VANCH VILLAGE: Firecrackers are central to Diwali celebrations for millions of Indian Hindus and this year was no different even as some cities, including New Delhi, banned their use to curb some of the worst pollution levels in the world.
Diwali honors the victorious return of Lord Rama, one of Hindiusm’s most revered figures, and was celebrated in India on Thursday. It is also known as the festival of lights to symbolize the triumph of light over darkness, or good over evil, explaining why fireworks are so central to the celebrations.
“Firecrackers damage the environment, but they are a way of bringing good fortune to us,” said Yash Gadani, a local business owner, in Ahmedabad, a city in western Gujarat state.
While the bans didn’t stop people using firecrackers, factories that make the devices say sales have fallen this year as the rising cost of living, including higher prices for firecrackers, dampened demand.
In the village of Vanch, near Ahmedabad, thousands of workers covered in silver gunpowder make firecrackers by hand.
The industry is largely informal with lax safety standards. Nearly all of Vanch’s 10,000 residents are involved and workers are paid 500 rupees ($5.95) a day, often for 16-hour days.
“A couple of fires in factories as well as unseasonal rains have led to an increase in raw material prices,” Dipan Patel, who runs a unit in Vanch, said.
Firecracker bans have been difficult to implement, especially during Diwali, despite the threat of jail and fines.
New Delhi, a city of 20 million people, is the world’s most polluted capital. From October each year, air quality worsens as factors including the burning of farm stubble following the harvest, car fumes, and firecracker smoke get trapped over the city.
“The incidents of stubble burning are decreasing, but ... the smoke created by firecrackers needs to be controlled,” Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai told news agency ANI.
Despite bans, firecrackers sizzle across India for Diwali
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Despite bans, firecrackers sizzle across India for Diwali
- Firecracker bans have been difficult to implement, especially during Diwali, despite the threat of jail and fines
- While the bans didn’t stop people using firecrackers, factories that make the devices say sales have fallen this year
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
