Asia
India to resume regular international flights from Dec 15
After a long Covid-induced hiatus, India will resume regular international flights from the middle of December. This was announced by India's Civil Aviation Ministry on Friday.
"The matter of resumption of scheduled commercial international passenger services, to and from India, has been examined in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Health, and it has been decided... may be resumed from December 15," the Ministry said in an order.
Read:EU wants to stop flights from southern Africa over variant
The Indian government put curbs on all domestic and international flights in March last year in the wake of the Covid-induced lockdown. Though it allowed domestic flights from May 2020, restrictions prevailed on international flights till it allowed the entry of all foreigners except tourists in October that year.
However, restrictions on regular international flights to and from 14 countries, including the UK, France, Germany, China, Botswana and South Africa, will continue, government sources told UNB.
Read:South African scientists detect new virus variant amid spike
The Indian Civil Aviation Ministry's decision to resume scheduled international flights comes amid fears over a new variant of the coronavirus -- the B.1.1.529 strain -- that has spread to Botswana, Israel and Hong Kong since its detection in South Africa.
"All passengers coming to India will need to have downloaded a government contact-tracing app, and they will also be subject to thermal screening. Also, flyers will also need to wear masks and gloves while inside airports," the sources said.
Modi lays foundation stone for Asia's largest airport near Delhi
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday laid the foundation stone for what has been heralded as Asia's largest airport -- Noida International Airport, barely 80kms from the national capital.
Technically located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Bugh Nagar district bordering Delhi, the greenfield airport will be the second international airport to come up in the National Capital Region, after Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in Delhi. To be developed in four phases, the airport is slated to begin flight operations in three years.
"Noida International Airport will be a great model from the point of view of connectivity. Passengers will be able to use taxis, metro, rail to access Yamuna Expressway, Noida, Greater Noida, UP, Delhi and Haryana," Modi said, addressing a massive gathering at the airport site in the Jewar area of Gautam Bugh Nagar.
"The airport will also have direct connectivity to the Delhi freight corridor. It will be a logistics gateway for northern India and an image of the National Gati Shakti Master Master Plan. This airport will change people's lives in the region," the Prime Minister added.
Zurich AG, the company that operates Switzerland's Zurich International Airport, has been awarded the concessionaire contract to develop and operate Noida International Airport. Once operational in the first phase by 2024 with one runway, the airport would cater to 1.2 crore passengers a year. By 2040, it would be able to handle 7 crore passengers.
"25th November is a major day for India's and Uttar Pradesh's strides in infra creation. This project will significantly boost commerce, connectivity and tourism," Modi tweeted before the foundation stone laying ceremony, his first public event since he announced the scrapping of the three contentious farm laws.
The airport, however, has been mired in a land acquisition controversy. Some farmers have been camping in makeshift tents, barely 800kms from the airport site, claiming that they are yet to get adequate compensation from the Uttar Pradesh government for their agricultural and residential land acquired for the ambitious project.
However, according to experts, the gala foundation stone laying ceremony is nothing but an attempt to showcase the development agenda of Modi's nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh before the assembly polls.
"It is said that the road to Delhi passes through Uttar Pradesh. And the party that wins the majority of seats in assembly polls in the northern state stands a fair chance to form the federal government. The general elections are due in 2024," said Prof RK Sinha, a retired Delhi University professor.
South Korea sets pandemic high with 4,000 new virus cases
New coronavirus infections in South Korea exceeded 4,000 in a day for the first time since the start of the pandemic as a delta-driven spread continues to rattle the country after it eased social distancing in recent weeks to improve its economy.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said most of the new 4,116 cases reported Wednesday came from the capital Seoul and its surrounding metropolitan region, where an increase in hospitalizations has created fears about possible shortages in intensive care units.
Read: US to require vaccines for all border crossers in January
The country’s death toll is now 3,363 after 35 virus patients died in the past 24 hours. The 586 patients who are in serious or critical conditions also marked a new high.
South Korea is the latest country to see infections and hospitalizations rise after loosening social distancing measures amid high vaccination rates. Cases are also climbing in the United States ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, while Austria entered a major lockdown on Monday as a virus wave spreads across Europe.
Officials in South Korea eased social distancing rules starting this month and fully reopened schools on Monday in what they describe as first steps toward restoring some pre-pandemic normalcy. In allowing larger social gatherings and longer indoor dining hours at restaurants, officials had hoped that improving vaccination rates would keep hospitalizations and deaths down even if the virus continues to spread.
