Stunning Images of Destroyed Syrian City

Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Syrian government forces patrolled the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs on Sunday.

In 1982, after President Hafez al-Assad’s forces leveled whole sections of Syria’s fourth-largest city, Hama, to suppress a revolt, the first foreign journalists allowed to view the rubble were shocked by the scale of the destruction.

Three decades later, as another President Assad struggles to defeat a much broader insurgency, reporters have again been left searching for words as images emerge of vast tracts of ruins where, until recently, the vibrant residential neighborhood of Khalidiya stood in the country’s third-largest city, Homs.

“almost complete destruction” BBC’s @ramiruhayem tells @BBCNewshour about #Syria govt capture Khalidiya #Homs ..what is left of it

â€" lyse doucet (@bbclysedoucet) 28 Jul 13

Sam Skaine/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images What an Agence France-Presse journalist found in the Homs neighborhood of Khalidiya on Tuesday.

Reuters, via Shaam News Network An image provided to news organizations by a Syrian opposition news agency, said to show the ruined Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs on Friday, as government forces regained control.

The extent of the damage brought to mind the words of a United States Army officer who told the Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett, as they surveyed the ruined Vietnamese city of Ben Tre, pulverized by American bombardment in 1968: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

As a colleague who visited Homs this month reported, at the center of Khalidiya is the silver-domed mosque of Khalid bin al-Waleed â€" named for an early Islamic warrior particularly revered by the Sunni Muslims who make up the backbone of the rebellion â€" which is now “pockmarked and perforated.”

Sam Skaine/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images A soldier loyal to President Bashar al-Assad outside the Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs on Monday.

Sam Skaine/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Ruins around the historic Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs on Monday.

When Syrians first took to the streets in 2011, Homs was known as “the capital of the revolution.” Video posted online by Syrian activists throughout the spring and summer of that year showed protest after protest in the neighborhood around the mosque, as demonstrators chanted for the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad and security forces struggled to contain them.

Video of a protest on May 13, 2011, in the Khalidiya district of Homs showed demonstrators chanting, “The people want the fall of the regime,” as the security forces fired at them.

Video of protesters in Khalidiya, Homs, on Aug. 10, 2011.

In video of the protests, the mosque’s distinctive silver domes, a point of pride and wonder before the uprising, were frequently visible in the background â€" particularly in one clip recorded in July 2011 after the security forces opened fire at the funeral of a demonstrator.

Video posted online by Syrian activists on July 20, 2011, said to have been recorded during an attack by the security forces on a funeral in the Khalidiya district of Homs a day earlier.

In the past two years, as the uprising devolved into an armed conflict and rebel-held Khalidiya came under heavy bombardment by government forces, activists trained their cameras on the mosque.

Video posted on YouTube in March by Syrian opposition activists showed shelling at the Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs.

Over the weekend, as government forces closed in on the area, opposition activists continued to record shells landing around the familiar domes.

Video of shelling near the Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs, recorded on Friday, according to opposition activists.

Just hours after a final video of government shelling in the area was recorded on Saturday by an opposition activist, a reporter for state television accompanied Syrian Army troops as they took control of the mosque.

Video of a news report on Saturday from Syrian state television, showing a reporter inside the Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs.

The capture of the mosque was greeted as a major propaganda victory by supporters of the Syrian government, who gleefully shared images of government troops in and around the famous domes.

Image from the Khalid Ibn Al Walid Mosque in Khalidiya #Homs back in the hands of the #SAA http://t.co/iLm63wAkO1

â€" G (@SyrianLionesss) 27 Jul 13

Filming among the ruins, a crew from the Iranian government’s Arabic-language news channel Al-Alam reported on Monday that government forces had taken control of all of Khalidiya.

A report from Al-Alam, Iran’s Arabic-language news channel, on Syrian forces taking control of the Homs neighborhood of Khalidiya.

In an English-language news bulletin broadcast Tuesday night, Syrian state television hailed the offensive and claimed that government forces were consolidating their gains in the city.

An English-language news bulletin from Syrian state television broadcast on Tuesday.

Image of the Day: July 31

Mahesh Kumar A/Associated Press Women releasing pigeons in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, as they celebrate the United Progressive Alliance coalition’s endorsement of creating the new state of Telangana in Southern India.

Debate Over Controversial Delhi “Encounter” Continues

Altaf Qadri/Associated Press Demonstrators protesting against the judgment in the Batla House encounter case in New Delhi on Saturday.

NEW DELHI - The questions surrounding the controversial Batla House encounter in New Delhi continue to be unresolved. On Tuesday, a local court sentenced Shahzad Ahmad, 24, the only person arrested after the September 19, 2008 gunfight between Delhi police officials and suspected terrorists in Batla House area of south Delhi, to life imprisonment for killing a police officer. But human rights activists contesting the police version say that the legal battles around the half a decade old episode are far from over.

Mohan Chand Sharma, 42, an officer of the Delhi Police, was killed in the September 2008 gun battle. Atif Ameen, 24, and Mohammad Sajid, 17, two alleged operatives of the terrorist group Indian Mujahideen, were also killed. Mr. Ameen was a postgraduate student of human rights at the Jamia Millia Islamia University. Mr. Sajid was an 11th grade student at a school in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh. Mr. Ameen, Mr. Sajid and Mr. Ahmad hailed from Azamgarh.

Mr. Ahmad, 24, the sole person arrested in the case, was charged with the murder of the police inspector, attempt to murder two police officers and prevent public servants from completing their duties. He was arrested in February 2010.

A third man, who the prosecution alleged, escaped with Mr. Ahmad, is still at large.

Satish Tamta, the defense counsel for Mr. Ahmad, argued in court that his client had not been in the apartment at the time of the raid and could not have killed the police inspector.

The police raid on Batla House was conducted six days after a series of blasts rocked the capital, killing at least 30 people.

Delhi Police claimed that the men present in the Batla House apartment were operatives of Indian Mujahideen, the terrorist organization allegedly responsible for the Delhi blasts.

Mr. Tamta insisted that the police lacked sufficient evidence to support their allegation that the accused had been members of the Indian Mujahideen.

In his judgment, Rajender Kumar Shastri, additional sessions judge at the Saket district court in south-east Delhi noted:

“True, there is no evidence on record to establish that fact. At the same time, this court cannot be expected to endeavour in giving any finding about said fact. For the purpose of decision of this case it hardly matters as to whether accused was affiliated to Indian Muzahiddin or not.”

The closely-watched trial has drawn criticism from the Human Rights Watch, which in a 2011 report said, “We do not have sufficient information to determine whether the police’s fatal shootings inside Batla House were legitimate acts of self-defense. However, we believe such incidents should be thoroughly and independently investigated.”

In a press conference on Wednesday, Mr. Tamta, along with members of the advocacy group, Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, asserted that the court had “conveniently ignored all arguments and evidence favoring the defendant.”

Courtesy of Malavika Vyawahare Advocate Satish Tamta, third from left, along with members of the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.

During the trial, the defense had questioned why the police had not included any independent witnesses in the police raiding party, which is standard operating procedure for a police raid, even though the raid was to take place during the day and in a crowded area.

The public prosecutor in turn argued that given “the majority of residents of that area are followers of the religion, as was of those suspects. If the police officers tried to involve any such local resident, it would have created social unrest in that area, causing fear to the life of those police persons even.”

Manisha Sethi, the president of the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, criticized what she called the acceptance of a “pernicious communal logic, which should not have been entertained at all and rejected out rightly by the court.”

Ms. Sethi also said that the judgment should not be seen as a closure of the Batla House encounter case.

The Delhi Police reacted with caution to the judgment. “We had appealed for a death sentence but the court has settled for a life sentence,” S.N. Srivastava, special commissioner of the Delhi Police Special Cell, said. “We would look into the judgment closely and then take a final call.”

“We all know the Batla House encounter was fake,” Shifa Siraj, Mr. Ahmad’s 22-year-old sister said in a phone interview. “My brother is completely innocent, so are the other boys” who were killed in that encounter.

Ms. Siraj is confident that justice would be delivered by the higher courts and her brother would be acquitted.

