Anchal, an M.A. student and a resident of Igra village, Jind district, posted a video on social media satirising khap panchayats, the powerful but unelected community bodies dominated by elderly men from landowning communities in Haryana. Imagining what a “Gen Z panchayat” might look like, she suggests in the video that elderly men face restrictions on playing cards, smoking hookahs and bidis, and wasting time, while tobacco sellers be fined. The money collected through such fines, she jokes, could be used to replace phones damaged or confiscated from girls.

Anchal was responding to a controversy that exploded after a khap panchayat member, Virender Dhull, a resident of Ikkas village in Haryana, made a remark about young women at the Naugama khap meeting in Jind on August 1. The comment that went viral was about women riding pillion with their fathers on two-wheelers, their legs astride, while using mobile phones and wearing clothes the khap thought unsuitable. He said their phones should be smashed. Dhull, a director of physical education at Jat Senior Secondary School in Jind, was hit by social-media criticism. 

Over the past few weeks, several khap panchayats across parts of north Haryana have unleashed a series of resolutions, many against women. The khaps have opposed marriages within the community and live-in and same-sex relationships, while also resolving to fight drug abuse, online betting, and obscene social-media content.

Khap leaders insist they are not issuing diktats. They describe themselves as community elders offering guidance to the youth, and argue that their goal is to preserve social cohesion and protect families. Except, ostracisation will be a penalty for those who disregard these social rules. And the rules are targeted primarily at young women. 

To many, especially the social-media-vocal Gen Z, the khaps’ message sounded like an attempt to regulate their personal choices in the name of tradition. 

“Why are concerns over culture and social behaviour directed primarily at girls? If these restrictions are genuinely meant to protect society and preserve our culture, they should apply equally to men,” Anchal says.

Young women see the controversy as an enduring culture of social control over female agency, and have posted videos against the diktats. Several men too, like rapper Rahul Fazilpuria and content creator Paras Yadav, too, took to social media to condemn the resolution. 

Naugama khap president, Jaivir Lohan, however, says Dhull’s remarks have been misrepresented. He maintains that the khap has not banned mobile phones for girls or prescribed what women should or shouldn’t wear. Parents, he says, should decide what is appropriate for their children, and the khap will intervene only if parents seek its help. 

“The views expressed during the panchayat on women’s clothing and use of mobile phones was an individual’s opinion,” Lohan says. The Naugama khap has 42 members, all male.

Haryana’s over 130 khap panchayats have long carried an image of being stuck in time. Their decisions have frequently been criticised for restricting women’s autonomy, particularly their freedom to choose whom to marry, who to associate with, and how to live. They have largely kept women away from decision-making roles. 

Khap state of mind

On August 9, 24 khap panchayats met in Jind’s Kandela village. Here, they passed a resolution disallowing women and men from marrying within the same gotra (clan) or cluster that their khap panchayats oversee. This diktat is based on their belief that its members are one extended social family. However, people are free to choose who they marry beyond this boundary. 

Chanderbhan Nambardar, a khap member, says people within this network are considered brothers and sisters, irrespective of caste differences and, in some cases, gotra distinctions. For the khap, therefore, a marriage within these prohibited social boundaries is seen as a relationship crossing what the community considers a kinship boundary. Lohan says that same-gotra marriages lead to genetic disorders and weak offspring, because of a common gene pool. 

The consequences, if the khap panchayat is disobeyed, are severe. Nambardar says that if a woman and a man who come under the 24 khap panchayats disobey, they will not be allowed to enter the area under their community-appointed jurisdiction. He acknowledges that the khaps have no legal authority, though.

The khaps also passed a resolution banning live-in and same-sex relationships, and content they felt was obscene, while also urging the government to regulate marriage by choice, or love marriages, as they are called in India.

Raghubir Nain, president of the Sarvjatiya Binain khap, in Jind, says the panchayat did not oppose love marriages, but wanted them to take place with parental consent and within accepted social norms. He refers to live-in and same-sex relationships as a “nai beemari (new disease)” in society. The Naugama khap has made similar demands.

Naugama khap spokesperson Umed Jaglan says they want the government to examine the social consequences of live-in relationships, particularly where a married person leaves a spouse and children to live with another partner. The khap argues that such relationships can damage families and traditional social institutions. 

Khap leaders also say women are being included more in decision-making now, through special assemblies and women’s wings aimed at addressing social issues. 

On August 23 in Jind, the Naugama khap panchayat convened its first ever women-led mahapanchayat. They too passed resolutions against love marriages and live-in relationships, but also against dowry and gun culture. A 21-member committee will spread the word and ensure compliance. 