But health workers are now wrestling with a rise in serious cases and fatalities among older people who rejected vaccines or whose immunities have waned after getting injected early in the vaccine rollout that began in February.
“The rise in serious cases has been considerably higher than what we had expected,” Health Ministry official Son Youngrae said in a briefing. Son said officials are closely monitoring the situation and may announce steps to re-impose stronger social distancing measures in coming weeks if the spread continues to worsen.
Read: Covaxin cleared by UK, relief for Indian students, tourists
According to KDCA data, most of the virus patients who died in recent weeks were in their 60s or older, and the majority of them were not fully vaccinated or vaccinated at all. Son said there has also been a rise in breakthrough infections among older people who received two shots, showing how the delta variant is reducing the effectiveness of vaccines.
Officials are now scrambling to speed up the administration of booster shots and create plans to share hospital capacities between the greater Seoul area and other regions with smaller outbreaks to prevent hospital systems from being overwhelmed.
Son said the government has issued administrative orders to hospitals in the capital region to designate hundreds of more beds for virus patients. He said more than 83% of the region’s ICUs designated for COVID-19 treatment are currently occupied.
Covaxin cleared by UK, relief for Indian students, tourists
China and India's Covid vaccines have been approved by the U.K. for travel into the country, clearing the way for tourists and foreign students who have been fully immunized with them to enter.
Immunizations from China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd., state-owned Sinopharm, and India's Bharat Biotech International Ltd. have joined the list that the U.K. uses to grant entry with proof of full vaccination, according to a notice issued by the Department for Transport and Department of Health and Social Care on Monday, reports NDTV.
Read: Serum Institute of India to start Covishield supply to COVAX countries
Now all seven Covid shots that have received emergency backing from the World Health Organization will be recognized by the U.K., including India's Covaxin, which got the agency's nod in early November. The U.K. is following Australia, which last month expanded the number of shots it recognizes, and the U.S., which said it would accept all WHO-approved vaccines when it opened its borders to foreign travelers this month.
The U.K. decision should allow tens of thousands of Chinese students given home-grown shots to attend school there. Universities have received record numbers of undergraduate applications from Chinese nationals, according to an October report released by UCAS, a U.K. universities admission service provider. Sinovac and Sinopharm shots are the most widely used in China, which has vaccinated more than 80% of its 1.4 billion population.
Read:UK rules recognising Covaxin for inbound travel come into effect from today
China accounts for the majority of foreign students in the U.K., and their families contribute significant revenue to universities there every year, data from U.K.'s Higher Education Statistics Agency shows. More than 4,500 Chinese students applied for undergraduate admission to colleges and universities in the U.K. this year, an increase of about one-third since the global Covid-19 pandemic began.
Visitors to the U.K. who are not fully vaccinated are required to get Covid tests and quarantine for 10 days.
Serum Institute of India to start Covishield supply to COVAX countries
The Serum Institute of India (SII) will start COVID-19 vaccines supply to COVAX countries soon, sources said on Monday.
Serum Institute of India was supposed to start Covishield vaccine supply to COVAX countries from Monday, after it received approval from the government of India, to supply COVID vaccines to other countries, reports ANI.
Read:Made-in-India stealth fighter project set to take off in 2022
"The first consignment from the Pune facility of Serum Institute of India was scheduled to leave for Nepal today. However, due to some reason, it has been delayed by two to three days," said SII sources.
"However the clarity on the exact date of the consignment dispatch is still awaited," sources added.
Earlier, the government of India has allowed the SII to start the supply of vaccines to other countries in the world. The supply of COVID vaccines to other countries was banned by the government in April this year.
Read:Indian PM scraps three contentious farm laws
Earlier, in a tweet Serum Institute of India's chairman, Adar Poonawala had said that around 200 million doses of Covishield are stockpiled with the states in India.
Being the world's largest manufacturer of vaccines, SII now produces over 120 million doses of Covishield every month, and according to some sources, there are over 150 million doses stockpiled in the manufecturer'sshalini bhardwaj Pune facility.
At least 4 killed in southern China dormitory collapse
At least four people have died in the collapse of a workers’ dormitory in the southern Chinese province of Jiangxi, state media report.
The six-story building in the province’s Ganjiang New District tumbled down Monday evening, they said.
The building housed workers who had originally worked at a local pharmaceutical plant and most of the residents were elderly, according to state broadcaster CCTV and other outlets. The building was constructed in 1995 mainly out of prefabricated slabs and was considered to be poor quality, they said.