Dreams of a Mother

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Akbari Begum Khan, third from left, with her family members at their home in South Delhi on June 18.

NEW DELHI - Akbari Begum Khan was exhausted by a long morning of cooking for several homes, where she works as a maid. The 46-year-old woman in a white and blue nightie sprawled on the hard floor of her small rented room. Mrs. Khan snored through the unruly game of carom being played by Sahil, her 3-year-old adopted son, and Nashad, her 6-year-old grandson.

Outside, a punishing afternoon sun beat down on the vegetable vendors and butchers whose shops lined the narrow, dusty street, where she lived in a cramped room in Madangir area in south Delhi. Mrs. Khan’s room, fortified by bottles of hair oil and prickly heat powder, steel utensils and a whirring plastic cooler, was deliciously dim and cool.

Every morning, Mrs. Khan wakes up before dawn and walks about four kilometers (2.5 miles) to work. She covers the distance in an hour, plodding along slowly because of her worsening diabetes. She walks back in the afternoon to prepare lunch at home and to spend time with her children. She sets off again at about five in the evening to cook dinner for her clients and then makes the journey back on foot by 9 pm or 10 pm at night.

With two of her eldest daughters now married, one to an office manager and the second to an engineer, Mrs. Khan talked about reaching the halfway mark on the road to fulfilling her responsibilities. She still has to raise her 16-year-old daughter, Nazia, her 13-year-old son, Anas, and Sahil, whom she adopted after his mother died during childbirth.

“Sometimes, I don’t have the energy to go for work. But when I wake up and see my children sleeping in a line, I know I have to get up,” said Mrs. Khan. “I walk these roads every day.”

She makes about 6,000 rupees, or $100, a month. She pays 3,000 rupees, or $ 50, in rent. An auto-rickshaw would cost her rupees 3,000 or $50, every month, a public bus would cost rupees 600 or $10 per monthâ€"expenses she can’t afford. She walks.  “On winter mornings, the roads are empty. And then it’s the same at night,” said Mrs. Khan. “I know it’s not safe. I just think of God, and keep walking.”

Domestic workers in India are subjected to poor working conditions, low wages, and abusive language. But Mrs. Khan is what her employers described as one of Delhi’s modern maids, who insist on a reasonable salary and being treated with respect. Mrs. Khan takes care to dress well, and often uses hand me downs from her employers. “I don’t feel like a beggar inside but like a king,” she said. “If you take away the wealth of a king, you cannot take away dignity. So even if I have been hungry for four days, you can’t look at me or my children and say we are poor.”

According to Indian laws, maids don’t qualify for minimum wage rights, but employers in more socially conscious homes are changing their behavior toward them. The biggest changes are in households where both the husband and wife work, and such professional couples are dependent on maids and nannies to take care of the house and their children. It has increased the bargaining power of domestic help. Some maids are able to secure between 8,000 rupees to 12,000 rupees a month.

Mrs. Khan used to make 8,000 rupees a month by working in four homes. But she recently lost a client, who found someone younger and more agile, and so her monthly earnings are down to 6,000 rupees.

Maids and male servants traditionally sat on the floor while speaking to their employers. But increasingly, the help is no longer tolerating abusive language or being overly servile.

Mrs. Khan perched herself on the sofa in the drawing room while discussing the household chores with one of her employers, a young couple. The husband is a corporate lawyer and the wife works in the government. They requested not to be identified to protect their privacy.

“We are very impressed by her strength and determination to provide for her family,” said the wife. “We attended her girl’s marriage this year. She is so smart that even with her meager resources, she managed to pull off a good wedding.”

At Mrs. Khan’s home, however, nobody but her immediate family knows that she works as a maid. “They would mock me and shame my children,” she said. “I know there is dignity in all kind of work. But I still feel ashamed that at my age, I am sweeping and cleaning toilets. At times, my girls offered to help because I can no longer bend easily, but I don’t let them.”

Mrs. Khan came to Delhi in 1999 with her children after fleeing her husband’s home. They lived in a conservative Muslim community in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. She was married at age 11 to her teenage cousin, and her first child was born when she was 16.

Her husband, she recalled, had a good heart but was a drunkard who used to beat her badly. “He would beat me with anything he could find,” she said. Mrs. Khan described being desperately unhappy at her in-laws’ home, where she remained fully veiled and rarely moved outside her home. “It was suffocating,” she said. She decided to leave her alcoholic husband when he stopped providing for their children.

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Mrs. Khan buying mangoes near her house in South Delhi.

When Mrs. Khan came to Delhi, she found work checking for damaged products in a sporting goods factory. But after her eyesight weakened a few years ago, she found work as a maid.

To do her job at the factory, Mrs. Khan gave up the veil, and she has never encouraged her daughters to even cover their head.  “The veil is to stop strangers from looking at us. Now what’s the use of the veil if I have to work outside or run to the market 10 times?” she said. “My girls never covered their heads, but I didn’t let them go anywhere except school or college and straight back to the house. I have been very strict about that.”

Although Mrs. Khan has been working for more than 10 years, her income has never been enough to provide the comfortable life she is still trying to give her children.  Even now, there are days when the family cannot buy vegetables. “We make do by having roti with pickles or chutney,” she said.

Despite having married her two eldest daughters into well-off homes, Mrs. Khan doesn’t ask them for help. “This is Hindustan. If a son takes care of his mother, it’s okay, but if a daughter helps her mother, she is accused of eating into her husband’s house,” said Mrs. Khan.

“No matter how nice they maybe, but sons-in-law are not your own. As long as my arms and legs are working, I never want my daughter to hear her husband say, ‘I did this for your mother,’ ” she said.

Despite her grueling work, Mrs. Khan is proud to have educated her daughters. Her father and her husband had supported her to complete her education till the 12th grade. “I loved studying and topped in class 10,” she recalled.

Some of her employers have supported her determination to educate her daughters, by giving her extra money to buy books, notebooks and stationery.

While her eldest daughter finished college and the second one studied until the 11th grade, it’s her third daughter, Nazia Khan, who has inherited her mother’s love for studying.

Ms. Khan brought down a plastic box from a shelf lined with schoolbooks. Inside, she has preserved her prized notebooks, projects and drawings from the second grade, which she leafed through and described animatedly. “She had taken commerce so her class 12 results were not too good. Tuitions were necessary, but I couldn’t afford 1,000 rupees for it,” said Mrs. Khan.

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Nazia Khan at her home in South Delhi.

These days, Ms. Khan is taking computer classes and trying to improve her English in preparation for the entrance exam for law school next year. “I wanted to be a lawyer since I was a child,” she said. “I don’t want to be one of those private lawyers who only make money but a government lawyer. If one has to do a job, then why not do a good job instead of a small one?”

So now Mrs. Khan has to worry about raising 77,000 rupees, which is the annual fee at the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi for a five-year law program. “We can think of taking a loan for one year, but how can we for the other four years?” she said.

Her employers said that Mrs. Khan would be wiser to set her daughter on a more practical course like training as a beautician. “Her ambition for her daughter is wonderful to see,” said the wife. “But I also think her children will have a better future with more practical dreams.”

Meanwhile, pressure from relatives in Banda to get Ms. Khan married has been building. “I ignore them,” Mrs. Khan said. “If she becomes a lawyer, the best of boys will fall in line for her.”

Ms. Khan was reconciled to the possibility that law school may not happen for her. She recalled how badly she once wanted to participate in a television show, but the family couldn’t raise 2,000 rupees that were required to build her portfolio.

“It will be great if I can become a lawyer,” she said. “From teaching us the Koran to feeding us, I know how hard my mother has worked for us. And now it’s my turn to take care of her, one way or the other.”

Mrs. Khan is now trying to secure more work for a higher pay. “I have a few more years of work left in me,” she said. “I could work in some more homes, but there are not enough hours left in the day.”

Sending her daughter to law school is her most important challenge yet. But she had faith that some window of opportunity will open. “I work now to fulfill her dreams because they are mine,” she said. “What else is there to live for?”.