At a mahapanchayat, held in July at the Meham Chaubisi Chabutra in Rohtak, participants adopted resolutions against drug abuse, online betting, obscene social-media content, and the glorification of guns online. The gathering also decided to eliminate the use of hookah at community functions — an especially striking move in a State where the hookah has long been a symbol of rural social interaction. The mahapanchayat was chaired by Chaubisi Khap president Subhash Goyat and attended by prominent local artists, including Ajay Hooda.

Khap leaders say these social issues they take up rarely receive the same attention as their positions on marriage and relationships. Nambardar argues the khaps are “guiding lights” for the youth. 

Gen Z hits back

On her YouTube channel, Leena Sharma (leena_yuvan7240) criticises what she describes the khap diktats, questioning how restrictions on women’s clothing, mobility, and behaviour can be imposed in the 21st century. She points out that women sitting astride a motorcycle is a matter of safety. She also questions khap resolutions, such as not allowing DJ music at weddings, asking why community bodies should dictate personal choices. Her larger argument is generational: cities may be changing, she says, but villages need to change too.

On Instagram, Garima (@garima.sees) talks about how the khaps were claiming that this was done to save “culture”, but it was just to control women. In a Reel with the caption “One of the reasons why Haryana is developing backwards,” she says the State grapples with one of the highest youth unemployment ratios and one of the lowest sex ratios in India. “Meanwhile, Haryana’s male youth is involved in drugs and crime, but no such panchayat is held for the betterment of these people. Na unkay liye kuch ban kiya jaata hai, aur na unkay liye kuch rules banaye jaate hain (Nothing for them is banned, nor are there any rules made for them),” she says on the video.

It’s not just women speaking against the diktat. Aman Kashyap, who holds a master’s degree in journalism from a university in Jind, asks, “When the Constitution grants girls equal rights, how can a panchayat decide to smash their phones or restrict their movements?” He calls these diktats illegal and contrary to fundamental rights, including the freedom of movement, expression, and privacy. He stresses that the views of a few khap members should not be seen as those of all of Haryana, noting that many students and their parents too had opposed the decisions. 

Krishan Dalal, a reel creator with nearly 27.8k followers on his Instagram account @iamkrishan7, clocked 747k views on his post on the subject. In the Reel with some mixed messaging, he says, “Actually, ye buddhay hain gay (Actually, these old men are gay),” adding that, “Before they die, they want to come out of the closet….” He also says, with some misunderstanding, “Ye low testosterone mard ki pehli pehchaan hoya kare, ki jab kahin uska bas nahi chalta toh aurat ne sanskar aur sabhyachaar sikhane nikileya kare wo. (The first sign of a low-testosterone man is that when he cannot assert his authority anywhere else, he sets out to teach women about values and civilisation).”

Critics, however, point out that societal relationships are governed through individual rights and the law, rather than through community sanctions. A YouTube channel FlicksUnpacked has uploaded a Short under the title “Huge Decision by Haryana Khap on Love Marriages”. It addresses Khap members as “so-called dadajis (paternal grandfathers)”, accusing them of seeking attention and social-media fame. 

The clip reflects a wider generational tension in Haryana and elsewhere: traditional community-based institutions continue to assert authority over matters of relationships and social conduct, while the youth increasingly uses digital platforms to challenge those norms and demand greater autonomy, equality, and individual rights.

Customs versus law

As they sit in a circle in a building set on 5 acres of land in Ramrai village, some of the men feel India’s laws must be in tandem with Haryana’s social customs. 

“Couples entering into these relationships, which are against our social customs, are given security by law-enforcing agencies,” Jaglan says, referring to safe houses set up by the government to protect couples who have been socially ostracised and whose lives are sometimes in danger. 

Jaglan says the Naugama khap has actively approached political and legal authorities seeking changes to the law. According to him, more than two years ago, a delegation first met then Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, and later, in January 2025, met Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal. Among its demands were changes to the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, restrictions on same-gotra and same-village marriages, and legal action against live-in and same-sex relationships. Jaglan says the delegation was assured that its concerns would be placed before the Union Cabinet, but that no further action or response followed.

The khap also demanded changing the legal marriage age for women, with Jaglan recalling that some members had proposed reducing it from 18 to 16. He also points to its history of approaching political and judicial authorities, including earlier meetings with former Haryana Chief Ministers Devi Lal and Bansi Lal, as well as a representation before the Supreme Court.

The khap leaders see matters such as drugs, guns, and dowry as being interconnected with other parts of the social order, like marriage and relationships. Their critics see a dangerous blurring of the line between community advice and coercion.

Anti-women accusations

Nambardar rejects the accusation that khaps are anti-women. He points to the wider political system to explain why women remain under-represented in khap leadership. “Women became sarpanches in Haryana only in the 1980s,” he says, questioning the gap between political promises and reality. “Every political party talks about 33% reservation for women, but how many women are actually in the State Assemblies and Parliament?”

