Royal courts of justice visit

Hundreds of thousands of Hindu devotees flocked on Monday to take a holy bath in India’s Ganges river, even as the nation racked up the world’s highest tally of new daily coronavirus infections.

With 168,912 new cases, India accounts for one in six of all new infections globally, although the figure is still well below the U.S. peak of nearly 300,000 new cases on Jan. 8.

In the northern city of Haridwar, nearly a million devotees thronged the banks of the Ganges, a river many Hindus consider holy, to participate in the months-long ‘Kumbh Mela’ or pitcher festival.

“The crowd here is surging…the police are continuously appealing to people to maintain social distancing,” police official Sanjay Gunjyal told Reuters at the site.

By mid-morning a million people had taken a dip in the river, believed to wash away one’s sins.

As India’s second wave of infections builds, with fewer than 4% estimated to have been vaccinated among a population of 1.4 billion, experts say the situation could have a long way to go before it starts getting better.

“After cases declined in January-February, we were very comfortable,” said a panel of high court judges in the western state of Gujarat, calling on authorities to take urgent steps to rein in the outbreak.

“Almost everyone forgot that there was ever corona,” added the panel, headed by Chief Justice Vikram Nath.

A full opening of the economy from last year’s crippling lockdown, coupled with the mass religious festivals and political rallies in states heading to elections have fuelled the crisis.

Monday’s new infections carried India past Brazil for a tally of 13.53 million, data compiled by Reuters shows, ranking it the second-most infected country after the United States, with 31.2 million.

Tally feared to double in two months

India’s tally is on course to double in two months, according to estimates based on data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

Yet authorities appeared unwilling or unable to stop events that could lead to a calamitous spread of the disease.

People are seen at a fish market, amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Mumbai, India, April 12, 2021. Photo: Reuters

Thousands of people are attending political rallies in four big states set for elections this month, including two events on Monday in the eastern state of West Bengal, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to speak.

“With 1.2 million active cases, and the daily number reaching 200,000, it’s bizarre to have poll rallies and a full Kumbh Mela,” political commentator Shekhar Gupta said on Twitter.

Officials and experts said authorities had underestimated the resilience of the virus, believing they had beaten it after daily cases fell below 10,000 in early February.

Officials in the worst-hit state of Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, said they were considering a broader lockdown this week after large closures at the weekend.

“It is necessary to break the cycle (of infections),” said a senior state official who sought anonymity. “We are working on identifying industries and services that need to be exempted.”

The rupee fell to its lowest in nearly eight months and Mumbai’s benchmark index tanked as much as 3.7% in the worst session in more than six weeks.

India’s economy has been limping back to recovery after last year’s hard lockdown caused the deepest contraction in decades.

Nearly 10 years ago, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Ky, the incumbent Party Secretary of Quang Ninh, was the Chief of the Quang Ninh Provincial Party Committee’s Office, who directly assisted the then Party Secretary of Quang Ninh, Mr. Pham Minh Chinh.

When Mr. Chinh, who is now the Prime Minister, raised the policy to transform the growth model from “brown to green”, Mr. Ky was also the one who delivered the first invitations to experts and officials to come to Quang Ninh to help the province find a new development path for the area, which was called the kingdom of “black gold” (coal) in Vietnam.

Secretary of the Quang Ninh Provincial Party Committee Nguyen Xuan Ky: The Covid-19 pandemic has urged us to think of something else to keep Quang Ninh more stable before hardships. Photo: Pham Cong

“When we gave letters of invitations to the local former Party leaders, who grew up from the coal industry, they asked us ‘are you okay, why do you have to do this?’. For many generations, Quang Ninh developed based on coal mining and it is still the key industry,” Ky recalled.

In response to the concerns, Quang Ninh’s Party Chief at that time replied: “Yes, you are right. But if it is just that, Quang Ninh cannot develop.”

That is the story that paved the way for the development of tourism and services of Quang Ninh, which was set in the 2000s and has been implemented strongly since 2010.

In August 2011, Mr. Pham Minh Chinh was appointed as Secretary of Quang Ninh Provincial Party Committee. On May 24, 2013, he signed a resolution of the Provincial Party Committee on tourism development in the period 2013-2020, with a vision to 2030. This resolution emphasized renovating the growth model, restructuring the local economy, and changing the province’s mode of development from “brown to green” (from coal mining to tourism development).

However, changing from “brown” to “green” did not mean stopping coal mining to make Quang Ninh “cleaner”. Instead, the coal industry would be oriented to be cleaner, greener, and cause less conflict with other economic sectors.