Dreams of a Mother

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Akbari Begum Khan, third from left, with her family members at their home in South Delhi on June 18.

NEW DELHI - Akbari Begum Khan was exhausted by a long morning of cooking for several homes, where she works as a maid. The 46-year-old woman in a white and blue nightie sprawled on the hard floor of her small rented room. Mrs. Khan snored through the unruly game of carom being played by Sahil, her 3-year-old adopted son, and Nashad, her 6-year-old grandson.

Outside, a punishing afternoon sun beat down on the vegetable vendors and butchers whose shops lined the narrow, dusty street, where she lived in a cramped room in Madangir area in south Delhi. Mrs. Khan’s room, fortified by bottles of hair oil and prickly heat powder, steel utensils and a whirring plastic cooler, was deliciously dim and cool.

Every morning, Mrs. Khan wakes up before dawn and walks about four kilometers (2.5 miles) to work. She covers the distance in an hour, plodding along slowly because of her worsening diabetes. She walks back in the afternoon to prepare lunch at home and to spend time with her children. She sets off again at about five in the evening to cook dinner for her clients and then makes the journey back on foot by 9 pm or 10 pm at night.

With two of her eldest daughters now married, one to an office manager and the second to an engineer, Mrs. Khan talked about reaching the halfway mark on the road to fulfilling her responsibilities. She still has to raise her 16-year-old daughter, Nazia, her 13-year-old son, Anas, and Sahil, whom she adopted after his mother died during childbirth.

“Sometimes, I don’t have the energy to go for work. But when I wake up and see my children sleeping in a line, I know I have to get up,” said Mrs. Khan. “I walk these roads every day.”

She makes about 6,000 rupees, or $100, a month. She pays 3,000 rupees, or $ 50, in rent. An auto-rickshaw would cost her rupees 3,000 or $50, every month, a public bus would cost rupees 600 or $10 per monthâ€"expenses she can’t afford. She walks.  “On winter mornings, the roads are empty. And then it’s the same at night,” said Mrs. Khan. “I know it’s not safe. I just think of God, and keep walking.”

Domestic workers in India are subjected to poor working conditions, low wages, and abusive language. But Mrs. Khan is what her employers described as one of Delhi’s modern maids, who insist on a reasonable salary and being treated with respect. Mrs. Khan takes care to dress well, and often uses hand me downs from her employers. “I don’t feel like a beggar inside but like a king,” she said. “If you take away the wealth of a king, you cannot take away dignity. So even if I have been hungry for four days, you can’t look at me or my children and say we are poor.”

According to Indian laws, maids don’t qualify for minimum wage rights, but employers in more socially conscious homes are changing their behavior toward them. The biggest changes are in households where both the husband and wife work, and such professional couples are dependent on maids and nannies to take care of the house and their children. It has increased the bargaining power of domestic help. Some maids are able to secure between 8,000 rupees to 12,000 rupees a month.

Mrs. Khan used to make 8,000 rupees a month by working in four homes. But she recently lost a client, who found someone younger and more agile, and so her monthly earnings are down to 6,000 rupees.

Maids and male servants traditionally sat on the floor while speaking to their employers. But increasingly, the help is no longer tolerating abusive language or being overly servile.

Mrs. Khan perched herself on the sofa in the drawing room while discussing the household chores with one of her employers, a young couple. The husband is a corporate lawyer and the wife works in the government. They requested not to be identified to protect their privacy.

“We are very impressed by her strength and determination to provide for her family,” said the wife. “We attended her girl’s marriage this year. She is so smart that even with her meager resources, she managed to pull off a good wedding.”

At Mrs. Khan’s home, however, nobody but her immediate family knows that she works as a maid. “They would mock me and shame my children,” she said. “I know there is dignity in all kind of work. But I still feel ashamed that at my age, I am sweeping and cleaning toilets. At times, my girls offered to help because I can no longer bend easily, but I don’t let them.”

Mrs. Khan came to Delhi in 1999 with her children after fleeing her husband’s home. They lived in a conservative Muslim community in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. She was married at age 11 to her teenage cousin, and her first child was born when she was 16.

Her husband, she recalled, had a good heart but was a drunkard who used to beat her badly. “He would beat me with anything he could find,” she said. Mrs. Khan described being desperately unhappy at her in-laws’ home, where she remained fully veiled and rarely moved outside her home. “It was suffocating,” she said. She decided to leave her alcoholic husband when he stopped providing for their children.

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Mrs. Khan buying mangoes near her house in South Delhi.

When Mrs. Khan came to Delhi, she found work checking for damaged products in a sporting goods factory. But after her eyesight weakened a few years ago, she found work as a maid.

To do her job at the factory, Mrs. Khan gave up the veil, and she has never encouraged her daughters to even cover their head.  “The veil is to stop strangers from looking at us. Now what’s the use of the veil if I have to work outside or run to the market 10 times?” she said. “My girls never covered their heads, but I didn’t let them go anywhere except school or college and straight back to the house. I have been very strict about that.”

Although Mrs. Khan has been working for more than 10 years, her income has never been enough to provide the comfortable life she is still trying to give her children.  Even now, there are days when the family cannot buy vegetables. “We make do by having roti with pickles or chutney,” she said.

Despite having married her two eldest daughters into well-off homes, Mrs. Khan doesn’t ask them for help. “This is Hindustan. If a son takes care of his mother, it’s okay, but if a daughter helps her mother, she is accused of eating into her husband’s house,” said Mrs. Khan.

“No matter how nice they maybe, but sons-in-law are not your own. As long as my arms and legs are working, I never want my daughter to hear her husband say, ‘I did this for your mother,’ ” she said.

Despite her grueling work, Mrs. Khan is proud to have educated her daughters. Her father and her husband had supported her to complete her education till the 12th grade. “I loved studying and topped in class 10,” she recalled.

Some of her employers have supported her determination to educate her daughters, by giving her extra money to buy books, notebooks and stationery.

While her eldest daughter finished college and the second one studied until the 11th grade, it’s her third daughter, Nazia Khan, who has inherited her mother’s love for studying.

Ms. Khan brought down a plastic box from a shelf lined with schoolbooks. Inside, she has preserved her prized notebooks, projects and drawings from the second grade, which she leafed through and described animatedly. “She had taken commerce so her class 12 results were not too good. Tuitions were necessary, but I couldn’t afford 1,000 rupees for it,” said Mrs. Khan.

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Nazia Khan at her home in South Delhi.

These days, Ms. Khan is taking computer classes and trying to improve her English in preparation for the entrance exam for law school next year. “I wanted to be a lawyer since I was a child,” she said. “I don’t want to be one of those private lawyers who only make money but a government lawyer. If one has to do a job, then why not do a good job instead of a small one?”

So now Mrs. Khan has to worry about raising 77,000 rupees, which is the annual fee at the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi for a five-year law program. “We can think of taking a loan for one year, but how can we for the other four years?” she said.

Her employers said that Mrs. Khan would be wiser to set her daughter on a more practical course like training as a beautician. “Her ambition for her daughter is wonderful to see,” said the wife. “But I also think her children will have a better future with more practical dreams.”

Meanwhile, pressure from relatives in Banda to get Ms. Khan married has been building. “I ignore them,” Mrs. Khan said. “If she becomes a lawyer, the best of boys will fall in line for her.”

Ms. Khan was reconciled to the possibility that law school may not happen for her. She recalled how badly she once wanted to participate in a television show, but the family couldn’t raise 2,000 rupees that were required to build her portfolio.

“It will be great if I can become a lawyer,” she said. “From teaching us the Koran to feeding us, I know how hard my mother has worked for us. And now it’s my turn to take care of her, one way or the other.”

Mrs. Khan is now trying to secure more work for a higher pay. “I have a few more years of work left in me,” she said. “I could work in some more homes, but there are not enough hours left in the day.”

Sending her daughter to law school is her most important challenge yet. But she had faith that some window of opportunity will open. “I work now to fulfill her dreams because they are mine,” she said. “What else is there to live for?”.

