Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
January 21, 2019
India’s mega Hindu festival begins under cloud of toxic air
HAZARDOUS HAZE. A naga sadhu, or a Hindu
holy man (top photo), smiles while participating in a
procession toward the Sangam, the confluence of the
rivers Ganges, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati
during the Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad, India. In-
dia’s Hindu nationalist-led government is splurging on
the religious megafest, spending unprecedented sums
as part of a strategy to focus on the country’s majority
Hindu population ahead of a general election this year.
In the bottom photo, Hindu devotees arrive to take
spiritual-cleansing dips in the Sangam. (AP Photos/
Rajesh Kumar Singh)
By Emily Schmall
The Associated Press
RAYAGRAJ, India — Thousands
of portable toilets line roads
constantly swept clean, drinking
water flows from newly installed taps,
electric substations power a massive tent
city, and billboards encourage a “Clean
Kumbh,” an extension of Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s huge push to
improve sanitation across the country.
But the skies over the confluence of
sacred rivers in northern India where
millions of Hindu priests and pilgrims
have come to wash away their sins at the
ancient Kumbh Mela festival are thick
with toxic dust, a sign that government
officials are struggling to grapple with the
country’s worsening air pollution.
The hazardous air may also hinder the
government’s drive to make the Kumbh
Mela, or pitcher festival, a global tourism
event.
Four sites in India rotate every three
years hosting the Kumbh, the world’s
largest pilgrimage. The river baths,
prayer, meditation and yoga sessions, and
other religious rituals are organized by
sadhus, Hinduism’s holy men, and
financially supported with public funds.
Tens of millions throng to the sites for a
holy dip, many with little money, few
provisions, and nowhere to sleep.
The Indian government has for years
provided security and free food and shelter
for the poorest pilgrims.
For this year’s Kumbh — though less
religiously significant than the Kumbh
that happens every 12 years, and still less
than the one that occurs every 144 years —
the government shelled out an estimated
4.3 billion rupees ($650 million), hoping to
impress India’s largely Hindu population
ahead of general elections this year and
draw visitors from around the world.
The budget supplied thousands of toilets
and urinals, public dormitories, and
hundreds of water stations, as well as
police, hospitals, 24-hour pharmacies, and
fire and ambulance services.
P
And like elsewhere in India, a person’s
comfort is determined by wealth and social
standing.
The expansive campgrounds hosted
everything from luxury “glamping”
options that cost up to 35,000 rupees
($494) per night — private, tent “suites”
with plush bedding and flush toilets — to a
cot with a thin foam mattress in a public
dormitory in a high-top tent that costs 200
rupees ($2.83) per night.
“I go to holy sites very often, but I’m used
to them being very dirty. I have never seen
this level of cleanliness measures at any
other holy city,” said Gita Mishra, 58, one
of the guests at a public tent near the
banks of the river.
When people waiting for a spot outside
the tent learned it was full, they laid
blankets around the periphery to sleep in
the hazy open air.
Still others, including about 500
sanitation workers, pitched pup tents near
a row of some of the toilets they are paid
300 rupees ($7) per day to clean.
The production of any Kumbh is a
gargantuan task, particularly in the
low-lying Indian army parade grounds in
Prayagraj where the ritual baths take
place. Regular summertime floods leave
organizers only 40 to 50 days to erect the
temporary city, according to city commis-
sioner Ashish Goel.
But this year’s public provisions are
unprecedented.
“It’s a very aspirational Kumbh Mela,”
Goel said.
The dust plumes encompassing the
camp come from the sandy riverbanks,
Goel said, and not from construction,
which is banned during the 55-day
festival. Still, in the city center outside the
fairgrounds, brick kilns send up clouds of
PM 2.5, tiny particulate matter that can
dangerously clog lungs.
India’s cities are among the world’s
smoggiest.
The Indian government has announced
a five-year program to cut air pollution by
up to 30 percent from 2017 levels in the
country’s 102 worst-affected cities,
including Prayagraj.
Key targets include reducing burning of
field waste, firewood, and charcoal; clean-
ing up thermal power and auto emissions
and heavily polluting brick production;
and controlling dust from construction.