According to him, the problem runs deeper than the khaps themselves. Indian society, he says, continues to be patriarchal, with women still under-represented in politics, government, and employment. “So naturally, there are fewer women in khaps as well. But their representation is growing fast.” 

Nambardar argues that several decisions taken by khaps have received support from women. For instance, during the wrestlers’ protest, when several women wrestlers from Haryana had accused BJP leader Brijbhushan Singh of sexual abuse, the khaps stood by the women. 

The khap remains rooted in a Haryana where village identity, kinship, honour, and collective decision-making continue to carry enormous weight. But it operates alongside Gen Z that is increasingly connected to cities, smartphones, social media, new forms of work and relationships, and a legal system built around individual rights. That collision is producing uncomfortable questions on both sides.

In the first four months of 2026, Haryana’s Sex Ratio at Birth plummeted to 898 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Identities of all sex workers, former sex workers, and their families have been changed to maintain privacy

Sitting in her older daughter’s room, where one corner is covered with maps and math formula sheets, Savitri, a 40-year-old former sex worker, recalls when she began hating her profession. “It was when my girls turned five and seven,” she says. “I had decided that my daughters would never live the life I had. They would live with dignity.”

Although she continued in the profession for a few more years due to family responsibilities — her husband, who was one of her clients, abandoned the family years ago — Savitri eventually quit. Now, about 10 years later, her elder daughter works with an NGO and is preparing to write the police exam, while her younger daughter is preparing for medical entrance tests in Indore.

The family belongs to the Banchhada community, a de-notified tribe with an estimated population of 25,000 spread across 78 villages in the districts of Mandsaur, Neemuch, and Ratlam in western Madhya Pradesh.

Unlike Savitri’s daughters, most girls in the community are born into a system in which their families expect them to enter sex work — a practice passed down over generations. According to several members of the community and NGOs in the region, while many Indians celebrate the birth of a boy over a girl, the Banchhadas welcome a girl with sweets and firecrackers. As girls grow up, they receive better nutrition than boys. They are given expensive clothes and, unlike in much of India, are not told that they will have to marry one day and leave the nest.

The reason, however, is disturbing: for generations, the Banchhada girls have been pushed into sex work upon hitting puberty and given the responsibility of earning. Their family members function as pimps and live off their money.

Akash Chouhan, founder of the Jan Shaurya Social Welfare and Development Society, an NGO based in Neemuch, estimates that at least 10,000 women of the community, including about 3,000 girls, remain trapped in this form of exploitation. “Girls are forced to drop out of school after Class 8 or 9 and are pushed into sex work by their families,” says Akash, who is from the community. “Community elders protect the practice in the name of tradition.”

Radhika, a sex worker, says girls are conditioned from childhood to believe in the tradition. They are told it is their responsibility to ease the family’s financial woes. “I quit school on my own after Class 9 and began working,” she says. “But if a girl refuses to quit, her family forces her into sex work through physical or emotional abuse.”

Abuse along the highway

A drive along State Highway 156, which connects the three districts, passes through several villages of the community. Girls wearing bright lipstick stand along the way, while older women sit on cots outside their houses and shanties, watching children playing nearby. As evening approaches, they gesture to men to come in.

In Neemuch’s Jaitpura village, an elderly woman approaches a car parked on the roadside and asks if anyone would like to come in. She points to three girls sitting outside her house; two of them are her granddaughters. “You can pick either of them and go into the house,” she tells them. “It will cost you ₹300 for 10 minutes, but I will take ₹100 as my tip. The room has a fan; you will be comfortable.”

Most girls along the highway, including those who look underage, say that they are around 20; some say they recently turned 18. Conversations with them reveal that they have been involved in sex work for about four years.

Multiple dhabas along the highway are also involved in brokering deals between prospective clients and sex workers. The owner of a highway dhaba in Ratlam’s Dhodar village claims he can “arrange girls” and lists different price brackets based on location, duration, and the girl’s age. Standing near a toll booth, he lists the facilities available, including an air-conditioned room, car parking, and assurances of safety from the police. The rates range from ₹300 for 10 minutes to ₹1,000 for an hour, and ₹6,000 for a night. They go up to ₹10,000 for a younger girl.

“If girls are taken to a hotel, clients face the risk of police raids. But here, clients have no problem,” the dhaba owner explains. “The girls avoid going to hotels as they face incidents of violence by drunken men. That is why many of them have built rooms in their houses with AC.”

Several sex workers from the region also travel to cities such as Indore in Madhya Pradesh and Chittorgarh and Udaipur in neighbouring Rajasthan, on client requests.