Across the Hudson, Closer to India

Floyd Cardoz, the executive chef and a partner at North End Grill in Manhattan, searches for inspirational ingredients in his Indian roots.

Image of the Day: July 30

Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images A shopkeeper in New Delhi selling garlands made of Indian rupees, worn by bridegrooms as a symbol of good luck.

Reaction to the Manning Verdict

As my colleague Charlie Savage reports, a military judge found Pfc. Bradley Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who provided hundreds of thousands of secret documents to Wikileaks, not guilty of aiding the enemy but guilty of multiple counts of violating espionage act at the conclusion of his court-martial in Fort Meade, Md. on Tuesday.

Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy but convicted of multiple counts of violating espionage act

â€" Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) 30 Jul 13

The Lede will be rounding up reaction to the verdict as it comes in.

Congress Party Supports Creation of Telangana State

Saurabh Das/Associated Press A protester braving a police water cannon during a demonstration in New Delhi on Sept. 4, 2012, seeking a separate state of Telangana.

After years of hunger strikes, sit-ins, and even suicides by activists, India’s ruling Congress party has endorsed the creation of Telangana as the 29th state of India by dividing the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The Congress Working Committee, the highest body of India’s governing party, passed a resolution Tuesday evening after its allies in the United Progressive Alliance coalition backed the formation of the new state.

“Hyderabad will be the common capital for 10 years,” said Digvijaya Singh, a senior Congress Party leader, who was party of the crucial meeting, told the press in New Delhi. He described an elaborate procedure that has to be followed before the new state can come into existence. After consultations at the state level, the Indian Parliament has to pass a bill for the creation of the state with a simple majority vote.

Telangana would be carved out of 10 northwestern districts of Andhra Pradesh and would comprise an area of around 60,000 square miles. A separate state of Seemandhra, which would encompass the eastern coastal and southern districts of Andhra Pradesh, would also simultaneously come into being.

“We have been optimistic and hopeful that the Congress Party will keep its promise to grant statehood for Telangana,” said K.T. Rama Rao, a top leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi party and a lawmaker in the Andhra Pradesh state assembly.

“An announcement was made on Dec. 9, 2009, but it was later retracted. While we welcome today’s announcement, we would remain guarded till the bill for a separate statehood for Telangana is passed by the Indian Parliament,” Mr. Rao added.

Andhra Pradesh was the first Indian state to be created in 1956 on the basis of a common language, setting a precedent for the reorganization of Indian states on a linguistic basis. Andhra Pradesh, a Telugu-speaking state, was created by combining three regions of Telangana, Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema.

The regions of Coastal Andhra and Rayalseema were relatively better developed and had higher literacy rates. But the Telangana region was predominantly poor, highly feudal and lacking in all socioeconomic indicators. Most of the politicians representing the state of Andhra Pradesh came from Rayalseema and Coastal Andhra regions, also known as the “Seema-Andhra” region.

The embers of discontent in Telangana began to glow in the late 1960s. Marri Channa Reddy, a Congress Party politician who came from Telangana, parted ways with the Congress in 1969. Mr. Reddy formed a separate party, the Telangana Praja Samithi (Telangana People’s Congress) to speak for the subregional aspirations of his people.

Mr. Reddy’s mobilization for Telangana found immense support from students at Osmania University in Hyderabad, the state’s capital. Throughout 1969, Osmania students, supported by farmers and landless laborers from across the region, led a violent agitation in favor of a separate state of Telangana. The proponents of a separate Telangana state argued that their region had been systematically discriminated against and neglected when it came to economic development and political representation in Andhra Pradesh.

Manish Swarup/Associated Press Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, left, and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee in New Delhi on Tuesday to decide on the statehood demand of Telangana.

The stalemate was resolved after 18 volatile months, when the Andhra Pradesh government promised greater inclusion to the people from Telangana region. Mr. Reddy merged his party into the Congress Party. The movement for a Telangana state was stalled for the next 30 years.

“The rise of popular leaders like the legendary N.T. Rama Rao, who founded the Telugu Desam Party, his successor and son-in-law N. Chandrababu Naidu, and Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy of the Congress, who united people across the state on different agendas, meant that the Telangana agitation was dormant,” said Mahesh. Vijaypurkar, an analyst based in Hyderabad.

In 1995, Nara Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party became the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Between 1995 and 2004, Mr. Naidu aggressively pushed economic reforms and encouraged investment from information technology companies in Hyderabad, including Microsoft, which opened its first port of operation outside the United States in the state capital. Mr. Naidu’s policies brought thousands of high-paying jobs for I.T. professionals to the city. Hyderabad’s skyline transformed within years â€" thousands of apartment blocks and luxurious mansions serviced by glitzy shopping malls, pubs and high-end fashion outlets bloomed across the city.

The economic rise of Mr. Naidu’s Hyderabad trickled down to the Telangana through the modest wages of its migrant workers, who had left their farms and joined a growing workforce of construction workers, waiters and delivery boys in “Cyberabad,” as Mr. Naidu liked to call the capital.

Several thousand debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide in the Telangana in the past decade, and tens of thousands of landless villagers have migrated from the region to Hyderabad. In 2001, 3.6 million people lived in Hyderabad. The number rose to 6.8 million in 2010, and has grown further to over 9.1 million in 2013. Although an exact breakdown of this growing population is not available, the rise in population gives a sense of the pull the city exerts for the opportunity-starved residents of the poorer districts.

In Hyderabad, the migrant workers and students from Telangana were exposed to the growing inequality around them, which ignited the old resentments of neglect and discrimination. Chinna, a 17-year-old Dalit worker in Hyderabad, delivers grocery bags to apartments in the elite Hi-tech City neighborhood, which houses Google, Amazon, Facebook, I.B.M., Dell and Microsoft, among other multinational giants. Mr. Chinna, who uses only one name, migrated to Hyderabad from the Mahbubnagar district after his family couldn’t survive on agricultural labor.

Reflecting upon his family’s history of continual misery, he reveals that as Dalits, or the former untouchable caste, they never owned land. “The land was always owned by the upper caste landlords. We always worked, sometimes out of bondage to repay old debts of forefathers, and mostly because it was the only way to avoid death by hunger,” said Mr. Chinna.

“I have been here for seven years. I have washed dishes at tea stalls, driven an auto-rickshaw, worked as a cleaner in a private bus,” he said.

As a delivery boy, Mr. Chinna earns 2,350 rupees ($40) a month; gifts and tips add up to another 600 rupees ($10). “I have to sustain myself and send money to family,” he said.

Mr. Chinna said he believed that another world is possible after the creation of Telangana. “Many people say nothing will change for me or my family even when Telangana is formed. I hope to get better work, earn more money. But if nothing else happens, we will have pride. We have struggled and won. We have our own state,” he said.

Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times K. Chandrasekhar Rao, leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti political party went on an indefinite fast in 2009 seeking a separate state of Telangana.

The political aspirations of Telangana’s poor got a renewed impetus since 2001 after K. Chandrasekhar Rao, an upper-caste leader from the Telugu Desam Party, quit and formed the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, a political party dedicated to renewing the struggle for a separate state.

Almost 600 students, mostly Dalits, have committed suicide over the last 10 years to emphasize the need for a separate Telangana, like a student who killed himself last month. Opponents call most of these suicide claims “falsified,” trumped up by the political leaders and media, which they say “converts” normal suicides into “political” ones. Pro-Telangana activists celebrate them as martyrs and claim their numbers are over 3,000.

“The region, especially its most backward castes - the Dalits and Tribals - have suffered for centuries,” said Biju Mathew, a Hyderabad-born scholar, who teaches at Ryder University College in New York. “A separate Telangana is an aspiration of hope for the extremely downtrodden.”

Mr. Rao and his Telangana Rashtra Samiti party joined hands with Congress in the 2004 elections on the promise of delivering a Telangana state. The Congress-Telangana Rashtra Samithi coalition won, but they failed to deliver their promise. Mr. Rao continued to press his demand of a separate state and the Congress Party of betraying his region.

