United States imposed sanctions on more than 200 individuals and entities in Russia and other countries that are helping to financially support Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions were also placed on Russia’s metals and mining sector and on energy companies.The war in Ukraine was not the only matter this past week that consumed finance ministers in India.The United States and Europe continued to hash out differences over American subsidies for electric vehicles that European countries believe will harm their economies. A global tax agreement that was struck in 2021 continues to flounder, raising the prospect that it could unravel. And talks over restructuring debt burdens facing poor countries to avoid a cascade of defaults failed to bear fruit, largely because of resistance from China.“There hasn’t been a significant change that I see,” said Ms. Yellen, who expressed frustration at China’s role as a roadblock this past week.But it is the war in Ukraine that has left the world’s economic leaders most divided. In many cases, resistance to supporting Ukraine and confronting Russia is the result of complicated domestic politics in many countries, and the United States is no exception.A growing number of Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, have been arguing in recent weeks that the United States cannot afford to endlessly support Kyiv. They contend that at a time when the United States is burdened by record levels of debt and a weakening economy, that money would be better spent on domestic problems.In the past year, the United States has directed more than $100 billion dollars of humanitarian, financial and military aid to Ukraine. The Congressional Budget Office projected last week that the United States was on track to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade, $3 trillion more than previously forecast.For the Biden administration, scaling back aid to Ukraine does not appear to be an option.In the interview, Ms. Yellen argued that the United States can afford to bear the costs and that supporting Ukraine was a priority for national security and economic reasons.“The war is having an adverse effect on the entire global economy,” Ms. Yellen said, “and providing the support that’s necessary for Ukraine to win this and bring it to an end is certainly something that we really can’t afford not to do.” More

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    U.S. Courts India as Technology Partner to Counter China

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    American and Indian officials are working toward new partnerships in defense technology, advanced telecom and semiconductors.Officials from the United States and India agreed on Tuesday to expand cooperation on advanced weaponry, supercomputing, semiconductors and other high-tech fields, as the Biden administration looks to strengthen its connections with Asian allies and offset China’s dominance of cutting-edge technologies.The agreements followed two days of high-level meetings in Washington between government officials and executives from dozens of companies, the first under a new dialogue about critical and emerging technologies that President Biden and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced in Tokyo in May.Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that the goal was for technological partnerships to be “the next big milestone” in the U.S.-Indian relationship after a 2016 agreement on nuclear power cooperation. He described the effort as a “big foundational piece of an overall strategy to put the entire democratic world in the Indo-Pacific in a position of strength.”The agreements will be a test of whether the Biden administration can realize its proposal for “friendshoring” by shifting the manufacturing of certain critical components to friendly countries. Biden officials have expressed concerns about the United States’ continued heavy reliance on China for semiconductors, telecommunications parts and other important goods. In recent months they have clamped down on the sale of advanced semiconductor technology to China, in an effort to stymie an industry that the White House says could give China a military advantage.Many companies have found it difficult to obtain the factory space and skilled workers they would need to move their supply chains out of China. India has a highly skilled work force and a government that wants to attract more international investment, but multinational companies seeking to operate there continue to complain of onerous regulations, inadequate infrastructure and other barriers.Our Coverage of the Investment WorldThe decline of the stock and bond markets this year has been painful, and it remains difficult to predict what is in store for the future.2023 Predictions: There are plenty of forecasts coming for where the S&P 500 will be at the end of the year. Should you be paying attention to them?May I Speak to a Human?: Younger investors who are navigating market volatility and trying to save for retirement are finding that digital investment platforms lack the personal touch.Tips for Investors: When you invest and where matters for taxes. But a few rules of thumb can stave off some nasty surprises.Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi are also propelling closer U.S.