Shivangi, a former sex worker in Neemuch’s Nilkanthpura, who now works with the government’s Women and Child Development (WCD) Department, recalls some of the horrific incidents she faced. “In 2003, my friend and I had gone to a hotel in Chittorgarh for two clients. After a few minutes, two or three others entered the room. For hours, we suffered sexual and physical violence that still haunts me. All I could think of was jumping out a window,” says Shivangi, who is now married with two daughters.

Shivangi says girls rarely share grim experiences with their families as they have to “get to work as soon as the next client approaches”.

In 2005, Shivangi came in contact with an international NGO working in the region and began volunteering with it while continuing sex work. “Over the next few years, my mindset began to change as I got exposed to a life outside my community,” she says. “In 2008, I chose to leave that life behind for good. I married a man I met during my NGO work and moved in with him.”

From a criminal tribe to social outcasts

Historically a nomadic community in the Malwa and Mewar regions of present-day Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the Banchhada community was notified as a ‘criminal tribe’ by the British government under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.

Narendra Chouhan, founder of Naya Jeevan Foundation, an NGO working for the youth of the community, says the origin of sex work in the community can be traced back to that period. “Our elders have told us that it began during the British Raj, when the police would catch men from the community and demand women in exchange for their release. Some families who could not pay money started sending them unmarried girls from their homes,” he says.

The community was de-notified by the Government of India in 1952 and classified as a Scheduled Caste. The practice that ensured monetary benefits for families continued, says Narendra. “Slowly, families who were engaged in sex work started moving out of Rajasthan and settled in this region.”

Apart from offering services in their homes, they also began offering services in trucks. A girl would board a truck at one location, offer services, and get off at another. “This method went on till the 2010s when people started buying land along the highway and building houses,” he says.

Barriers to a better life

Today, the Banchhadas remain cut off from mainstream society, with their members facing stigma in all walks of life: from education to employment to renting properties in cities. In many villages with a mixed population, the houses of the Banchhadas remain secluded. In Hadi Pipliya, for instance, the two sections are divided by a drain.

Kanupriya, a counsellor with Jan Shaurya, says members of the community, including women who are not involved in sex work, face job rejections in the private sector as soon as they reveal their social identity. “I have been rejected from various jobs myself,” she says. “Schools often deny admissions to Banchhada children. They say taking them in could disturb the atmosphere of their institution.”

Aditi Garg, who was Mandsaur Collector until recently, says the administration is trying its best to bridge the gap. Once, when the administration had recommended some women from the community, living in a government hostel, for teaching and teaching assistant jobs at private schools, there was pushback, she recalls. “The managements were concerned about their reputation, but we dealt with them firmly and ensured jobs for 24 women from the community. We have also hired some women on help desks in government offices where the public has to communicate with them,” she says.

The youth of the community find it hard to obtain government documents, especially a caste certificate, since many of them are born out of wedlock and have no records of their fathers. The absence of a caste certificate means that they are deprived of various government benefits such as reservation and scholarships.

Neemuch Collector Himanshu Chandra says the district administration has written to the government seeking a provision to help the community. “This is a policy problem. Since a person’s caste is decided based on the father’s caste, we can’t do much at our end,” he says.

Narendra says it is because of these reasons that many girls who want to leave sex work stay trapped. “They see no scope outside this profession. Some of those who did manage to escape or were rescued returned to sex work,” he says.

A government official adds that some girls who were rescued and rehabilitated at government hostels and centres returned to sex work as they had to vacate these places on turning 18. “While the government is running initiatives and programmes to provide them livelihood options such as sewing or skill-based jobs, it is difficult to match the income and lifestyle the girls earn through sex work. This leaves a gap in our efforts to rehabilitate the community,” the official adds.

In Mandsaur, however, Ms. Garg says the district administration has been able to find a way to issue caste certificates through ancestral records or any fraternal records that can establish a person’s connection to their family.

A cycle of exploitation

A recent short film, Khilawadi, which has received awards at various national and international film festivals, depicts the story of a Banchhada girl who dreams of becoming a doctor. Made by a debutant filmmaker, Shobhita Thakur, the film’s title comes from a local term often used for the oldest daughter of a family, who is not allowed to have a life of her own, whether it is a career or marriage.

In the Banchhada community, dowry is paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s. The reason is simple: her in-laws compensate her family for lost income. Activists and community members say the amount has increased over the years, with some girls’ families even taking ₹25 lakh.

As per the community’s customs, a girl cannot marry within the caste once she enters sex work. A married woman is not allowed into sex work.

Sangita, a social worker with Udan Women Employment Welfare Society, explains that the girls are fed ideas against marriage from childhood and encouraged to get into sex work, which promises materialistic benefits such as smartphones, scooters, and clothes. “They tell the girl that if she is unmarried, she can buy whatever she wants, but if she gets married, she will be stuck doing household chores,” says Sangita.