Also read: Search ends in Chinese hotel collapse that killed 17 people
Photos and video showed rescue crews searching through a pile of rubble under floodlights. Part of the building, one of several identical structures in the compound, remained standing.
China has sought to improve construction quality and industrial safety with the threat of prosecution, but accidents still occur as companies cut corners to save costs.
Aging infrastructure is also a growing problem, with gas line explosions a particular threat, along with weak adherence to safety standards for the handling of volatile chemicals.
Also read: Nigeria building collapse deaths climb to 36, dozens missing
Made-in-India stealth fighter project set to take off in 2022
India is now finally getting set to launch its most ambitious indigenous military aviation project to build a fifth-generation fighter or the advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA) with advanced stealth features as well as 'supercruise' capabilities, reported the Times of India.
The case for the full-scale engineering development of the twin-engine AMCA prototypes has been finalized and will be sent for approval to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) by early next year after consultations between the defence and finance ministries, top sources said on Sunday.
Production of fifth-generation jets is an extremely complex and expensive affair, with the American F/A-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning-II Joint Strike Fighter, the Chinese Chengdu J-20 and Russian Sukhoi-57 being the only operational ones around the globe at present.
Also read: Bangladesh's Delhi mission observes Armed Forces Day
Experts, however, contend the J-20 and Sukhoi-57 fighters are still somewhat short of being true-blue fifth-generation fighters. The 36 Rafales being inducted by IAF, under the Rs 59,000 crore deal inked with France in September 2016, are 4.5-generation jets.
As of now, the development cost of the 25-tonne AMCA is estimated to be around Rs 15,000 crore, with the first prototype’s “rollout” by 2025-26 and production of the Mark-1 jets slated to begin in 2030-31 under the “aggressive timelines” set by DRDO and its Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA). A more realistic timeframe for the AMCA induction to kick-off, however, would be around 2035.
The AMCA project is critical for IAF, which is grappling with just 30-32 fighter squadrons and will not reach its sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons even with “planned inductions” over the next 10-15 years.
The detailed AMCA designing, which was sanctioned in December 2018, meets IAF’s “preliminary staff qualitative requirements” but the requisite powerful engine remains a major problem.
Consequently, the first two squadrons of AMCA Mark-1 will have the existing General Electric-414 afterburning turbofan engine in the 98 Kilonewton thrust class, while the next five mark-2 squadrons will have a more powerful 110 Kilonewton engine. "With the foreign collaborator to be selected by early-2022, the new engine will be concurrently developed indigenously,” said a source.
The advanced stealth features in the swing-role AMCA will range from “serpentine air-intake” and an internal bay for smart weapons to radar absorbing materials and conformal antenna.
The fighter will also have the supercruise capability to achieve supersonic cruise speeds without the use of afterburners as well as data fusion and multi-sensor integration with AESA (active electronically scanned array) radars.
Also read: Made in India virus kits boost testing, and local industry
In the interim, IAF’s planned inductions include 73 Tejas Mark-1A fighters and 10 trainers, which will be delivered in the 2024-2028 timeframe under the Rs 46,898 crore deal inked with Hindustan Aeronautics in February this year.
Then there is the long-pending “Make in India” project for 114 new 4.5-generation fighters with “some fifth-generation capabilities” for over Rs 1.25 lakh crore, which has seven foreign contenders and is likely to get the initial “acceptance of necessity” next year.
There are some discussions also underway about whether India should leapfrog from the Tejas Mark-1A directly to the AMCA. “IAF will certainly require additional Tejas jets after the next 83 are delivered, whether they are enhanced variants of Mark-1A or Mark-2. Many technologies proven in their manufacture will be scaled up for AMCA,” said a source.
After slow starts, some Asian vaccination rates now soaring
When Cambodia rolled out COVID-19 vaccines, lines stretched down entire streets and people left their shoes out to save their places as they sheltered from the sun. But three months into its campaign, just 11% of the population had received at least one dose. In far wealthier Japan, it took two weeks longer to reach that level.
Now both countries boast vaccination rates that rank among the world's best. They are two of several nations in the Asia-Pacific region that got slow starts to their immunization campaigns but have since zoomed past the United States and many nations in Europe.
The countries with high rates include both richer and poorer ones, some with larger populations and some with smaller. But all have experience with infectious diseases, like SARS, and strong vaccine-procurement programs, many of which knew to spread their risk by ordering from multiple manufacturers.