-Indian cooperation in efforts to build out the industrial and innovation bases of their countries, Mr. Sullivan said.The partnerships announced on Tuesday include an agreement between the U.S. and Indian national science agencies to cooperate on artificial intelligence and advanced wireless technology, as well as in other areas.The countries also pledged to speed up their efforts to jointly produce and develop certain defense technologies, including jet engines, artillery systems and armored infantry vehicles. The United States said it would look to quickly review a new proposal by General Electric to produce a jet engine with India.Officials also said they would work together to facilitate the build-out of an advanced mobile network in India and look for new cooperation in semiconductor production, including efforts to help India bolster chip research and production that would complement major investments in the industry in the United States.The new dialogue would include efforts to work through regulatory barriers, as well as visa restrictions that have prevented talented Indians from working in the United States, the countries said.But experts said India would need to continue to reform its permitting and tax system to lure more foreign manufacturing companies. And the United States would need to reform restrictions on transferring defense-related technology outside the country, they said, if it hopes to work with India to produce jet engines and other advanced weapons.Analysts also noted that many of the technology partnerships would hinge on new connections between the countries’ private sectors, meaning that the agreements could go only so far.India’s frequent purchases of Russian military equipment and close ties with Russia also present another wrinkle to the planned partnership. But Biden officials said they believed that the cooperation could accelerate India’s move away from Russia, to the benefit of its relationship with the United States.On Monday, Mr. Sullivan, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, met with more than 40 company executives, university presidents and others, including executives from Lockheed Martin, Tata, Adani Defense and Aerospace, and Micron Technology.A semiconductor event last year in Bengaluru, India. A technology partnership “has the potential to take U.S.-India ties to the next level,” Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution said.Munsif VengattilReuters“It has the potential to take U.S.-India ties to the next level,” Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said of the initiative. The trick, she added, will be “getting from potential and promises to outcomes.”“Many of the decisions to collaborate or not will be made in the private sector, and companies will be assessing the business case as much as, if not more than, the strategic case,” Ms. Madan said.India has traditionally been known as a difficult partner for the United States in trade negotiations. In the talks that the Biden administration is currently carrying out in Asia, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum, India bowed out of the trade portion of the deal, though it has continued to negotiate in areas like clean energy, supply chains and labor standards.But analysts said the Indian government was far more motivated on national security matters, and particularly tempted by the prospects of working with the United States to cultivate cutting-edge tech industries.“We both have a common purpose here, which is the fear that China is going to eat our lunch in all the sectors unless we find areas to cooperate and collaborate,” said Richard M. Rossow, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. More

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    Indian Rupee Hits Weakest Level Ever Against U.S. Dollar

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    How much an Indian rupee is worth

    Note: Scale is inverted. A falling line indicates a weaker rupee.Source: FactSetBy The New York TimesThe Indian rupee touched the weakest level on record against the dollar on Tuesday, another victim of higher energy prices and a stronger greenback.The rupee has lost about 7 percent of its value against the dollar this year as India has spent more to import sources of energy like crude oil, natural gas and coal. Prices of those commodities have climbed after Russia invaded Ukraine.Another factor behind the decline of the rupee is uncertainty about the global economy that has, in turn, propelled the dollar to a 20-year high against the currencies of its major trading partners. Investors have pulled money out of India and other developing countries and poured it in to the United States, where the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates aggressively to tame inflation.“A lot of it is dollar strength rather than rupee weakness,” said Rahul Bajoria, the chief economist for India at Barclays. “It still feels like on a relative basis the rupee has done a lot better,” he said, pointing to the steeper declines in the value of the euro and the British pound against the dollar.On Tuesday, the rupee briefly crossed 80 to the dollar for the first time. The Reserve Bank of India intervened in the market, as it has in recent months, to bid up the currency, according to local media reports.Like in much of the world, inflation has slowed economic growth this year in India. Reserve Bank officials responded by unexpectedly raising rates in May, and then again in June, to 4.9 percent. But inflation remains around 7 percent, putting pressure on household budgets.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has cut taxes on fuel and restricted exports of wheat and sugar. And it has bought more Russian oil, which has become cheaper following sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe. More

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    India’s Economy Is Growing Quickly. Why Can’t It Produce Enough Jobs?