After the age of 25, many women are forced to become brokers or offer their houses on commission as client demand begins to decline. Others, suffering from infections, sexually transmitted diseases, or HIV/AIDS, become dependent on relatives or NGOs.

While researching for her film, Shobhita found that a girl suffering from AIDS was in the hospital. “The girl’s father came to the hospital in a drunken state and asked her to give him money even though she was in a critical condition. He created a scene and left. The girl died a few days later.” She says she came across many incidents that were so revolting that she could not include them in the film.

Sex workers say it is because demand goes down with age that they take on as many clients as they can. Radhika says she has about 10-15 clients a day and earns about ₹5,000. “I don’t have a large family; I only have my grandmother. So, I have to save enough to buy a house and live comfortably after a few years,” she reasons.

Sangita says the girls are unable to escape as caste panchayats punish or penalise those who try to break free from the practice. She adds that the community has an unofficial nexus of pimps and agents that keeps a close watch on the girls, including those who have been rescued.

Ms. Garg adds that caste panchayats and community members oppose programmes they believe could affect the profession. “We recently faced resistance during our HPV [human papillomavirus vaccination] drive for cervical cancer as they feared it could impact their girls’ work,” she says.

A generation of hope

Social activists allege that multiple government campaigns and programmes have failed to impact the community.

For instance, the Jabali Scheme launched by the State government remains “completely missing from the ground,” Akash says. Launched in the early 1990s, it was aimed at building hostels for the women from the Banchhada and Bedia communities that are involved in caste-based sex work. Officials say there has been no allocation for the scheme for about four years. “Even when it was active, the allocation was just about ₹5 lakh-7 lakh a year for a district,” says a WCD official.

Narendra says most government programmes focus on creating awareness instead of providing women with alternative livelihood options and erasing the stigma. “And even their awareness drives often turn into photo opportunities for government officials,” he points out.

Meanwhile, NGOs have been running learning centres for children of the community so that they can resist their families’ push when the time comes. The youth in various villages also have initiatives to do away with the practice.

In Sagargram, a group of mostly college-going youth formed a committee about four years ago. Within a year, they were able to stop sex work and liquor inside their village. “We faced objections, but we stood our ground,” says Vikas Chouhan, a Master of Social Work student.

Saniya, who is part of the committee, says she encouraged a friend, who was being pressured by her family to get into sex work, to fight back. “Her parents came to my house to complain to my parents, but my parents took my side. My friend fought with her parents, and they eventually relented. She is now continuing her studies,” she says.

Her approach was simple, Saniya explains. “Start with one house, one person, then move up. Now, our village feels much safer,” she says.

mehul.malpani@thehindu.co.in

For nearly two minutes on the night of July 9, Block A of Sushant Lok Phase-I in Haryana’s Gurugram sounded like a war zone. Just minutes from the glitzy Mehrauli-Gurugram Road, known for its premium hotels and luxury showrooms, a quiet enclave of bungalows was jolted by gunfire. More than 60 rounds were fired in a brief but intense exchange — roughly one bullet every two seconds — as Gurugram Police and alleged shooters faced off outside a businessman’s house.

The confrontation left four alleged shooters dead and three policemen injured. The dead were Sandeep (alias Deepa), a criminal with a dozen cases against him, including some cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985; Nitin Phogat, a motorcycle mechanic with a criminal record; and two minors — a promising javelin thrower and a daily-wage labourer. Their alleged fifth accomplice, Shivam of Nuh, was critically injured and has since been shifted out of the Intensive Care Unit.

The police said the attack was ordered by Deepak Nandal, a music director-turned-gangster who allegedly runs an extortion racket from abroad. The target was businessman Vishal Berry, who had reportedly received extortion calls.

The First Information Report, in which Nandal has been named as an accused, said that the police acted on intelligence about a possible attack. It read: “There was input that the Deepak Nandal gang might target and kill individuals to whom he had made extortion calls. We got further intelligence that an attack was planned today on Vishal Berry’s residence in Sushant Lok Phase-I.”

At 9:22 p.m., a wireless alert flagged a black sport utility vehicle (SUV) carrying about four armed men on National Highway-48. Three Crime Branch teams led by sub-inspectors moved in and surrounded Berry’s house.

Twenty-eight minutes later, the SUV rolled in, with its number plates crisscrossed with strips of black tape. The police said they spotted five youths inside. Three jumped out from the middle row and one from the front, before unleashing a volley towards Berry’s house and neighbouring homes. One of them recorded the assault on his phone, the FIR said.

“When challenged, the accused fired at the police to escape. The police team retaliated,” Assistant Commissioner of Police (Crime) Naveen Sharma said. He later told reporters that five modern pistols, live ammunition, and the SUV allegedly used in the crime had been seized.