It was not a task that was accomplished overnight. For example, Quang Ninh’s Cam Pha city covers a total area of 300,000 hectares, but one third of the land area in the city belongs to the coal mining industry. According to Ky, Cam Pha could not develop that way. “Coal mining area must be reduced. Coal mining on the ground must be minimized,” Ky said.

In Quang Ninh, coal was no longer transported by car or ferry. The provincial government developed a roadmap to gradually reduce open-pit coal mining and increase pit mining. In places where open-cast exploitation was still used, measures to prevent dust pollution and restore the environment had to be applied.

A senior official who visited Quang Ninh 10 years ago still remembers three things: In the rainy season in February, he went to Cua Ong – the land of coal mining – and had to wear plastic boots; otherwise his feet would have been wet; he could not see the green color of leaves as everything was covered by the coal dust; and he could not see anyone in a white shirt on the street.

Quang Ninh has been transformed into an ideal destination. Photo: Pham Cong

Ten year later, he returned to Quang Ninh, and realized that everything had changed. Most of Quang Ninh’s roads were cleaner, the trees green, and people were no longer afraid of wearing white shirts. However, for the transition from “brown to green” to be really thorough, more time is needed.

“Awakened” one more time

Over the past 10 years, Quang Ninh has persisted in strongly innovating the growth model, restructuring the economy, changing the development mode from “brown” to “green” based on the three pillars: nature, people, and culture. However, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, Quang Ninh was startled, and had to engage in self-examination.

Quang Ninh suddenly realized that over the past 5 years it was too passionate about developing tourism. At the same time, its neighbor – Hai Phong – had developed robustly, attracting tens of billions of US dollars in foreign investment, compared to only a few hundred million dollars in Quang Ninh.

Quang Ninh officials began to reconsider the strategic directions on developing the manufacturing and processing industry planned by Mr. Pham Minh Chinh when he was still the province’s Party Secretary. He had emphasized that in 2012 and the following years the province would call for investment in the development of a number of industries and industrial products in the fields of information technology, electronics, mechanical engineering, and biology…

It was also the period when Quang Ninh welcomed many big FDI projects, with the $300 million Texhong yarn factory project as an example. This project was granted an investment certificate only 24 hours after the investor had completed the relevant procedures.

“Mr. Pham Minh Chinh clearly pointed out the issues related to the development of processing and manufacturing industry in Quang Ninh,” Ky said. “In the past 5 years, Quang Ninh has not added any significant growth engine from the manufacturing and processing industry.”

That is understandable. When the transport infrastructure was developed fully, Quang Ninh’s tourism industry boomed. Along with this, local officials could be assured that the provincial economy could be firmly based on the tourism and service sector.

Ha Long – Van Don expressway seen from above. Photo: Pham Cong

“The Covid-19 pandemic screwed our neck down and Quang Ninh fell,” Ky said. “It forced us to think of something else to make Quang Ninh more stable in front of hardship.”

The “something else” for Quang Ninh is the manufacturing and processing industry, which is considered the “heart” of industry. “If there was $10-20 billion of foreign investment capital in the manufacturing and processing industry, when the Covid-19 pandemic occurred, these factories were still there, the growth would have been maintained, even though FDI does not add much added value in Vietnam,” Ky said.

Therefore, Quang Ninh had to determine to “walk with both feet”: developing services besides agriculture and fisheries, especially on the processing and manufacturing industries.

It is not a coincidence the first resolution issued in November 2020 by the Provincial Party Committee of the new term was Resolution 01/NQ-TU on the rapid and sustainable development of the manufacturing industry in the period 2020-2025, with a vision to 2030.

But learning from the lessons of coal mining, Ky said that Quang Ninh does not want to attract projects that pollute the environment, or affect security and order, but those that use land efficiently, use high technology, and create great added value and high budget revenue. If Quang Ninh lured foreign investment at all costs, it would have to pay a high price.

Luong Bang

Despite being constantly on the move and staying in makeshift accommodations, construction workers in Ho Chi Minh City still move forward and are ready for whatever comes next.

Makeshift shanties erected at a construction site, secluded at a swamp next to the Saigon River, along Ven Ho Trung Tam Street in Thu Duc City, are where Nguyen Van Kiet, a 29-year-old construction worker, and more than a dozen co-workers have called home for the past several weeks.

The site is filled with noise and dust, and piles of construction materials are strewn across the area.

