MUMBAI, India: They are all pictures of women doing everyday activities: A woman on a street, a woman playing the piano in her home, a woman lounging in a boat, a woman at a table in a restaurant.
All unremarkable, except that they are wearing a cow mask.
The photographs aim to highlight the growing violence against women in India, while also drawing attention to a wave of attacks on religious minorities accused of eating beef or slaughtering cows — considered sacred by many Hindus.
“People are getting lynched in this country to protect cows. But women’s safety is neglected and violence against women is rising,” photographer Sujatro Ghosh said of his project.
“If we can protect cows, then why not women?“
Violence against women has been under the spotlight since a fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012 sparked nationwide protests about entrenched violence against women and the failure of authorities to protect them.
India has enacted tougher jail sentences for rapists and promised to try those accused through “fast-track” courts but rape, acid attacks and domestic violence remains common.
More than 327,390 crimes against women were registered in India in 2015, an increase of more than half since 2010.
But activists say many crimes go unreported because women are afraid of reprisals from their attackers, or because they are ashamed to report them.
There has also been a surge in violence against people accused of harming cows.
Earlier this month, a 16-year old Muslim boy was stabbed to death on a train on suspicion of carrying beef, the latest victim of an estimated 28 people killed in cow-related violence since 2010.
Most were killed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party won elections three years ago.
Modi last week broke his silence and condemned the violence by so-called cow protection groups, some of which have links to his party.
Ghosh, who began by photographing his friends and family in Delhi and Kolkata wearing the cow mask, said he has been flooded with offers from women to pose for his project since he began posting the pictures on social media.
He has taken about 30 photographs so far, and is raising money via crowd funding to take the project across the country.
But he has also been attacked on social media for the project, which some people see as belittling the cow.
“I hope people get the message and realize we need to protect women with at least as much zeal as we protect cows,” Ghosh said.
Indian women don cow masks to show they are less safe than cattle
Indian women don cow masks to show they are less safe than cattle
World copper rush promises new riches for Zambia
CAPE TOWN: Five years after becoming Africa’s first Covid-era debt defaulter, Zambia is seeing a dramatic turnaround in fortunes as major powers vie for access to its vast reserves of copper.
Surging demand from the artificial intelligence, green energy and defense sectors has exponentially boosted demand for the workhorse metal that underpins power grids, data centers and electric vehicles.
The scramble for copper exposes geopolitical rivalries as industrial heavyweights — including China, the United States, Canada, Europe, India and Gulf states — compete to secure supplies.
“We have the investors back,” President Hakainde Hichilema told delegates at the African Mining Indaba conference on Monday, saying that more than $12 billion had flowed into the sector since 2022.
The politically stable country is Africa’s second-largest copper producer, after the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo, and the world’s eighth, according to the US Geological Survey.
The metal, needed for solar panels and wind turbines, generates about 15 percent of Zambia’s GDP and more than 70 percent of export earnings.
Output rose eight percent last year to more than 890,000 metric tons and the government aims to triple production within a decade.
Mining is driving growth that is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to reach 5.2 percent in 2025 and 5.8 percent this year, which places Zambia among the continent’s faster-growing economies.
“The seeds are sprouting and the harvest is coming,” Hichilema said, touting a planned nationwide geological survey to map untapped deposits.
But the rapid expansion of the heavily polluting industry has also led to warnings about risks to local communities and concerns of “pit-to-port” extraction, in which raw copper is shipped directly abroad with little domestic refining.
’Dramatic new chapter’
“We need to be aware of the potential for history to repeat itself,” said Daniel Litvin, founder of the Resource Resolutions group that promotes sustainable development, referring to the colonial-era scramble for Africa’s resources.
There is a risk that elites will be enriched at the expense of the broader population, while “narratives of partnership” offered by major powers can mask underlying self-interest, he said.
Chinese firms have long dominated the sector in Zambia and control major stakes in key mines and smelters, cementing Beijing’s early-mover advantage.
Another major player is Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, Zambia’s largest corporate taxpayer.
Investors from India and the Gulf are expanding their footprint, and the United States is returning to the market after largely pulling out decades ago.
Washington, which has been stockpiling copper, this month launched a $12 billion “Project Vault” public-private initiative to secure critical minerals, part of an effort to reduce reliance on China.
In September, the US Trade and Development Agency announced a $1.4 million grant to a Metalex Commodities subsidiary, Metalex Africa, to expand operations in Zambia.
“We are at the beginning of what is going to unfold to be a dramatic new chapter in the way that the free world sources and trades in critical minerals,” US energy secretary adviser Mike Kopp said at Mining Indaba.
Sweeping US tariffs introduced last year helped send copper prices soaring to record highs, as companies rushed to buy both semi-finished and refined stocks.
Cost of rush
“The risk is that this great power competition becomes a race to secure supply on terms that serve markets and not the people in producer countries,” said Deprose Muchena, a program director at the Open Society Foundation.
Despite its mineral wealth, more than 70 percent of Zambia’s 21 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
“The world is waking up to Zambia’s copper. But Zambia has been living with copper and its consequences for a century,” Muchena told AFP.
Environmental damage caused by mining has long plagued Zambia’s copper belt.
In February 2025, a burst tailings dam at a Chinese-owned mine near Kitwe, about 285 kilometers (180 miles) north of Lusaka, spilled millions of liters of acidic waste.
Toxins entered a tributary feeding the Kafue, Zambia’s longest river and a major source of drinking water. Zambian farmers have filed an $80 billion lawsuit.
“Whether this boom is different depends on whether governance, rights, and community agency are at the center, not just supply chain security,” Muchena said.