In Nov. 29, 2009, Mr. Rao commenced a fast until death to pressure Congress to concede to the creation of a Telangana state. His hunger strike found immense support. Ten days later, the central government in New Delhi, led by the Congress Party, announced that it would be initiating the process of forming the new state, including passing a bill in Parliament.

It triggered a counterprotest from lawmakers from Andhra Pradesh’s Seema-Andhra regions, who threatened to resign. The Congress government retracted its bill.

The opponents of the division of Andhra Pradesh have been arguing that Telangana has witnessed more development than other two regions, and the capital city, Hyderabad has been developed by people of all regions. A division would deprive them of Hyderabad, they contended.

“We cannot divide and create new states based on sentiments and flared-up passions,” said Lagadapati Rajgopal, a Congress member of Parliament. “By relenting to the political Telangana agitation, we are allowing India to get divided and weaken our federal structure.”

India’s government had appointed a commission headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice B.N. Sri Krishna, to study the viability of Telangana as a separate state in 2010. “The Sri Krishna Committee has said that if Telangana is formed, the region will become a breeding ground for extreme left-wing Maoist violence and also lead to politics of communal passions and strife,” Mr. Rajgopal added.

Another major opponent to the creation of Telangana is Asadudin Owaisi, who heads the Muslim party All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and is a member of the Parliament from Hyderabad. “The Bharatiya Janata Party will be the biggest winner of this divide. The Muslims will suffer and so will the values of secularism,” said Mr. Owaisi.

The Congress Party’s decision to support the creation of Telangana is based on cynical electoral calculations. Andhra Pradesh has had a Congress government for the past nine years. “The Congress government has become highly unpopular,” said Mr. Vijaypurkar, the Hyderabad analyst. The opposition parties in the states, especially the Telugu Desam Party and a splinter group of the Congress party, YSR-Congress, are becoming stronger.

“This divide-and-rule will give the Congress some seats in the coming elections at least in one region,” added Mr. Vijaypurkar.

Sriram Karri is a Hyderabad-based journalist.

Bihar School Deaths Highlight India’s Struggle With Pesticides

Amit Dave/Reuters A farmer sprinkling pesticide in his paddy field in Visalpur village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on July 30, 2012.

India is still reeling from the deaths of 23 schoolchildren in the village of Dharmasati Gandawa in Bihar on July 17 after they ate a free school lunch that was made with cooking oil tainted with the pesticide monocrotophos. The police say that the cooking oil might have been kept in a container that once held the pesticide.

The devastating event in Bihar reveals a larger problem in India that stems from the wide use of biocides in myriad forms, in cities and villages, in homes and fields. The organophosphate monocrotophos is widely used in India even as other countries, like the United States, have banned the chemical because it has “high acute toxicity,” according to the World Health Organization. In fact, the W.H.O. pressured India to bar the use of the pesticide in 2009.

In 2011, India’s Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar acknowledged that 67 pesticides prohibited in other parts of the world were widely being used in India. If they are cheap and effective, these chemicals often remain legal, though their specific instructions and proper use are often flagrantly disregarded or simply unknown to the users. There is evidence that even pesticides banned in India continue to be used.

Indians are getting sick or dying from the widespread use of these chemicals. From 2004 to 2008, one hospital in Bathinda, Punjab recorded 61 deaths from accidental inhalation of pesticides while spraying crops. Other poisonings are woefully deliberate in the case of widespread farmer suicides, most commonly accomplished by ingesting the chemicals once used on their crops. The northern state of Punjab, which produces nearly a fifth of the nation’s wheat and inhabits merely 1.5 percent of India’s landmass, accounts for 17 percent of the country’s pesticide use. The landscape is as silent as Rachel Carson’s unnamed town in “Silent Spring,” eerily bereft of the mewing calls of peacocks, India’s national bird, or any other of the avian funa that were once abundant according to locals. In the fields, the nimble fingers of women and children pluck cotton for the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day while men walk barefoot through the rows with pesticide sprayers lashed to their backs.

Studies have detected known carcinogens such as heptachlor and ethion in the blood of Punjabi citizens and the breast milk of new mothers, as well as in grains, cotton and vegetables harvested from the fields. While productivity soared for several generations with the thick application of pesticides and fertilizers promoted in the Green Revolution, yields have plateaued, as cancer cases soared, surpassing international and national averages.

Meanwhile, the water table is plummeting. The National Geophysical Research Institute has found that every year, the level drops another two feet. Punjab has, in less than 30 years, depleted groundwater reserves that took over a century to accumulate, and the nitrate levels in the water have increased tenfold since the Green Revolution began in 1972. In a proactive measure, The Punjab State Farmers Commission has just released a draft of new agricultural policy that would seek to alleviate the drain on water resources by diversifying crops and reducing the acreage under water-intensive wheat and rice paddy production.

Adnan Abidi/Reuters A woman serving a free lunch to children at a primary school in Brahimpur village in Chapra district of Bihar on July 19.

Across India, there is a movement to lighten the heavy use of pesticides and other agrochemicals that began 40 years ago. The Indian states of Sikkim and Kerala are already working toward converting their states completely to organic methods by 2015, and the breadbasket of Punjab is haltingly heading in the same direction. Although certified organic farming still accounts for only one percent of India’s agricultural production, (the US is only .57%), there is a grassroots effort underway to increase the numbers, much of it beyond the realm of certification. In Punjab, many small farmers are transitioning to natural farming on at least some of their acreage with the aid of the nongovernmental organization Kheti Virasat Mission (KVM), which has trained hundreds of Punjabi farmers in organic farming methods since its founding in 2005.

Swaram Singh is one such farmer. Singh is beanpole thin, lanky in his white cotton kurta, an emerald green turban atop his head, a symbol of his Sikh faith. He gives two reasons for turning to natural farming in 2002. One was that the pests that the chemical companies promised would disappear were still destroying his crops. The other reason was his mother was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, and he suspected that all the chemicals he and other farmers were putting on their fields might have something to do with it.

“I remember the gram sewak, the village officer, coming to the house with a cart full of urea, offering it for free,” Singh recalls of the first time he saw the pure nitrogen fertilizer in the 1970s. “It looked like sugar.” His grandfather was skeptical. “Don’t take anything they give you for free,” Singh’s grandfather warned them. “It’s like the tea that the British gave us and now it’s like a drug.” But Swaram Singh and his brothers were young men, excited about the new chemistry, and it was free. “When grandfather found out, he told us we’d regret it.”

It took 34 years for that regret to set in, and on two of his six acres, Singh switched to natural methods. He says that he would do all six acres if he could find enough labor to work the land. Singh grows a traditional variety of cotton, along with guar, vegetables and fodder for his livestock. Using the leaves from a neem tree, datura, and bitter plants, along with the urine and dung from his cows, he says he’s able to keep his soil healthy and his plants free from pests. He and many other farmers in Punjab recognize that there is a transition period as they rebuild the soil after years of pesticide and fertilizer application, which breaks down natural soil health, an admitted challenge for the small farms that make up the bulk of India’s agricultural landscape.

Some farmers with larger landholdings are also making the switch. Vinod Jyani was a baby when the carts of free petrochemicals and the spray planes began to show up at the family farm just a few miles from the Pakistan border. Growing crops with chemicals was all he knew â€" until the fall of 2005, when he went to a meeting “to oblige a friend” and heard Umendra Dutt, the founder of KVM, speak about organic farming. His response was akin to a religious conversion.

“That was it,” he says, as doves coo from the eaves of his house, a sprawling complex set amid the 130 acres that has been in his family for seven generations. It was like a “light went off.” A few weeks later, he attended a two-day meeting organized by KVM.

“The very next day, I took all chemicals from my farm. I started with a passion â€" and a zero budget.” He is smiling as he sits in the center of his now-successful organic farm, but when asked about the transition, he laughs. “It went bad,” he says, shaking his head. “Bad! For three years it was a struggle, but I was committed.” He was in his early forties. There was time to adjust to change and he had the financial resources to cushion the transition.

Back in Bihar, another method is being implemented that also foregoes the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Known as System of Crop Intensification, or S.C.I., farmers carefully cultivate seeds until the plants are established and then transplant them out into the fields to mature. A recent World Bank study found that productivity increased 86 percent in rice production and 72 percent for wheat.