Also read: US mandates vaccines or tests for big companies by Jan. 4
Most started vaccinating relatively late due to complacency amid low infection rates, initial supply issues and other factors. But by the time they did, soaring death tolls in the United States, Britain and India helped persuade even the skeptical to embrace the efforts.
“I did worry, but at the moment we are living under the threat of COVID-19. There is no option but to be vaccinated,” said Rath Sreymom, who rushed to get her daughter, 5-year-old Nuth Nyra, a shot once Cambodia opened its program to her age group this month.
Cambodia was one of the earlier countries in the region to start its vaccination program with a Feb. 10 launch — still two months after the United States and Britain began theirs. As elsewhere in the region, the rollout was slow, and by early May, as the delta variant started to spread rapidly, only 11% of its 16 million people had gotten at least their first shot, according to Our World in Data. That's about half the rate reached in the United States during the same timeframe and a third of the U.K.’s.
Today Cambodia is 78% fully vaccinated — compared to 58% in the U.S. It is now offering booster shots and looking at extending its program to 3- and 4-year-olds.
From the beginning, it has seen strong demand for the vaccine, with the rollout to the general public in April coinciding with a massive surge of cases in India, from which grim images emerged of pyres of bodies outside overwhelmed crematoria.
Also read: Indonesia first to greenlight Novavax COVID-19 vaccine
Prime Minister Hun Sen leveraged his close ties with Beijing to procure nearly 37 million doses from China, some of which were donated. He declared last week that Cambodia's “victory of vaccination” could not have happened without them. The country also received large donations from the U.S., Japan, Britain and from the international COVAX program.
Still, it took time to get sufficient supplies, and many countries in the region that started their programs later struggled even more, especially when the region’s major producer, India, suspended vaccine exports during its spring surge.
“Certainly getting the supply in place was really important for the countries that have done particularly well,” said John Fleming, the Asia-Pacific head of health for the Red Cross. “Then there’s the demand creation side — clearly this is about getting a buy-in from the population and also reaching out to marginalized groups.”
Early in the pandemic, many Asian countries imposed strict lockdown and travel rules that kept the virus largely at bay. As vaccines rolled out in force elsewhere, those low rates sometimes worked against them, giving some people the impression that getting the shot wasn't urgent.
But when the virulent delta variant began ripping through the region, cases rose, encouraging people to sign up.
Some countries, like Malaysia, made extra efforts to ensure that even the hardest-to-reach groups were offered the vaccine. It enlisted the Red Cross’s help to give shots to people living in the country illegally and other groups that may have feared showing up for a government-sponsored vaccination.
“We made the vaccine accessible to all, with no questions asked,” said Professor Sazaly Abu Bakar, director of the Tropical Infectious Diseases and Research Education Center.
As with Cambodia and Japan, Malaysia plodded along in its first three months, giving less than 5% of its 33 million people their first dose in that time, according to Our World in Data.
When cases surged, however, Malaysia bought more doses and established hundreds of vaccination centers, including mega hubs capable of providing up to 10,000 shots a day. The country now has 76% of its population fully vaccinated.
To date, about a dozen countries in the Asia-Pacific region have vaccinated more than 70% of their populations or are on the cusp of doing so, including Australia, China, Japan and Bhutan. In Singapore, 92% are fully vaccinated.
Some countries in Asia, however, have continued to struggle. India celebrated giving its billionth COVID-19 vaccine dose in October, but with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, that translates to a fully vaccinated rate of 29%. Indonesia started earlier than most but has also stumbled, largely due to the challenge of expanding its campaign across the thousands of islands that make up its archipelago.
Japan's vaccine program was notoriously slow — inching along while the world wondered if it would be able to hold the Summer Olympics. It didn't start until mid-February because it required additional clinical testing on Japanese people before using the vaccines — a move that was widely criticized as unnecessary. It was also initially hit with supply issues.
But then it turned a corner. Then-Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga brought in military medial staff to operate mass inoculation centers in Tokyo and Osaka and bent laws to allow dentists, paramedics and lab technicians to give shots alongside doctors and nurses.
The number of daily doses given rose to about 1.5 million in July, and the country is now at about 76% fully inoculated. A large part of Japan's success is due to the public's response, said Makoto Shimoaraiso, a senior official in charge of the country's COVID-19 response.
Many in Japan are skeptical in general about vaccines, but after seeing deaths soar around the world, it has not been an issue.
In fact, retiree Kiyoshi Goto is already clamoring for his next shot, as he looks warily at rising case in Europe.
“I want to get a booster shot as our antibody levels are going down,” the 75-year-old said.