A village thrust into the spotlight

The news hit like a thunderclap in Bhalaut, a Jat-dominated village of more than 10,000 people on the Rohtak-Sonipat road, about 90 kilometres from Gurugram. Three of the village’s young men had been shot dead in the encounter. Two of them — the javelin thrower and the daily-wage worker — were minors with no prior criminal record, said both the police and their families. The third, Nitin, 22, had two cases against him in Rohtak for attempted murder and illegal possession of arms.

The village is grappling with grief, anger, and disbelief. For years, Bhalaut had not been in the headlines, locals said. Except for one murder over personal enmity a few months ago, the village had largely kept its name out of crime reports. That changed on July 9.

“Crime and gang violence have finally found their way here too,” rued Vinod Sheoran, a 40-year-old mason, sitting at a roadside tea stall in the village. “We have heard of shootings all around. But Bhalaut? Never thought it would happen to us.”

The three dead were cremated together on July 10. Sitting with a group of men around a hookah outside a juice shop, Rajender, a 30-year-old resident of Bhalaut, said the entire village turned up for the cremation. “Har gali mein policewale khade the. Maine itni police kabhi nahi dekhi gaon mein (The police were standing in every street. I have never seen so many police personnel in the village),” he said. “This many people never came even for a Sarpanch’s funeral,” he added.

Villagers said they are appalled by police claims linking the trio to gangster Nandal and an extortion plot in Gurugram. What hurts more, they said, is the speed with which the narrative shifted from “our boys” to “gang members”. Talk of the alleged encounter has dominated every chaupal — the traditional village meeting place — and sweet shop in Bhalaut, with all the residents asking one question: how did three young men from the village end up in the middle of a 60-round gunfight in Sushant Lok?

Glitz and guns

The incident has also left the elite neighbourhood of Sushant Lok Phase-I in Gurugram shaken. A resident whose house is 70-80 metres from the site of the alleged encounter recalled the shootout, saying he first heard a burst of gunfire between 9:45 p.m. and 10 p.m.

“I had just finished dinner when I heard cracker-like sounds,” he said. “They were unusual; not like Diwali firecrackers. The firing happened in quick succession and went on for about two-three minutes. Maybe there were 15-20 rounds? Then it reduced to random shots and gradually died down. Even after 10:30 p.m. there were one or two single shots.”

Around 10 p.m., two men arrived at his back gate and later approached the front door. Identifying themselves as Crime Branch officers, they showed him an ID card, shared a phone number, and asked for his CCTV digital video recorder (DVR).

“I let them in and they took the DVR themselves,” the resident said. He said police have not returned it yet. When he visited the traffic police headquarters, officers told him he would get it in a couple of days.

The resident said he noticed no prior police presence or announcement. “They seemed prepared, like they were ready for an encounter.”

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime, Hitesh Yadav told The Hindu that the businessman was in Delhi at the time of attack, while his wife and brothers-in-law were inside the house.

Berry had received a ₹5 crore extortion call from Nandal 4-5 days before the Sushant Lok shootout but did not inform the police, sources from the Special Task Force (STF) told The Hindu.

“Two days before the attack, we had credible input about a planned hit on his Gurugram home and shared it with Crime Branch,” said a senior STF officer.

Extortion rackets in Haryana

According to the STF, Nandal, a music director from Rohtak, turned to crime after financial disputes. He flew to Dubai in July 2024 on a passport with a Gurugram address and to the U.K. in June 2025. His current location is unknown. He is wanted in 10 criminal cases, including four extortion and three murder/attempt to murder cases.

STF Inspector-General Sateesh Balan said some 10 fugitives were running extortion rackets in Haryana from abroad. “They hire unemployed, gullible youth through social media and old contacts. They lure them with money or promises of quick gains to carry out shootings, create terror, and extort money from businessmen, doctors, and politicians,” he said.

Balan added that gangs preferred juveniles with no criminal records because they faced less severe punishment. Extortion calls were made using VPNs or “dabba calling” to conceal locations, he said.

Opposition parties in Haryana, including the Congress, have accused the government of failing to curb what they describe as an increase in mafia activity, gang wars, and extortion in the State. They have cited recent incidents such as the firing at Congress Meham MLA Balram Dangi’s office and the shooting outside YouTuber Elvish Yadav’s Gurugram residence over alleged extortion demands as evidence of a deteriorating law-and-order situation. They have staged protest marches to the State Assembly and disrupted legislative sessions to demand urgent, high-level debates on policing failures.

Nandal’s name had also surfaced in connection with a gun attack on Haryanvi rapper Fazilpuria’s car on Gurugram’s Southern Peripheral Road in July 2025. The attack had allegedly stemmed from Fazilpuria’s failure to repay ₹5 crore that he had borrowed from Nandal, according to STF sources. Rohit Shaukeen, a property dealer, financier, and close childhood friend of Fazilpuria, was later shot dead in broad daylight in Sector 77, Gurugram.

