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The Print
19 hours ago
- The Print
India Navy's latest stealth frigate INS Tamal visits Italy
The stealth frigate arrived in Naples on August 13, during her return passage to India after the commissioning in Russia, the defence ministry said. INS Tamal participated in a Passage Exercise (PASSEX) with ITS Trieste, a landing platform dock of the Italian Navy, prior to entering harbour in Naples, they said. New Delhi, Aug 15 (PTI) INS Tamal, the latest stealth frigate of the Indian Navy, has arrived in Italy, during her return passage to India after the commissioning in Russia on July 1, officials said on Friday. 'The visit underscores the deepening of bilateral relations between India and Italy since the elevation to a 'Strategic Partnership' in 2023, centered on expanded cooperation in defence, energy, and technology, and is aimed at enhancing interoperability and jointmanship between both the navies,' it said in a statement. Joint operations during the PASSEX included communication exercises, manoeuvres and flying operations, a Navy spokesperson said. The ship's engagements during the port call include professional and bilateral activities, including interaction with civil dignitaries in Naples, cross-deck visits, discussions with senior Italian Navy functionaries and cultural events in honour of Indo-Italian relations, it said. INS Tamal celebrated India's 79th Independence Day in Naples on August 15. The port call by INS Tamal is 'indicative of the importance India attaches to its relations with Italy and the endeavour to strengthen the growing defence cooperation between the two nations'. PTI KND AMJ AMJ This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
George Steinmetz: 'The Indian bureaucracy is really quite impressive! '
'There are parts of our food system that some people don't want us to see.' You say that in your author note. What was the most invisibilised part of the food chain that you photographed? George Steinmetz (Courtesy the subject) Animal operations are quite sensitive to get access to. People get really touchy because there's been -- especially in the industrialized world -- a lot more concern about animal rights and farmers get criticized a lot for it. Then, there's large scale agriculture. People in the corporate world are very cautious. When you go to a private farmer who has five acres of land and you want to photograph them harvesting their stuff, there's no issue. But when you get into corporations, they get nervous and the lawyers get involved and it gets all very closed. I also looked at fishing quite a bit and it's difficult getting onto fishing boats. Squid boats can be at sea for six months at a time. I wasn't volunteering for that. The other thing that's really complicated are illegal activities, whether it's illegal fishing or immigrant labour. In the United States, for example, close to half of the food is harvested by undocumented workers. And lastly, the government things. In India, there's a huge government food corporation which sells large amounts of food to the poor at subsidized prices. There's a lot of waste in those warehouses. But India, as you know, has a lot of bureaucracy. You try to get into those warehouses, and it's extremely difficult. The bureaucracy is really quite impressive! What does your research look like? Well, it's complicated. Let's say, I was looking at sugar. I was told that Brazil has the biggest sugar plantations in the world. And you do Google searches, and all of a sudden India starts popping up as the biggest sugar producer. There's such a big market, mostly for internal consumption. In India, I worked with Saurabh Tripathi. I would give him a general idea of what I was looking for. And then he would do a lot of picture research and statistical research. And it's better to have somebody do those searches in that market. I had somebody work for me in China, in Brazil, and in German-Italian-speaking Europe. In California, I was out in the lettuce fields with the pickers, and then I went back to the packing house and a guy said you've got to go to Bakersfield where one building produces about 40 percent of the carrots in the United States. It looks like rivers of orange; it's incredible. But they had never let anybody photograph in there before. There's an old saying in journalism that no is not an answer. It's just kind of a bad beginning. And so, you have to find another way. Sometimes you don't succeed, but often you can. 255pp, ₹6327; Harry N Abrams Inc What was it like to contrast industrial livestock supply chains and an artisanal butchery, like you photographed in Belgium? I'm not a pig whisperer, obviously. I can't talk to pigs, you know, but you go and you look and you can see the animals are stressed. They're going into the kill chute and they're resisting. I saw that with pigs. And they're much more intelligent than the chickens or the cows. It's really quite disturbing to watch. But in the small butchery I went to in Belgium, they were doing a really good job. And the pigs didn't really know they were about to go down. They would be killed instantly. It's interesting in that small butcher shop, their prices were only 20% more than they would be in the supermarket, which is actually really good for the small-scale operation. And he had producers who raised animals just for him. He was doing really high-quality work for very little extra cost, with the efficiency of proximity. I also went to the biggest slaughterhouse in Brazil for cattle and they were pretty good. I didn't see cows that missed the shot and were maimed. In India, I went to the biggest buffalo slaughterhouse and it was really fascinating. It was all Muslims and they had to kill them halal. It was quick. They were doing a good job. I didn't see people abusing animals. There's no incentive for a farmer to abuse animals. I'm sure it exists somewhere. But I didn't go looking for it and I didn't see it. What do you think about the current politics globally on the role of migrants? The people at the top don't really understand the reality of what is going on, who's actually providing the work. In the US, less than 2% of the population is involved in food production. So, there's this huge disconnect. They go to the market and a little piece of meat comes in a little foam tray and they have no idea. Go to the dairy farmers in the United States, they can't get American workers. It's physically tiring. It's very repetitive. It's kind of boring. And they just don't want to do it. But they can get undocumented workers to do that kind of work at a reasonable price. And if you paid American workers $50 an hour, they might do that. But Latino workers will do that for $10 an hour and they'll live in some crummy little trailer out back. If the government were to say, okay, we're going to control the quality of the living standards for the workers and then raise the price of milk 30%, then you could do that. But government doesn't want to do that. So, you have a system where there's a huge disconnect. I think, in the United States, about 40% of the labour is