In Phnom Penh, Nuth Nyra was just happy to get her first, saying she was afraid of COVID-19 before — but no more.
“I felt a little bit of pain when I got the shot,” the young girl said in a soft voice at a vaccination center on the outskirts of Cambodia's capital. “But I didn’t cry.”
Thousands of Afghans seek temporary US entry, few approved
More than 28,000 Afghans have applied for temporary admission into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons since shortly before the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan and sparked a chaotic U.S. withdrawal, but only about 100 of them have been approved, according to federal officials.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has struggled to keep up with the surge in applicants to a little-used program known as humanitarian parole but promises it’s ramping up staff to address the growing backlog.
Afghan families in the U.S. and the immigrant groups supporting them say the slow pace of approvals threatens the safety of their loved ones, who face an uncertain future under the hard-line Islamic government because of their ties to the West.
Read: Indian PM scraps three contentious farm laws
“We’re worried for their lives,” says Safi, a Massachusetts resident whose family is sponsoring 21 relatives seeking humanitarian parole. “Sometimes, I think there will be a day when I wake up and receive a call saying that they’re no more.”
The 38-year-old U.S. permanent resident, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of retribution against her relatives, is hoping to bring over her sister, her uncle and their families. She says the families have been in hiding and their house was destroyed in a recent bombing because her uncle had been a prominent local official before the Taliban took over.
The slow pace of approvals is frustrating because families have already paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars in processing fees, says Chiara St. Pierre, an attorney at the International Institute of New England in Lowell, Massachusetts, a refugee resettlement agency assisting Safi’s family.
Each parole application comes with a $575 filing charge, meaning USCIS, which is primarily fee-funded, is sitting on some $11.5 million from Afghans in the last few months alone, she and other advocates complain.
“People are desperate to get their families out,” said St. Pierre, whose nonprofit has filed more than 50 parole applications for Afghan nationals. “Do we not owe a duty to the people left behind, especially when they are following our immigration laws and using the options they have?”
Victoria Palmer, a USCIS spokesperson, said the agency has trained 44 additional staff to help address the application surge. As of mid-October, the agency had only six staffers detailed to the program.
Read: Global Covid cases top 255 million
Of the more than 100 approved as of July 1, some are still in Afghanistan and some have made it to third countries, she said, declining to provide details. The program typically receives fewer than 2,000 requests annually from all nationalities, of which USCIS approves an average of about 500, according to Palmer.
Part of the challenge is that humanitarian parole requires an in-person interview, meaning those in Afghanistan need to travel to another county with an operating U.S. embassy or consulate after they’ve cleared the initial screening. U.S. officials warn it could then take months longer, and there’s no guarantee parole will be granted, even after the interview.
Humanitarian parole doesn’t provide a path to lawful permanent residence or confer U.S. immigration status. It’s meant for foreigners who are unable to go through the asylum or other traditional visa processes, but who need to leave their country urgently.
The backlog of parole requests comes on top of the more than 73,000 Afghan refugees already evacuated from the country as part of Operations Allies Welcome, which was focused on Afghans who worked for the U.S. government as interpreters and in other jobs.
Most have arrived in the country and have been staying on military bases awaiting resettlement in communities across the country, though about 2,000 still remain overseas awaiting clearance to enter the U.S., according to Palmer.
But advocates question some of USCIS’s recent decisions for Afghan humanitarian parole, such as prioritizing applications from those already living in other countries. They say that approach is at odds with the program’s purpose of helping those most at risk.
The Biden administration should instead focus on applications from women and girls, LGBTQ people and religious minorities still in the country, said Sunil Varghese, of the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project.
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It could also dispense with some of the financial documentation required for applicants and their sponsors, since Congress has passed legislation making Afghan evacuees eligible for refugee benefits, said Lindsay Gray, CEO of Vecina, an Austin, Texas-based group that trains attorneys and volunteers on immigration matters.
Palmer didn’t directly address the critiques but said the agency, in each case, determines if there’s a “distinct, well-documented reason” to approve humanitarian parole and whether other protections are available. USCIS also considers whether the person already has U.S. ties, such as a family member with legal status or prior work for the U.S. government, among other factors.
In the meantime, Afghans in the U.S. have little choice but to wait and fret.
Bahara, another Afghan living in Massachusetts who asked her last name be withheld over concerns for her family, says she’s been wracked with guilt for her decision to leave her country to attend a local university.
The 29-year-old boarded a plane on Aug. 15 just hours before the Taliban swept into the capital of Kabul, leading to one of the largest mass evacuations in U.S. history.