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    The disconnect is a result of India’s uneven growth, powered and enjoyed by the country’s upper strata.NEW DELHI — On paper, India’s economy has had a banner year. Exports are at record highs. Profits of publicly traded companies have doubled. A vibrant middle class, built over the past few decades, is now shelling out so much on movie tickets, cars, real estate and vacations that economists call it post-pandemic “revenge spending.”Yet even as India is projected to have the fastest growth of any major economy this year, the rosy headline figures do not reflect reality for hundreds of millions of Indians. The growth is still not translating into enough jobs for the waves of educated young people who enter the labor force each year. A far larger number of Indians eke out a living in the informal sector, and they have been battered in recent months by high inflation, especially in food prices.The disconnect is a result of India’s uneven growth, which is powered by the voracious consumption of the country’s upper strata but whose benefits often do not extend beyond the urban middle class. The pandemic has magnified the divide, throwing tens of millions of Indians into extreme poverty while the number of Indian billionaires has surged, according to Oxfam.The concentration of wealth is in part a product of the growth-at-all-costs ambitions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who promised when he was re-elected in 2019 to double the size of India’s economy by 2024, lifting the country into the $5 trillion-or-more club alongside the United States, China and Japan.The government reported late last month that the economy had expanded 8.7 percent in the last year, to $3.3 trillion. But with domestic investment lackluster, and government hiring slowing, India has turned to subsidized fuel, food and housing for the poorest to address the widespread joblessness. Free grains now reach two-thirds of the country’s more than 1.3 billion people.Those handouts, by some calculations, have pushed inequality in India to its lowest level in decades. Still, critics of the Indian government say that subsidies cannot be used forever to paper over inadequate job creation. This is especially true as tens of millions of Indians — new college graduates, farmers looking to leave the fields and women taking on work — are expected to seek to flood the nonfarm work force in the coming years.A job fair in Chennai last month.Idrees Mohammed/EPA, via Shutterstock“There is a historical disconnect in the Indian growth story, where growth essentially happens without a corresponding increase in employment,” said Mahesh Vyas, the chief executive of the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, a data research firm.Among the job seekers despairing over the lack of opportunities is Sweety Sinha, who lives in Haryana, a northern state where unemployment was a staggering 34.5 percent in April.As a child, Ms. Sinha liked to pretend to be a teacher, standing in front of her village classroom with fake eyeglasses and a wooden baton, to fellow students’ great amusement.Her ambition came true years later when she got a job teaching math at a private school. But the coronavirus upended her dreams, as the Indian economy contracted 7.3 percent in the 2020-21 fiscal year. Within months of starting, she and several other teachers were laid off because so many students had dropped out.Ms. Sinha, 30, is again in the market for a job. In November, she joined thousands of applicants vying for much-coveted work in the government. She has also traveled across Haryana seeking jobs, but turned them down because of the meager pay — less than $400 a month.“Sometimes, during nights, I really get scared: What if I am not able to get anything?” she said. “All of my friends are suffering because of unemployment.”But for Indian politicians, a high unemployment rate “is not a showstopper,” said Mr. Vyas, the economist, adding that they were far more concerned with inflation, which affects all voters.India’s reserve bank and finance ministry have tried to tackle inflation, which is battering many countries because of pandemic-related supply chain problems and the war in Ukraine, by restricting exports of wheat and sugar, raising interest rates and cutting taxes on fuel.The bank, after raising borrowing rates in May for the first time in two years, increased them again on Wednesday, to 4.9 percent. As it did so, it forecast that inflation would reach 6.7 percent over the next three quarters.Reserve bank officials have also employed an array of fiscal and monetary tactics to continue supporting growth, which cooled in the first quarter of 2022, falling to 4.1 percent. Household consumption, a major driver of India’s economy, has dropped in the last few months.“We are committed to containing inflation,” said the bank’s governor, Shaktikanta Das. “At the same time, we have to keep in mind the requirements of growth. It can’t be a situation where the operation is successful and the patient is dead.”While the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve in the United States have said their countries need to accept lower growth rates because of high commodity prices, India’s reserve bank is not in that camp, said Priyanka Kishore, an analyst at Oxford Economics. “Growth matters a lot for India,” she said. “There’s a political agenda.”Working at a brick factory in Bangalore.Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe ban on food exports is a sharp turnabout for Mr. Modi. In response to Russia’s blockade on Ukrainian ports, which has led to a global shortage of grains, he had said in April that Indian farmers could help feed the world. Instead, with the global wheat shortfalls driving up prices, the Indian government imposed an export ban to keep domestic prices low.Temporary interventions like these are easier than addressing the fundamental problem of large-scale unemployment.“You have wheat in your godowns and you can ship it out to households and get instant gratification,” Mr. Vyas said, referring to storage facilities, “whereas trying certain policies for employment is far more protracted and intangible.”Those policies, analysts say, could include greater efforts to build up India’s underdeveloped manufacturing sector. They also say that India should ease regulations that often make it difficult to do business, as well as reducing tariffs so manufacturers have an easier time securing components not made in India.Exports have been a source of strength for the Indian economy, and the rupee has depreciated by about 4 percent against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of the year, which would normally boost exports.But inflation in the United States and war in Europe have started to affect sales for Indian-made clothes, said Raja M. Shanmugam, the president of a trade association in Tiruppur, a textile hub in the state of Tamil Nadu.“All the input cost is increasing. Even earlier this industry worked on wafer-thin margins, but now we are working on loss,” he said. “So a situation which is normally a happy situation for the exporters is not so anymore.”The struggles of working-class Indians, and the millions of unemployed, may eventually cause a drag on growth, economists say.Zia Ullah, who drives an auto-rickshaw in Tumakuru, an industrial city in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, said his income was still only about a quarter of what it was before the pandemic.The $20 he used to earn daily was enough to cover household expenses for his family of five, and school fees for his three children.“Customers are preferring to walk,” he said. “No one seems to have money these days to take an auto.”Mr. Ullah, 55, said the cost of food had climbed so much that he had to cut down on meals and take two of his children out of school.“Only one, the elder daughter, goes to school now,” Mr. Ullah said. “The rest look around for work in the area.”Hari Kumar contributed reporting. 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    India’s Economic Figures Belie Covid-19’s Toll

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    Strong results compared with last year’s performance mask lingering weaknesses that could hold back needed job creation.NEW DELHI — The coronavirus continues to batter India’s damaged economy, putting growing pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to nurture a nascent recovery and get the country back to work.The coronavirus, which has struck in two waves, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and at times has brought cities to a halt. Infections and deaths have eased, and the country is returning to work. Economists predict that growth could surge in the second half of the year on paper.Still, the damage could take years to undo. Economic output was 9.2 percent lower for the April-through-June period this year than what it was for the same period in 2019, according to India Ratings, a credit ratings agency.The coronavirus has essentially robbed India of much of the momentum it needed to provide jobs for its young and fast-growing work force. It has also exacerbated longer-term problems that were already dragging down growth, such as high debt, a lack of competitiveness with other countries and policy missteps.Economists are particularly concerned about the slow rate of vaccinations and the possibility of a third wave of the coronavirus, which could prove to be disastrous for any economic recovery.“Vaccination progress remains slow,” with just 11 percent of the population fully inoculated so far, Priyanka Kishore, the head of India and Southeast Asia at Oxford Economics, said in a research briefing last week. The firm lowered its growth rate for 2021 to 8.8 percent, from 9.1 percent.Even growth of 8.8 percent would be a strong number in better times. Compared with the prior year, India’s economy grew 20.1 percent April through June, according to estimates released Tuesday evening by the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation.But those comparisons benefit from comparison with India’s dismal performance last year. The economy shrank 7.3 percent last year, when the government shut down the economy to stop a first wave of the coronavirus. That led to big job losses, now among the biggest hurdles holding back growth, experts say.The coronavirus continues to batter India’s damaged economy, putting growing pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesReal household incomes have fallen further this year, said Mahesh Vyas, the chief executive of the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy. “Till this is not repaired,” he said, “the Indian economy can’t bounce back.”At least 3.2 million Indians lost stable, well-paying salaried jobs in July alone, Mr. Vyas estimated. Small traders and daily wage laborers suffered bigger job losses during the lockdowns than others, though they were able to go back to work once the restrictions were lifted, Mr. Vyas said in a report this month.