With walls temporarily built from corrugated iron and floors from planks of wood, the shanties, which double as the workers’ living and sleeping space, will be removed as construction nears completion.

These makeshift accommodations lack the basics like a kitchen and toilet.

Construction is ongoing at a building site in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo : Cong Trieu / Tuoi Tre

On the day a Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper correspondent visited the under-construction site, more than 50 workers rode off on their motorbikes, while the remaining 50 workers trudged back to the ramshackle sheds after a long working day.

Kiet, who hails from An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta, hummed a Vietnamese tune about the life of masons with his phone before taking a night’s rest.

“We masons build people’s houses, but just keep relocating and don’t have a place of our own,” his co-workers cracked a joke based on the lyrics.

Kiet used to work at a footwear factory, but the monthly salary of VND6 million (US$259) was barely enough for him to support his wife and young child.

Six months ago, he ended up in Ho Chi Minh City, where he began work in construction but until now has still struggled to adjust to the new ‘nomadic’ life.

“I couldn’t sleep sound for half a year now,” Kiet said.

As the contractors do not provide the workers with room or board and many of them are with their wives and young children, they cook their own meals and live in unsanitary conditions.

The women also help around with less physically demanding chores on the site.

The makeshift shanty, built from leaves and corrugated iron at a building site in Thu Duc City, Ho Chi Minh City, is where Nguyen Quang Hieu, Nguyen Van Kiet and their team live and work. Photo : Cong Trieu / Tuoi Tre

Construction workers typically try to get as much work done as they can in the morning so they can avoid more strenuous work if the heat gets more intense later in the day.

Though staying on the site spares the workers room rent and allows them extra payment from the contractors, many find the conditions quite tough.

Tram Ngoc, from Tra Vinh Province, also located in the Mekong Delta, said extreme weather conditions can also have an effect on construction workers; scorching heat can add to their exhaustion, while windy conditions can also prove difficult.

His bedding and clothing items as well as makeshift ‘bed’ placed atop bricks all got soaked during an unseasonal downpour last week, leaving him struggling to stay dry under the porch of a household nearby the whole night.

“The heat is unpleasant but still bearable. What I dread most is unseasonal downpours that catch us off guard at midnight,” Ngoc said, adding construction materials drenched in rainwater may become unusable for the following day.

“I can’t take on the physically taxing work the next day if I go without sleep during the night.”

Theft is another of his concerns.

Ngoc, who has been on the job for more than 10 years, racked his brain trying to remember how many times he had his phones pinched.

“Thieves sneak in when we are sound asleep on breezy nights,” he said.

“Most masons have lost at least one or two phones.”

Ngoc added five such gadgets at a building site he was working at were stolen at one time, while he once had a phone he had just bought for more than VND3 million ($130) nicked.

“I’ve saved every hard-earned penny,” he said.

“It really hurt.”

Finding joy

Kiet’s ‘housemates’ are Nguyen Quang Hieu, 24, also from An Giang Province, and his 18-year-old wife, Le Thi Thao Nhi.

Hieu and his younger brother took up the construction job from their parents, who have been on the move between work sites in Ho Chi Minh City and its neighbors, Dong Nai and Binh Duong Provinces, over the past 20 years.

The young couple are hard at work to save up for themselves and take care of their baby of less than three months old.

“Our baby is doing fine,” Nhi said.

“I usually put on extra covers to keep my child from the sun or winds.”

After a long working day, what Hieu and others are most eager for is fishing at the swamps nearby, which gives the young men something to do in their spare time and some fish to eat.

Hieu’s wife also goes to the riverbanks overgrown with wild morning glory to pick some for meals.

Despite physically exhausting work and tough living conditions, Hieu and his team always try to find a reason to smile.

Nguyen Quang Hieu, a young construction worker, poses with his wife and their baby inside the shanty at a building site in Thu Duc City, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Cong Trieu / Tuoi Tre

Hieu would follow his parents to building sites during his childhood, always moving to other places after construction finished.

The boy, due to such mobility and insufficient livelihood, could not make it to school.

Though unable to write, Hieu can read and loves doing karaoke, which he said helps himself and his co-workers unwind and have some fun during their casual gatherings on the weekend.

The man joked that what he likes most is no one complains about them making noise.

The man recently bought a loudspeaker for VND15 million ($648) by installments.

“I try to refrain from hanging around in order not to spend money,” Hieu shared, pointing to the brand-new device placed in the distance.

“This speaker is quite expensive, but helps alleviate our exhaustion and keep our spirit high.”

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