It’s too early to tell if these initial forays into minimizing the rampant presence of pesticides on the Indian landscape, at least in the realm of agriculture, will lead to a new way of growing food that doesn’t impact human and ecological health, but any steps taken toward minimizing the ubiquity of biocides could benefit Indians. A large-scale study commissioned by the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project of the UK government demonstrated that a move toward agroecology - using integrated pest management in which chemicals are used as a last resort, building soil health, improving crop species, and incorporating diversity through tree planting and animal husbandry - more than doubled crop yields over a 3-10 year period on 35 million acres in Africa. Such tactics, if implemented at a broad scale in India, could produce enough food for a growing nation while simultaneously offering the prospect of lessening toxic exposure for life forms from honeybees to humans, preventing the poisoning o water and land, alleviating farmer debt, and cultivating food free of chemical residues.

It would also mean there would be fewer empty containers of monocrotophos floating around, too easily converted to storage containers for food that might be used to cook a free midday meal for hungry children, hoping for some simple food, as well as a future.

Meera Subramanian won the Society of Environmental Journalists Award for her reportage on India’s Vanishing Vultures. Ms. Subramanian is currently working on a book about environmental challenges in India.

Bihar School Deaths Highlight India’s Struggle With Pesticides

Amit Dave/Reuters A farmer sprinkling pesticide in his paddy field in Visalpur village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on July 30, 2012.

India is still reeling from the deaths of 23 schoolchildren in the village of Dharmasati Gandawa in Bihar on July 17 after they ate a free school lunch that was made with cooking oil tainted with the pesticide monocrotophos. The police say that the cooking oil might have been kept in a container that once held the pesticide.

The devastating event in Bihar reveals a larger problem in India that stems from the wide use of biocides in myriad forms, in cities and villages, in homes and fields. The organophosphate monocrotophos is widely used in India even as other countries, like the United States, have banned the chemical because it has “high acute toxicity,” according to the World Health Organization. In fact, the W.H.O. pressured India to bar the use of the pesticide in 2009.

In 2011, India’s Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar acknowledged that 67 pesticides prohibited in other parts of the world were widely being used in India. If they are cheap and effective, these chemicals often remain legal, though their specific instructions and proper use are often flagrantly disregarded or simply unknown to the users. There is evidence that even pesticides banned in India continue to be used.

Indians are getting sick or dying from the widespread use of these chemicals. From 2004 to 2008, one hospital in Bathinda, Punjab recorded 61 deaths from accidental inhalation of pesticides while spraying crops. Other poisonings are woefully deliberate in the case of widespread farmer suicides, most commonly accomplished by ingesting the chemicals once used on their crops. The northern state of Punjab, which produces nearly a fifth of the nation’s wheat and inhabits merely 1.5 percent of India’s landmass, accounts for 17 percent of the country’s pesticide use. The landscape is as silent as Rachel Carson’s unnamed town in “Silent Spring,” eerily bereft of the mewing calls of peacocks, India’s national bird, or any other of the avian funa that were once abundant according to locals. In the fields, the nimble fingers of women and children pluck cotton for the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day while men walk barefoot through the rows with pesticide sprayers lashed to their backs.

Studies have detected known carcinogens such as heptachlor and ethion in the blood of Punjabi citizens and the breast milk of new mothers, as well as in grains, cotton and vegetables harvested from the fields. While productivity soared for several generations with the thick application of pesticides and fertilizers promoted in the Green Revolution, yields have plateaued, as cancer cases soared, surpassing international and national averages.

Meanwhile, the water table is plummeting. The National Geophysical Research Institute has found that every year, the level drops another two feet. Punjab has, in less than 30 years, depleted groundwater reserves that took over a century to accumulate, and the nitrate levels in the water have increased tenfold since the Green Revolution began in 1972. In a proactive measure, The Punjab State Farmers Commission has just released a draft of new agricultural policy that would seek to alleviate the drain on water resources by diversifying crops and reducing the acreage under water-intensive wheat and rice paddy production.

Adnan Abidi/Reuters A woman serving a free lunch to children at a primary school in Brahimpur village in Chapra district of Bihar on July 19.

Across India, there is a movement to lighten the heavy use of pesticides and other agrochemicals that began 40 years ago. The Indian states of Sikkim and Kerala are already working toward converting their states completely to organic methods by 2015, and the breadbasket of Punjab is haltingly heading in the same direction. Although certified organic farming still accounts for only one percent of India’s agricultural production, (the US is only .57%), there is a grassroots effort underway to increase the numbers, much of it beyond the realm of certification. In Punjab, many small farmers are transitioning to natural farming on at least some of their acreage with the aid of the nongovernmental organization Kheti Virasat Mission (KVM), which has trained hundreds of Punjabi farmers in organic farming methods since its founding in 2005.

Swaram Singh is one such farmer. Singh is beanpole thin, lanky in his white cotton kurta, an emerald green turban atop his head, a symbol of his Sikh faith. He gives two reasons for turning to natural farming in 2002. One was that the pests that the chemical companies promised would disappear were still destroying his crops. The other reason was his mother was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, and he suspected that all the chemicals he and other farmers were putting on their fields might have something to do with it.

“I remember the gram sewak, the village officer, coming to the house with a cart full of urea, offering it for free,” Singh recalls of the first time he saw the pure nitrogen fertilizer in the 1970s. “It looked like sugar.” His grandfather was skeptical. “Don’t take anything they give you for free,” Singh’s grandfather warned them. “It’s like the tea that the British gave us and now it’s like a drug.” But Swaram Singh and his brothers were young men, excited about the new chemistry, and it was free. “When grandfather found out, he told us we’d regret it.”

It took 34 years for that regret to set in, and on two of his six acres, Singh switched to natural methods. He says that he would do all six acres if he could find enough labor to work the land. Singh grows a traditional variety of cotton, along with guar, vegetables and fodder for his livestock. Using the leaves from a neem tree, datura, and bitter plants, along with the urine and dung from his cows, he says he’s able to keep his soil healthy and his plants free from pests. He and many other farmers in Punjab recognize that there is a transition period as they rebuild the soil after years of pesticide and fertilizer application, which breaks down natural soil health, an admitted challenge for the small farms that make up the bulk of India’s agricultural landscape.

Some farmers with larger landholdings are also making the switch. Vinod Jyani was a baby when the carts of free petrochemicals and the spray planes began to show up at the family farm just a few miles from the Pakistan border. Growing crops with chemicals was all he knew â€" until the fall of 2005, when he went to a meeting “to oblige a friend” and heard Umendra Dutt, the founder of KVM, speak about organic farming. His response was akin to a religious conversion.

“That was it,” he says, as doves coo from the eaves of his house, a sprawling complex set amid the 130 acres that has been in his family for seven generations. It was like a “light went off.” A few weeks later, he attended a two-day meeting organized by KVM.

“The very next day, I took all chemicals from my farm. I started with a passion â€" and a zero budget.” He is smiling as he sits in the center of his now-successful organic farm, but when asked about the transition, he laughs. “It went bad,” he says, shaking his head. “Bad! For three years it was a struggle, but I was committed.” He was in his early forties. There was time to adjust to change and he had the financial resources to cushion the transition.

Back in Bihar, another method is being implemented that also foregoes the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Known as System of Crop Intensification, or S.C.I., farmers carefully cultivate seeds until the plants are established and then transplant them out into the fields to mature. A recent World Bank study found that productivity increased 86 percent in rice production and 72 percent for wheat.

It’s too early to tell if these initial forays into minimizing the rampant presence of pesticides on the Indian landscape, at least in the realm of agriculture, will lead to a new way of growing food that doesn’t impact human and ecological health, but any steps taken toward minimizing the ubiquity of biocides could benefit Indians. A large-scale study commissioned by the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project of the UK government demonstrated that a move toward agroecology - using integrated pest management in which chemicals are used as a last resort, building soil health, improving crop species, and incorporating diversity through tree planting and animal husbandry - more than doubled crop yields over a 3-10 year period on 35 million acres in Africa. Such tactics, if implemented at a broad scale in India, could produce enough food for a growing nation while simultaneously offering the prospect of lessening toxic exposure for life forms from honeybees to humans, preventing the poisoning o water and land, alleviating farmer debt, and cultivating food free of chemical residues. It would also mean there would be fewer empty containers of monocrotophos floating around, too easily converted to storage containers for food that might be used to cook a free midday meal for hungry children, hoping for some simple food, as well as a future.