Unanswered questions

At the home of the 17-year-old javelin thrower killed in the alleged encounter, there is anger and grief. The boy’s uncle, a Haryana Roadways employee in his 50s, broke down saying, “The police did what they had to. The entire system is against us. We are poor, helpless people. This was a stage-managed encounter.”

The family disputed the police account of a gunfight. “The mortuary allowed us to see the body. He had four bullet wounds — three in the chest near the nipples and one in the neck. All the bullets had passed through him. That happens only when there is firing at point-blank range,” the uncle claimed. He added that several policemen familiar with the family, since the boy’s grandfather had served in the Haryana Police, shared this suspicion.

The family also demanded to know how the SUV entered Sushant Lok. “The entry to that colony has boom barriers and 24×7 security. Usually, registration numbers are noted. How was a vehicle with taped number plates even allowed inside,” the uncle asked.

The boy’s father, who runs an e-rickshaw repair and charging shop in Rohtak, asked why the police did not shoot to disable him. He said, “They told us he had six bullet wounds. Why did my son have them in the chest and not the legs?”

He described his son as “docile” and “promising” — a Class 12 student who had won gold in javelin and silver in the 100-metre event at a national meet organised by a private federation in Uttar Pradesh just days earlier. “I bought him shoes worth ₹20,000 two days before this,” he said.

Bhim Awardee Sunil Phogat, a junior Haryana government coach, said he had trained the boy for two years at the Rajiv Gandhi Sports Complex in Rohtak. “He came twice daily with his cousin. He was sincere and disciplined. There were no complaints against him,” Phogat said.

A neighbour, chemist Sandeep Phogat, said: “The family has had no criminal record for generations. He trusted the wrong people and paid the price.”

While Sunil Phogat posted a video after the alleged encounter urging youths to stay away from drugs, the boy’s father blamed unchecked drug abuse for the situation. “Gaon ke har chautha-panchwa ladka ganja peeta hai. Sabko pata hai kaun bech raha hai, lekin police kuch nahi karti (Every fourth or fifth boy in this village is smoking weed. Everyone knows who is selling it, but the police don’t do anything),” he said.

The father said he used to keep a close watch on his son, who was not allowed to have his own phone or use social media. The boy used his mother’s phone and shared his live location with the family.

The father said on July 9, his son had gone to get his motorcycle repaired at Nitin’s shop. Minutes after he spoke to him and told him to come home, the two left on a bike and sped away.

“We went to the police to file a complaint fearing they would do something wrong. The police told us to wait,” he said. The family learned of the deaths when the Gurugram Police contacted the Sarpanch, Kuldeep Phogat. He said, “Nitin had rented the SUV from Rohtak saying he was going to Haridwar. The owner of the vehicle had Nitin’s video, photos, and ID. That’s how the Gurugram Police reached us.”

At Nitin’s baithak, his father Sanjay was preparing a hookah for the mourners. Talking of the police version, he said, “They showed us nothing except a dark video of masked men firing. You couldn’t even identify who they were.” He claimed that the police shot the three 21 times.

In the village’s Valmiki mohalla for Scheduled Caste families, the grandfather of the third youth, a daily-wage worker, first said the family doesn’t want to talk. A 65-year-old supervisor at a firm in Mumbai, he then added that the boy was likely lured into this. “He said he was going to Haridwar. He went last year too, so we didn’t suspect anything. We don’t know what they offered him,” he said.

The boy had dropped out of school after completing Class 9 last year. The family’s neighbour, 30-year-old Monu, who runs a meat shop, called the boy “simple” and “free from manipulation.” He said the boy worked as a daily-wage labourer and herded goats when there was no other work.

A cousin of the boy said angrily: “The police are patting themselves on their backs for killing a poor boy. The real culprit is Nandal. Arrest him, or more innocent lives will be lost.”

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Hitesh Yadav did not respond to specific questions raised by the families of the deceased regarding the alleged encounter. He said the investigation was still underway and that several aspects were yet to be verified. He added that the ages of the two minors were also being verified.

He, however, gave a warning: “No one will be allowed to have a free pass in Gurugram and the law will take its own course.”

Every day for about a month, M. Soumina, a government-school teacher, began her mornings by knocking on the doors of apartments in a multi-storey residential complex in East Delhi’s Mayur Vihar.

Although the school where she taught was closed for the summer break, Soumina had her task cut out for her after being appointed an enumerator for the ongoing Census. The exercise relies on about 33 lakh government teachers and other enumerators, who will spend nearly a year surveying an estimated 1.4 billion Indians on housing, amenities, and demographics.