considered undocumented. You have photographed shog, the shit fog, in a part of the United States, and also the Third Pole in India. How was it to capture these with aerial photography? It's tricky. If I find an issue that's discussed and is important, I have to see if I can find a way to photograph it. With the shog, the shit fog, I talked to people who knew it, and they would say, okay, you want to come to this part of Texas, in this month, and you want to be there on a really hot, windy day. And then, there's the physical problem, like people who had the feedlots don't want us to photograph their property because they don't want their problem seen. So, I had to find one that was next to a road. To cut down that shog, you put sprinklers in the feed yard to keep the dust down. But it's only for one month a year, and they'd rather not spend the money on the sprinklers. And so, they're being cheap, and creating this problem for others. And with the Third Pole in India, it's challenging photographing water issues, and I don't think I did a very good job of that. There were some really big water development systems, places where they had like big storage and irrigation issues, and I just couldn't find a way to photograph that, but we tried. What does climate change mean for existing vulnerabilities and inequalities? I saw it most acutely in the Sundarbans in Bangladesh. With the monsoons getting more severe and the sea level slowly rising, people were farming rice inches above the tide line. It was kind of like you're stuck with your feet in the mud and the water's up to here (your nose). Then they get a big storm with a tidal surge and all their rice gets wiped out by the salt water. That was the most dramatic area I saw. Women are doing a lot of the work and also having to take care of their kids. The women were the ones who were being probably squeezed the hardest. What was it like to look at smallholder farming and large agri-corporations like you've done for the book? Well, I can tell you as a photographer, it's a lot trickier to get great pictures of the smallholder farmers. You go to the sugar mill in India. It looks kind of like the one in Brazil. But the farmers, it's just like three people out in their fields cutting cane with a long knife. And you go to Brazil, they have these monster machines. So, the big stuff is actually a lot easier to photograph. And it's more extraordinary. But that's not the norm. There's a huge percentage of the world's agriculture that's still being done by smallholder farmers. But even in India, you find those smallholder farmers are getting squeezed. In Europe, they have huge subsidies for smallholder farmers. And in other countries like the US, Brazil, that's not done as much. How was it to document agriculture in India? Well, it was a surprise to me. I was trying to cover the whole world but for India, I had to make three trips because it was so vast and seasonal and you have to choose. I really wanted to look at the red pepper harvest, because red -- it's kind of lame -- but it's going to photograph really well. And Kashmir; saffron is the most expensive crop in the world. I can't get into Iran where most of it is grown, but India I can do. I was looking at the global story of agriculture and to find things that are really particularly Indian. The scale of shrimp farming was really good. And I wanted to go the grain markets in Punjab. The stubble burning is a really important story. And I decided that I wanted to do the rice instead of the wheat. India was visually amazing; I would say it is like organized chaos. It's fascinating. In the West, people don't think of India as being a technical innovator, but I found quite the opposite. Like the biggest tractor factory in India. People think it's John Deere. But it's Mahindra. As a journalist, I love telling those surprises. And India was full of surprises for me. Where do you see farming and food production a decade from now? I think we'll see more consolidation. And I think you're going to see continued gains in productivity. There's been a lot of work with improved plant science and plant genetics. The experts were saying we have to double the global food supply by 2050. I think that's actually doable. I've seen big advances in fisheries. But at the same time, I see big problems like the Amazon disappearing. You really need to have strict, better enforcement of wild lands. Otherwise, we're going to lose all the wild spaces and wildlife that we have. What did you leave out? You know, we couldn't do everything. It would have been interesting to look at farming in Russia. As an American, with the current political situation, I didn't think it was realistic to be flying there. Everybody grows food and everybody does it differently. And I tried to pick out the best examples. And at some point, you have to say, well, enough. I worked on it for over 10 years. And I realised, at the end, that if I kept going, the pictures I took at the beginning, which are really good pictures, would become irrelevant because the farming techniques were changing. And now it's time for me to do something new. Aparna Karthikeyan is an independent journalist and author based in Chennai
Economic Times
a day ago
- Economic Times
India Navy's latest stealth frigate INS Tamal visits Italy
Synopsis INS Tamal, the Indian Navy's newest stealth frigate, made a port call in Naples, Italy, on August 13, following its commissioning in Russia and a Passage Exercise with the Italian Navy's ITS Trieste. This visit highlights the growing strategic partnership between India and Italy, particularly in defence cooperation. New Delhi: INS Tamal, the latest stealth frigate of the Indian Navy, has arrived in Italy, during her return passage to India after the commissioning in Russia on July 1, officials said on Friday. INS Tamal participated in a Passage Exercise (PASSEX) with ITS Trieste, a landing platform dock of the Italian Navy, prior to entering harbour in Naples, they said. The stealth frigate arrived in Naples on August 13, during her return passage to India after the commissioning in Russia, the defence ministry said. "The visit underscores the deepening of bilateral relations between India and Italy since the elevation to a 'Strategic Partnership' in 2023, centered on expanded cooperation in defence, energy, and technology, and is aimed at enhancing interoperability and jointmanship between both the navies," it said in a statement. Joint operations during the PASSEX included communication exercises, manoeuvres and flying operations, a Navy spokesperson said. The ship's engagements during the port call include professional and bilateral activities, including interaction with civil dignitaries in Naples, cross-deck visits, discussions with senior Italian Navy functionaries and cultural events in honour of Indo-Italian relations, it said. INS Tamal celebrated India's 79th Independence Day in Naples on August 15. The port call by INS Tamal is "indicative of the importance India attaches to its relations with Italy and the endeavour to strengthen the growing defence cooperation between the two nations".