Critics say the plan lacks details on
enforcement and funding.
Associated Press videojournalist
Rishabh R. Jain contributed to this report.
Waning iPhone demand highlights Chinese consumer anxiety
iSLUMP. A trade-in-for-an-iPhone XR promotion
board is displayed while an Apple employee waits
for customers at a retail store in Beijing. Apple Inc.’s
$1,000 iPhone is a tough sell to Chinese consumers
who are jittery over an economic slump and a trade
war with Washington. The tech giant became the
latest global company to collide with Chinese con-
sumer anxiety when CEO Tim Cook said iPhone
demand is waning, due mostly to China. (AP Photo/
Andy Wong)
Continued from page 2
car or making other major purchases.
“People are worried about losing jobs,” she
said.
Weakness in Chinese demand is
especially painful for Apple and other
smartphone makers. China accounts for
one-third of the industry’s global handset
shipments.
Shipments in China fell 10 percent from
a year earlier to 103 million handsets in
the quarter ending in September,
according to research firm IDC. It expects
last year’s total Chinese purchases to
shrink by eight or nine percent compared
with 2016.
The belt-tightening in the world’s
second-largest economy is bedeviling
global industries, including autos and
designer clothing, that count on China to
drive sales growth.
The trade war with Washington has
shaken a “sense of China’s invincibility,”
said Mark Natkin, managing director of
Marbridge Consulting, a research firm in
Beijing. Chinese are waking up to the fact
that their economy is vulnerable to the
uncertainties of the global economy, he
said.
The slump is a setback for the ruling
Communist Party’s efforts to nurture
self-sustaining, consumer-driven eco-
nomic growth and wean China from its
reliance on exports and investment.
China’s third-quarter economic growth
of 6.5 percent was stronger than most
other major economies, but the country’s
lowest since the 2008 global crisis. The
deceleration partly reflects a deliberate
government campaign to rein in China’s
high debt levels. At the same time, Beijing
has sought to relieve the economic pain
with higher government spending.
“They’re trying to aim at a very fine
target,” said Dollar, a former World Bank
and U.S. Treasury Department official.
“They want to see the economy slow down,
but they don’t want to see it slow down too
much.”
China reported that factory activity
shrank in December for the first time in
more than two years. And auto sales in the
biggest global market are on track for their
first annual decline in three decades after
plunging 16 percent in November. Soft
real estate sales have forced developers to
cut prices.
Overall, export growth decelerated to
5.4 percent over a year earlier, less than
half of October’s 12.6 percent rate.
Sales to the U.S. market have held up
despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s
punitive tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese
goods, rising 12.9 percent in November
over a year earlier. But that was thanks
partly to exporters rushing to beat further
American duty increases — a trend that is
starting to fade.
Apple’s setback also highlights another
challenge: increasingly capable Chinese
competitors whose products cost less.
In smartphones, that includes Huawei,
Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi. Some are priced
as low as 500 yuan ($70). Others have
beaten the American giant to market with
features Chinese users want, such as
phones that can use separate carriers for
voice and data.
That has eroded the iPhone’s cachet and
customers’ willingness to pay premium
prices.
“I think 10,000 yuan ($1,400) for an
iPhone is too much,” said Vivian Yang, a
manager at a Beijing technology company.
“Nobody needs such a phone.”
Yuan Yuan, a 26-year-old employee of a
social-media company in Beijing, reflects
the pressures on urban professionals
squeezed by rising living costs and job
uncertainty.
Yuan said his monthly income
fluctuates between 3,000 and 10,000 yuan
($425 and $1,400) and only covers living
expenses.
As a university student, Yuan had an
iPhone paid for by his parents. But once he
had to buy his own, he switched to a
lower-priced Xiaomi.
“I have no plans to buy an apartment, a
car, or any other major items,” Yuan said.
AP researcher Yu Bing in Beijing, AP Markets
writer Marley Jay in New York, and AP Economics
writers Paul Wiseman and Josh Boak in
Washington contributed to this report.