Meera Subramanian won the Society of Environmental Journalists Award for her reportage on India’s Vanishing Vultures. Ms. Subramanian is currently working on a book about environmental challenges in India.

Video of the Pope’s ‘Gay Lobby’ Remarks

Video of a news conference given by Pope Francis on Monday, as he traveled back to the Vatican from Brazil.

During a news conference on his flight back to Rome from Brazil on Monday, Pope Francis was asked about his much-reported acknowledgement last month that there is “a gay lobby” inside the Vatican hierarchy.

“Quite a lot has been written about the gay lobby. I have yet to find someone who introduces himself at the Vatican with an identity card marked ‘gay,’” the pope joked. “But we must distinguish the fact that a person is gay from the fact of lobbying, because no lobbies are good.”

“If a person is gay,” he added, “and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

As my colleague Rachel Donadio explains, the pope’s remarks seemed startling to some observers since his predecessor, Benedict XVI, wrote in 2010 that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not become priests.

Twenty four years earlier, in his position as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the previous pope, who retired in February, worked to correct what he called “an overly benign interpretation” of “the homosexual condition itself,” which he insisted should not be considered “neutral, or even good.” The man known then as Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1986:

Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.

Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not.

Protesters in Rio Keep Asking, ‘Who Threw the Molotov?’ and ‘Where Is Amarildo?’

Rio de Janeiro Military Police, via YouTube A police edit of video recorded during a protest in Rio de Janeiro on July 22 compared the T-shirts of a masked man who threw a Molotov cocktail and a man identified as an undercover officer.

Seeking to refute allegations that an undercover police officer had thrown a Molotov cocktail at a demonstration last week in Rio de Janeiro, sparking violent clashes, the city’s military police force released slow-motion video of the masked bomb-thrower, the newspaper O Globo reported Friday.

The police video, which included footage previously posted on YouTube and then mysteriously deleted from a government channel, showed the T-shirt of the man who hurled the explosive in more detail and close images of the tattooed wrist of an accomplice, who was seen lighting the fuse.

A police edit of video recorded during a demonstration last week in Rio de Janeiro.

By comparing their own footage of the bomb-thrower to video of undercover officers recorded by witnesses, the police hoped to undercut a theory put forward by video bloggers sympathetic to the protesters, who have suggested that police infiltrators threw the bomb just to give the authorities a pretext for shutting down the protest last Monday near the governor’s palace in Rio.

The authorities were offered a helping hand by Brazilian bloggers who discovered that the photographer Ana Carolina Fernandes had posted an image on Facebook that offered a clear view of the pattern on one undercover officer’s shirt.

A screenshot from the Facebook page of the Brazilian photographer Ana Carolina Fernandes shows man who was later identified as an undercover police officer wearing a T-shirt and jeans during a protest in Rio last week.

As a reader of The Lede in Brazil pointed out in a comment, one of the officers who infiltrated the demonstration by posing as a protester was wearing a familiar biker shirt, with the words “Last Stop Gasoline” printed on a red oval with a white star, above an image of a motorcycle and a woman in a bikini.

While the new version of the police video, and the Ms. Fernandes’s photograph, did appear to show that the bomb-thrower’s T-shirt was different from the one worn by the undercover officer, the same footage also seemed to prove that a protester who was arrested and charged with throwing the Molotov that night was not guilty.

As The Lede reported last week, a police spokeswoman in Rio said that a protester named Bruno Ferreira had been arrested and “accused of having thrown the Molotov cocktail that left two officers with burns on their bodies.” The police also claimed that Mr. Ferreira was in possession of more explosives when he was detained.

However, footage of Mr. Ferreira’s arrest, which was recorded from multiple angles by journalists and protesters, showed that he was not wearing a black T-shirt with a white design on it, but a green jacket with a zipper, and was not carrying anything at the time.

Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images A photograph of a protest in Rio de Janeiro on July 22 taken before clashes broke out, showed Bruno Ferreira, a protester who was arrested later, standing on a barricade with his arm raised.

After his arrest, two video bloggers released annotated edits of the footage of Mr. Ferreira at the protest that seem to offer convincing proof that he was standing right at the front of the crowd when the Molotov was thrown over the barricades between protesters and the police on Rua Pinheiro Machado, away from the spot further back where the bomb-thrower was located.

An annotated video edit of footage from a protest in Rio last week showing that a man who was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail was in a different location when the bomb was hurled at police officers.

A video blogger’s edit of footage showing the arrest of Bruno Ferreira, a Brazilian protester, last week in Rio.

While the first video blogger mistakenly asserted that the pattern on the bomb-thrower’s shirt was identical to the one worn by the undercover officer, the footage highlighted in the two edits does seem to suggest Mr. Ferreira was falsely arrested. (One of the bloggers also suggests that a black backpack worn by one of the undercover officers might have contained Molotov cocktails displayed for television cameras by the police later, but that remains conjecture.)

Since video evidence seems to clear both the undercover officer in the red-patterned shirt and Mr. Ferreira, that leaves the question of who did throw the Molotov unresolved. The police maintain that it was without doubt a protester, but protesters claim that there were other undercover officers in the crowd, one of whom might have thrown the bomb.

While conclusive proof has yet to emerge, there is evidence in another long video of the protest that shows most of the events unfold to suggest that there might have been at least one more undercover officer on the scene. At the 5-minute mark in this footage, just after the undercover officer in the black and red shirt tries and fails to tackle Mr. Ferreira, who is then shot with a stun gun and arrested, a bare-chested man in jeans can be seen speaking to him as if to a colleague.

Video recorded by a witness to the protest last week in Rio, showing the impact of an explosive and the arrest of a protester.

In the footage that surfaced last week, both of the other men identified as undercover officers were eventually seen stripping off their shirts and walking bare-chested as they retreated back across police lines.

Video recorded that night by Tamara Menezes, a journalist with the Brazilian magazine Istoé, did show riot police officers inspecting a backpack with Molotov cocktails they said they found near a newsstand.

Video shot by the Brazilian journalist Tamara Menezes last Monday in Rio showed riot police officers inspecting a backpack filled with Molotov cocktails.

But a map of the location where Ms. Menezes recorded her video shows that the backpack was discovered on a street about 600 yards away from the protest on on Rua Pinheiro Machado where the bomb was thrown and Mr. Ferreira was arrested.

View Rio protest in a larger map

While protesters in Rio would like to know who threw the Molotov last week, they do have a more pressing question for police that they have been asking at demonstration after demonstration: “Where is Amarildo?”

Observatório do Trabalho no Brasil, via Facebook In an image posted on Facebook, Amarildo de Souza’s daughter Milena held a sign asking where her father was. Her mother, Elisabeth, stood behind her near their home in Rocinha, one of Rio’s notorious favelas.

As Vincent Bevins explained in The Los Angeles Times on Friday, Amarildo is Amarildo de Souza, a bricklayer and father of six from one of Rio’s notorious slums, “who disappeared after, residents say, military police took him away from the Rocinha favela on July 14.” Although the man’s family insist he is not a criminal, they told the Brazilian media the police took him away unexpectedly that Sunday night, and said later that he had been released. “Yet no one has heard from him since,” Mr. Bevins reported.

The case has become a focus of protests and online activism since the disappearance. In a YouTube video recorded at the protest in Rio last Monday before the violence, protester after protester tried to draw the attention of Pope Francis to the case, asking, “Where is Amarildo?”

A YouTube video made to raise awareness of the case of man who went missing after he was detained by the police in Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro’s notorious slums.