“It was my dream, but it changed completely,” said Bahara, referring to enrolling in a U.S. master’s degree program. “I couldn’t stop thinking about my family. I couldn’t sleep the first few weeks. All I did was cry, but it didn’t help.”
Bahara said her family is worried because Taliban officials have been paying unannounced visits to people like her father who worked with the U.S. government after the militant group was originally ousted from power by the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
An American family is now sponsoring her family for humanitarian parole, giving Bahara hope even as she grieves over her country’s current situation.
“I cannot believe how everything just collapsed,” said Bahara, who founded a children’s literacy program in Afghanistan. “All the achievements and hard work just added up to zero, and now people are suffering.”
Read: Wild Asian elephant calf found dead near Sherpur border
Baktash Sharifi Baki, a green-card holder who has been living in the U.S. since 2014, was compelled to take more drastic measures as Afghanistan quickly unraveled this summer.
The Philadelphia resident, who served as an interpreter for the U.S. government, traveled back in August in the hopes of shepherding his wife, daughter, mother and godson to safety.
But the family wasn’t able to board any of the final commercial flights out of Kabul. Baki has appealed to the U.S. government to allow them to board one of the charter flights that have recently resumed.
Meanwhile, a friend in Louisiana has offered to serve as the family’s sponsor for a humanitarian parole application, even covering the costly fees himself.
Baki and his family are staying for now with relatives in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. But he worries his modest cash savings is dwindling just as the region’s harsh winter sets in and Afghanistan’s economic crisis is deepening.
“We are really facing a bad situation here,” Baki said. “We need to get out.”
Indian PM scraps three contentious farm laws
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday announced the scrapping of three contentious agricultural laws, apparently buckling under year-long farmer protests ahead of assembly polls in two states.
Tens of thousands of farmers have been camping on the outskirts of the national capital in protest against three controversial agricultural laws that they fear could hurt their livelihoods.
"Today I have come to tell you, the whole country, that we have decided to withdraw all three agricultural laws,” Modi said in an address to the nation in the morning.
Also read: Indian farmers intensify their protests against agri reforms
"In the Parliament session starting later this month, we will complete the constitutional process to repeal these three agricultural laws," he said, urging the protesting farmers to return to their homes and fields.
The Indian Prime Minister said that his government did its best to educate the farmers of this country about the benefits of the three agricultural laws but failed to achieve the desired results.
"We haven't been able to explain to our farmers. This is not a time to blame anyone. I want to tell you that we have taken the farm laws back," Modi added.
The government's decision comes on the occassion of Guru Nanak Jayanti, which celebrates the birth of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak. It's the most important festival of the minority Sikh community, who are primarily farmers and inhabitants of Punjab in northern India.
While some farmer bodies welcomed the move, others kept mum. "It's a good move by PM Narendra Modi on the occasion of Guru Purab," Joginder Singh Ugrahan, a prominent leader of a faction of the Bharatiyan Kisan Union, told the media.
India's opposition parties took to Twitter to react to the development.
"The country's farmers have defeated arrogance with their satyagraha. Jai Hindi, Jai Hindi's farmers," the country's main opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted. His party is a fierce critic of the three "anti-farmer" agricultural laws.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also tweeted, "Great news on Prakash Divas. Over 700 farmers lost their lives. Their sacrifice will live on. Future generations will remember how farmers gave their all for the cause of farmers. Salute India's farmers."
The three farm laws were brought in by the Indian government in September 2020 triggering fierce protests, particularly in the three northern Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Punjab and Uttar Pradesh are set to go to polls soon.
Also read: Indian farmers march seeking better prices for produce
While the Indian government had said that the reforms would help farmers get better prices by allowing them to sell their produce at markets and prices of their choice, the protesters feared the laws would hurt their interests by paving the way for the entry of private players into the agricultural market.
Experts said the three farm laws were revoked by the government in the wake of fierce protests that the top ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leaders had been facing during election campaign in Punjab and UP.
"It is said that the road to Delhi passes through Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. And the party that wins the majority of seats in assembly polls in the state stands a fair chance to form the federal government," Prof RK Sinha, a retired Delhi University professor, had earlier said.
The three farm laws are
1. Ending the monopoly of government-regulated markets and allowing farmers to sell their produce directly to private players
2. Ensuring a legal framework for farmers to enter into written pacts with companies and produce for them
3. Allowing agri-businesses to stock food articles and removing the government's ability to impose restrictions arbitrarily