“Salaried jobs are not similarly elastic,” he said. “It is difficult to retrieve a lost salaried job.”About 10 million people have lost such jobs since the beginning of the pandemic, Mr. Vyas said.Mr. Modi’s government moved this month to rekindle the economy by selling stakes worth close to $81 billion in state-owned assets like airports, railway stations and stadiums. But economists largely see the policy as a move to generate cash in the short term. It remains to be seen if it will lead to more investment, they say.“The whole idea is that the government will borrow this money from the domestic market,” said Devendra Kumar Pant, the chief economist at India Ratings. “But what happens if this project goes to a domestic player and he is having to borrow in the domestic market? Your credit demand domestically won’t change.”Dr. Pant added that questions remained about how willing private players would be to maintain those assets long term and how the monetization policy would ultimately affect prices for consumers..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“In India, things will decay for the worse rather than improve,” he said, adding that the costs to users of highways and other infrastructure could go up.During the second wave in May, Mr. Modi resisted calls by many epidemiologists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to reinstitute a nationwide lockdown.At a vaccination site in India in June. Economists are particularly concerned about the slow rate of vaccinations and the possibility of a third wave of the coronavirus.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesThe lockdowns in 2021 were nowhere near as severe as the nationwide curbs last year, which pushed millions of people out of cities and into rural areas, often on foot because rail and other transportation had been suspended.Throughout the second wave, core infrastructure projects across the country, which employ millions of domestic migrant workers, were exempted from restrictions. More than 15,000 miles of Indian highway projects, along with rail and city metro improvements, continued.On Tuesday, Dr. Pant said India’s growth estimates of 20.1 percent for the April-through-June period were nothing but an “illusion.” Growth contracted so sharply around the same period last year, by a record 24 percent, that even double-digit gains this year would leave the economy behind where it was two years ago.Economists say India needs to spend, even splurge, to unlock the full potential of its huge low-skilled work force. “There is a need for very simple primary health facilities, primary services to deliver nutrition to children,” Mr. Vyas said. “All these are highly labor intensive jobs, and these are government services largely.”One of the reasons Indian governments typically have not spent in those areas, Mr. Vyas said, is that it has been considered “not a sexy thing to do.” Another is the governments’ “dogmatic fixation” with keeping fiscal deficits in control, he said. The government simply can’t rely on private sector alone for creating jobs, Mr. Vyas said.The “only solution,” he said, is for the government to spend and spur private investment. “You have a de-motivated private sector because there isn’t enough demand. That’s what’s holding India back.” More

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    Portraits of Kolkata’s Rickshaw Pullers

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    It was still dark when I met Mohammed near the central market in Kolkata, the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. He and two other men were piling dozens of enormous jute bags into the carriage of his black-and-red rickshaw — supplies, he said, to be delivered around the city.For Mohammed, it was just the beginning of a long day’s work.A rickshaw puller from the neighboring state of Bihar.Kolkata is among the only places in India — and one of the few left in the world — where fleets of hand-pulled rickshaws still ply the streets.The men who operate them are called rickshaw wallahs. (Wallah is a term for someone who carries or procures something.) Some pull their rickshaws more than 10 miles a day while carrying several hundred pounds — the combined weight of the rickshaw and a couple of occupants. Their daily wages often equate to a few dollars.A set of idle rickshaws in the early morning.My job as a photojournalist involves a lot of travel, and I’ve become quite good at acclimatizing to new places. These days, it’s difficult for me to feel culturally disoriented, or dépaysé, as we say in French — literally “out of one’s country.”Yet Kolkata, which I visited in 2018 while on scholarship for a photography workshop, left me with a welcome sense of cultural dislocation. The saris, the sounds of the Bengali language, the smells of the spice markets, the thick monsoon air: All of it contributed to my sense of disorientation in this dense, river delta city of more than 14 million residents. And so, too, did the sight of the rickshaw wallahs, who, often barefoot, pulled their passengers through the crowded streets.Mohammad pulls a group of children to school.Rickshaw wallahs don’t earn a living serving tourists. Their clientele consists mainly of local Kolkatans: shoppers coming to and from markets, or residents transiting the city’s narrow side streets. Schoolchildren, picked up at home and dropped at school every day, often represent a steady income. If someone is sick at night, a rickshaw will do just as well as an ambulance.And when monsoon rains fall, usually between May and September, rickshaws — pulled through waist-deep water — can provide transportation to places that motorized vehicles cannot reach.Rickshaws in the downtown area of Kolkata.During the height of India’s Covid crisis, in April and May, many rickshaw wallahs provided an invaluable service, shuttling