After a series of protests demanding answers, Rio’s governor, Sérgio Cabral, who oversees the military police, met with Amarildo’s family late last week. After the meeting, the governor posted a message on Twitter promising to “mobilize the entire government to discover where Amarildo is and to identify those responsible for his disappearance.”

Vou mobilizar todo o governo para descobrir onde esta Amarildo e identificar os responsáveis pelo seu desaparecimento.

â€" Sérgio Cabral (@SergioCabralRJ) 24 Jul 13

As the journalist Kety Shapazian reported on Twitter, despite that promise, protesters were still demanding answers at a demonstration in Rio Sunday night.

Rio tonight: protesters ask where is Amarildo, who disappeared after the police arrested him in Rocinha favela (G1) http://t.co/N9c4bWfuND

â€" Kety Shapazian (@KetyDC) 29 Jul 13

Reporting was contributed by Taylor Barnes in Brazil.

Image of the Day: July 29

Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press A man blowing a conch shell on the first Monday of the Hindu month of Sawan, in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

After the Delhi Rape, Small Victories for Women in India’s Popular Culture

Kevin Frayer/Associated Press Protesters being hit by a police water cannon during a demonstration against the gang rape of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi on Dec. 23, 2012.

There are few better places to advertise products of mass appeal than the back of an auto-rickshaw. In the recent past, we have seen the gainful surface being used to sell, among other things, CDs of the self-help superstar Shiv Khera and books of the popular fiction phenomenon Chetan Bhagat.

Currently in Delhi, rickshaw rears are collectively employed by the Aam Aadmi Party to challenge the Delhi government about the safety of women. To make its point, the party is using posters that show angry protesters clashing with an impatient police in front of the India Gate. It may upset us to see the opportunistic party channel a public revolt it had nothing to do with, but Arvind Kejriwal, the party’s leader, has his eye on elections to Delhi’s assembly, and if earlier it was India Gate that represented the capital, now â€" as endorsed by no lesser authority than Bollywood â€" it’s water cannons at India Gate.

It is true that we needed a more realistic symbol for Delhi, with its well-known divides of power and resistance, than the stately monument. But is it our popular culture’s only contribution to “change” seven months after the horrific gang rape of a girl in Delhi jolted the national consciousness awake?

As everyone agreed in the crime’s wake, popular culture had a lot to account for. Furiously, advertisements, soap operas and popular cinema were scanned for signs of patriarchy and the respective industries were urged to be more responsible in their message. There are a number of ways in which the cultural establishment has since responded â€" consciously or not â€" revealing an enormous lot about both the scope and limits of our mainstream imagination.

In February, Gillette, a brand of shaving products known for its masculine appeal, released an ad that asked men to find the soldier in them â€" not to protect the country but to protect its women, because “when you respect women you respect the nation.” In March, Tata Tea’s socially conscious Jaago Re campaign got Shah Rukh Khan to pledge to run the female actor’s name above his own in film credits, because “auratein mardon se upar honi chahiye.” [“Women should be above men.”]

Also in March, Farhan Akhtar, an actor, director and film producer, kicked off an initiative called Men Against Rape and Discrimination, or M.A.R.D., which not-so-coincidentally is the Urdu word for “man”; the A in its logo resembled an upward-turned mustache as worn by many Rajputs. Through merchandise and concerts and an emotional poem by Javed Akhtar evoking terms like “aadar” (reverence), “izzat” (honor), “samman” (respect) and “suraksha” (protection), M.A.R.D. approached its objective exactly like most other popular interventions for better gender relations, which is by pushing chivalry on men, and not freedom, choice and equality for women.

It is even more ironic that their approach is the same as that of the conventional Bollywood film, where the hero’s masculinity is established through his ability to protect the women around him, and his hopelessness through the failure to do so. Ever since we started to see the male actor as hero, with no small contribution from Mr. Akhtar, the legendary scriptwriter, an Indian man has only been considered a mard if the women close to him could roam free without fear.

Even in a film as recent as “Singham” (2011), the title character’s machismo is revealed through his flattening with bare hands a bunch of goons who dared to bother the girl with him, after which he strides toward her with an inflated chest to return to her the ceremonial dupatta. Since what we need is for women to be able to roam freely, without needing male protection â€" whether in the form of a person or police â€" perhaps it is time to show them as doing so in the movies.

If it’s not easy to expect radical change from television in general, considering it is structured around the idea of routine, it’s nearly unreasonable to demand it of the current Indian programming. And it was without any expectation, or grand purpose, that on June 3 the popular Hindi entertainment channel Zee released “Connected Hum Tum,” a weekly prime-time reality show where six women in Mumbai - a radio host, a dentist who is also belly dancer, a brand manager, an aspiring actress, a corporate trainer and an activist for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights â€" take us, through self-handled mini cameras, inside their uniquely complex lives. Directed by Paromita Vohra, who has earlier made films about public toilets and gender identity, urban feminism and moral policing, “Connected Hum Tum” promised to show us “what being a woman in the year 2013 is all about.”

Preeti Kochar, the dentist-belly dancer, deals with her two conflicting careers on the one hand and troubles with mother-in-law on the other; Sonal Giani, the L.G.B.T. activist, is anxious about the hesitation of her partner, Jaanu, in validating their relationship; Pallavi Barman, the radio jockey, is reluctant to leave her imperfect but professionally fulfilling job to join her husband’s business as a glorified nobody. The show neither represents the majority of Indian women nor their dominant set of concerns, but what it does is present a painstakingly nuanced view of the worlds of its participants. And that’s why it’s important: in revealing how wildly complicated the lives of six randomly chosen women in one city are, it hints at how ignorant we are about the lives of those left out.

Later in June came “Raanjhanaa,” the film that has taken the debate about the links between popular culture and social norms back to its very basic: should the entertainment media really care? The movie is the story, set in Benares, of a man’s obsessive one-sided love for a woman, which wrecks the lives of everyone who gets sucked into it, including both of them. Although an instant hit, it has been criticized for making a hero of a man who, among other objectionable things, stalks the woman through most of the storyline.

Strdel/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Bollywood actor Dhanush at the success party of the film “Raanjhanaa” in Mumbai, Maharashtra, on Wednesday.

“A man who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer ought to be an unlikely hero in this era of anti-rape protests,” wrote Lakshmi Chaudhry in one such assessment on Firstpost. In March, stalking was recognized as a crime at the recommendation of the Justice Verma Committee, set up a week after the gang rape to strengthen laws concerning sexual crimes against women.

Those associated with the film see it very differently. The director, Aanand L. Rai, claimed that in small towns stalking was not considered offensive, but seen as a sign of true love. In an elaborate defense of the film in The Hindu newspaper, Swara Bhaskar, a supporting actor, backed Mr. Rai’s view, insisting that the characters in “Raanjhanaa” behave just as people from its milieu (“largely socially conservative, patriarchal world of small-town India”) are wont to. Ms. Bhaskar also stressed that, contrary to the reading of a section of critics, the lead character’s actions weren’t glorified but shown as flawed, like that of a tragic male protagonist who hurts the very woman he loves. His “naïve innocence” rendered him endearing in her view.

It is a smooth argument, and one could be tempted to believe in the idea of naïve obsession and imagine a large gap between that and actual threat - but the problem is that the movie itself presents no such distinction between the two. Having grown up in small towns and in a culture where love was often expressed through following around its target, it is hard even for me to see something like a man’s threat to slit the wrist of a woman if she dared love someone else as usual small-town business.

It is equally difficult to interpret the male protagonist as flawed after the movie changes course in the second half, and he is shown as having shaken the political establishment in the capital by taking over a party of student revolutionaries fighting for rights of the dispossessed, like the farmers of Bhatta-Parsaul. Before dying a heroic death that makes the viewer blame the girl’s rejection of his love for his fate (“Now who wants to get up again? Who wants to make an effort to love, and have his heart broken?” he thinks aloud after collapsing), he even leads a crowd of protesters at India Gate in the face of a lathi-wielding, water cannon-firing police.

Yes, things have a long way to go.

Snigdha Poonam is Arts Editor at The Caravan. She is on Twitter at@snigdhapoonam