patients to and from clinics and hospitals. Others were forced to leave Kolkata and return to their home villages during the lockdown. (In many places in India and elsewhere, the pandemic has led to a mass exodus of migrant laborers.)A rickshaw puller adjusts his vehicle before the start of his workday.Two passengers and their cargo near a market.Rickshaw wallahs don’t earn a living serving tourists. Their clientele consists mainly of local Kolkatans.Over the years, human rights groups and governing authorities have tried to curb the use of hand-pulled rickshaws, which some see as a degrading colonial anachronism. Local authorities officially banned the vehicles in 2006 and have stopped issuing or renewing licenses, while promising that the government would offer training for alternative livelihoods.But for the hundreds, if not thousands, of pullers who remain (some estimates place the number of remaining rickshaw wallahs at between 500, some at 5,000), rickshaws are often their only reliable source of income.A rickshaw puller washes his clothes at a public fountain.Not all of the men I met were willing to have their pictures taken. Some wondered what good it would do. But others, like Mohammed, were eager to share their stories.One young man described his frustration with the police, who, on occasion, issue fines, confiscate rickshaws or demand bribes. “They know where we are and where we work,” he told me. “They just do it for the money — and then we have to earn it back.”Two rickshaw pullers sleep on mats on the street.Many rickshaw pullers are migrants from the neighboring state of Bihar. With the exception of the meager funds they keep for their daily needs, they send much of what they earn home to their families.Over the years, human rights groups and governing authorities have tried to curb the use of hand-pulled rickshaws, which some see as a degrading colonial anachronism.Bihar has one of the lowest literacy rates in all India. In fact, none of the men I met knew how to read or write.But Mohammed took pride in telling me that his children in Bihar are attending school.“All of them,” he added with a candid smile, “thanks to the money I’m sending.”After we talked, I watched as he bent down to pick up his set of handles and walked away. Before long, all I could see was the black patch of his rickshaw vanishing around a corner.Emilienne Malfatto is a photojournalist and writer based in Iraq and Southern Europe. You can follow her work on Instagram and Twitter.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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    Covid-19 Pushes India’s Middle Class Toward Poverty

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    The pandemic sent 32 million people in India from the middle class last year. Now a second wave is threatening the dreams of millions more looking for a better life.NOIDA, India — Ashish Anand had dreams of becoming a fashion designer. A former flight attendant, he borrowed from relatives and poured his $5,000 life savings into opening a clothing shop on the outskirts of Delhi selling custom-designed suits, shirts and pants.The shop, called the Right Fit, opened in February 2020, just weeks before the coronavirus struck India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi abruptly enacted one of the world’s toughest nationwide lockdowns to stop it. Unable to pay the rent, Mr. Anand closed the Right Fit two months later.Now Mr. Anand, his wife and his two children are among millions of people in India in danger of sliding out of the middle class and into poverty. They depend on handouts from his aging in-laws. Khichdi, or watery lentils cooked with rice, has replaced eggs and chicken at the dinner table. Sometimes, he said, the children go to bed hungry.“I have nothing left in my pocket,” said Mr. Anand, 38. “How can I not give food to my children?”Now a second wave of Covid-19 has struck India, and the middle class dreams of tens of millions of people face even greater peril. Already, about 32 million people in India were driven into poverty by the pandemic last year, according to the Pew Research Center, accounting for a majority of the 54 million who slipped out of the middle class worldwide.The pandemic is undoing decades of progress for a country that in fits and starts has brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Already, deep structural problems and the sometimes impetuous nature of many of Mr. Modi’s policies had been hindering growth. A shrinking middle class would deal lasting damage.“It’s very bad news in every possible way,” said Jayati Ghosh, a development economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “It has set back our growth trajectory hugely and created much greater inequality.”The second wave presents difficult choices for India and Mr. Modi. India on Friday reported more than 216,000 new infections, another record. Lockdowns are back in some states. With work scarce, migrant workers are packing into trains and buses home as they did last year. The country’s vaccination campaign has been slow, though the government has picked up the pace.Yet Mr. Modi appears unwilling to repeat last year’s draconian lockdown, which left more than 100 million Indians jobless and which many economists blame for worsening the pandemic’s problems. His government has also been reluctant to increase spending substantially like the United States and some other places, instead releasing a budget that would raise spending on infrastructure and in other areas but that also emphasizes cutting debt.Anil G. Kumar lives in Palam, one of the many neighborhoods in Delhi that have been hurt by the pandemic.Smita Sharma for The New York TimesThe Modi government has defended its handling of the pandemic, saying vaccinations are making progress and that signs point to an economic resurgence. Economists are forecasting a rebound in the coming year, though the sudden rise in infections and India’s slow vaccination rate — less than 9 percent of the population has been inoculated — could undermine those predictions.The heady growth forecasts feel far away for Nikita Jagad, who was out of work for over eight months. Ms. Jagad, a 49-year-old resident of Mumbai, stopped going out with her friends, eating at restaurants and even taking bus rides, unless the trip was for a job interview. Sometimes, she said, she shut herself inside her bathroom so her 71-year-old mother wouldn’t hear her crying.Last week, Ms. Jagad got a new job as a manager at a company that provides housekeeping services for airlines. It pays less than $400 a month, roughly half her previous salary. It could also be short-lived: the state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, announced lockdown-like measures this week to stop the spreading second wave.If she loses her new job, Ms. Jagad is still the only support for her mother. “If something happens to her,” she said, “I don’t have the money to even admit her in the hospital.”India’s middle class may not be as wealthy as its peers in the United States and elsewhere, but it makes up an increasingly potent economic force. While definitions vary, Pew Research defines middle-class and upper-middle-class households as living on about $10 to $50 a day. The kind of income could give an Indian family an apartment in a nice neighborhood, a car or a scooter, and the opportunities to send their children to a private school.Roughly 66 million people in India meet that definition, compared with about 99 million just before the pandemic last year, according to Pew research estimates. These increasingly affluent Indian families have drawn foreign companies like Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, Nissan and others to invest heavily in a country of aspirational consumers.A collage of vacation photographs in Ashish Anand’s apartment in Noida, a reminder of the good times the family once had.Smita Sharma for The New York TimesAnil G. Kumar, a civil engineer, was one of them. Around this time last year, he and his family were about to buy a two-bedroom apartment. But when last year’s lockdown hit, Mr. Kumar’s employer, a construction chemicals manufacturer, slashed his salary by half.“Everything turned turtle within a few hours,” he said. Three months later, his job had been eliminated.Now Mr. Kumar spends his days in his home in a working-class neighborhood in the western part of Delhi, searching for jobs on LinkedIn and taking care of his son.The family’s middle-class life is now under threat. They survive on the $470-a-month salary Mr. Kumar’s wife draws from a private university. Instead of holding a big celebration for their son’s 10th birthday at a restaurant, which would have cost nearly $70, they ordered a cake and a new outfit for about one-fifth the cost. Mr. Kumar also canceled his Amazon Prime subscription, which he hadn’t used in a while.“Every day you can’t sit on the laptop,” he said. “At times, you feel depressed.”India’s middle class is central to more than the economy. It fits into India’s broader ambitions to rival China, which has grown faster and more consistently, as a regional superpower.To get there, the Indian government may need to address the people the coronavirus has left behind. Household incomes and overall consumption have weakened, even though the sales of some goods have increased recently because of pent-up demand. Many of the hardest hit come from India’s merchant class, the shopkeepers, stall operators or other small entrepreneurs who often live off the books of a major company.“India is not even discussing poverty or inequality or lack of employment or fall in incomes and consumption,” said Mahesh Vyas, the chief executive of the Center for Monitoring of the Indian Economy. “This needs to change first and foremost,” he said.Mr. Kumar with his 10-year-old son, Akshay, in the Palam neighborhood in Delhi, India. Mr. Kumar lost his job as a civil engineer during last year’s lockdown.Smita Sharma for The New York TimesMost Indians are “tired” and “discouraged” by the lack of jobs, said Mr. Vyas, especially low-skilled workers.“Unless this problem is addressed,” he said, “this will be a millstone that will hold back India’s sustained growth.”Mr. Anand, the prospective fashion designer, who lives in the industrial hub of Noida in the southeastern Delhi area, found himself at wit’s end during last year’s lockdown. The family fell behind on the rent. Two months into the lockdown, he collapsed in what he described as a panic attack.“We did not want to live,” said his wife, Akanksha Chadda, 33, a former operations manager at a luxury retail store who also hasn’t been able to find a job. She sat facing a photograph taken three years ago of her son and daughter sitting on a giant turtle at an amusement park. “I didn’t know if I would wake up the next morning or not.”The days when they could afford muesli for breakfast and pizza for dinner are gone, said Mr. Anand. On good days, they get some vegetables and banana for the kids.In January, Ms. Chadda sold their 8-year-old son’s bicycle to buy milk, lentils and vegetables. He cried for a solid evening. But she felt she had little choice. She had already sold her jewelry the month before.“When you don’t see a ray of hope,” she said, “you lose it.” More