For Soumina, the work meant spending hours going door to door in a brutal Delhi summer, with temperatures consistently hovering between 40°C and 42°C. She surveyed 150 flats spread across 17 apartment blocks and administered a 33-question survey to each household within 26 days.

“I was making those visits daily from May 19,” said Soumina. “I had an app on my phone to record the data. Before asking the questions, the households also have to be mapped and geotagged on the app.”

Other than her smartphone, a black bag, a QR-enabled identity card, and a white cap with the Census logo to protect her from the heat, Soumina’s companion during these visits was her husband, who works in the production unit of a newspaper. She said she felt safer with him around.

Like Soumina, enumerators working on the Census report facing several challenges in the field, including heat, connectivity issues, and safety concerns. Though the exercise is being conducted through a digital system designed for real-time monitoring, field workers said conditions on the ground and supervisory instructions are affecting data collection. Many of them have also flagged these issues on social media.

A massive exercise

The questions that enumerators asked are part of the Houselisting and Housing Operations (HLO), the first phase of the Population Census 2027. The questionnaire was notified by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India on January 22.

The 2027 Census marks several firsts: it is India’s first fully digital Census, the first to collect caste data, and the first to allow residents to self-enumerate. The exercise was originally scheduled for 2021, but was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, India is conducting its population count six years later than the decennial schedule, with governments continuing to rely on 2011 Census data for policy planning and welfare programmes.

The HLO phase involves the collection of data on housing conditions, household composition, basic amenities, and assets to assess living standards. It captures information on the structure of dwellings; access to water, sanitation, and energy, ownership of consumer goods, and the number of people living in a household. It also collects residents’ mobile numbers for official communication.

The HLO phase will lay the foundation for the second phase of the Census — Population Enumeration — scheduled for February 2027. In Ladakh and the snow-bound regions of Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh, both phases have been set a deadline of September 30, 2026, due to weather constraints.

The second phase will enumerate caste and collect other detailed individual-level data, including religion. Each enumerator gets an honorarium of ₹25,000 for completing the task. So far, 23 States and Union Territories have completed the first phase.

Meeting strangers

With several occupants being working professionals, Soumina said it was difficult to get them to answer questions during the day.

“Most residents leave for work around 8.30 in the morning. So I visited homes between 7 and 7.30 with my husband. While some were accommodative, others asked us to come again later or skip the exercise altogether,” she said.

If a house was locked, she would go back again and again until she got the data, Soumina added. “Sometimes the visit extended into the evening, so I would again go with my husband.”

Like her, many female enumerators, mostly government school teachers, said they asked their husbands or other male members in their families to accompany them during field visits.

Meenu Verma, a primary school teacher from Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, said that her husband and brother-in-law helped her during the exercise. “I was assigned 172 houses,” she said. “My husband and I used to wake up at 4 in the morning and reach the assigned village by 7. From 7 to about 11, we would find people in their homes, but after noon, due to the heat, the entire village would be deserted.”

She said they would then hesitate to knock on doors. “Many of them had no awareness about the Census, so we had to first explain it them. I want to request the government to appoint enumerators in pairs. Or a male colleague should accompany a female enumerator. Not everyone is polite. And in villages, houses are spread afar,” Verma said.

On May 21, a First Information Report (FIR) was registered against a Delhi resident for allegedly harassing a female Census enumerator while she was on duty. On June 13, a Delhi court convicted the accused, Sandeep Panwar, 43, for the crime. Earlier, on April 25, a female Census enumerator was allegedly denied entry into an apartment building in Bengaluru where an unidentified individual allegedly used abusive language against her, following which an FIR was registered against him.

Dinesh Kumar Dwivedi, a Hindi lecturer at a government school, who was Soumina’s supervisor, said six enumerators were reporting to him. “Fetching data from slum clusters was easier than seeking information from multi-storey apartments,” he said.

In Haryana and Delhi, Census enumerators, mostly government school teachers, complained that they faced hostility and were denied entry by residents of high-rise buildings and residents’ welfare associations (RWAs). The district administration of Gurugram wrote letters to RWAs saying that according to Section 8(2) of the Census Act, 1948, every resident is “legally bound” to answer Census-related questions to the best of their knowledge or belief.

“The slum residents were hesitant initially,” said Dwivedi, who collected data as an enumerator during the 2011 Census. “They thought this was an exercise to demolish the slums. When they understood its purpose, they were more than forthcoming. Some thought that participating in it would make them eligible for government schemes. Many others came to us with documents, asking for help in applying for welfare schemes.”

Dwivedi recalled that in 2011, the process was tedious: all the data had to be noted down on paper, which could get lost or damaged. He said residents were reluctant to share information on assets as they feared tax raids.

The digital divide

Beyond personal safety, the digital divide in India has also affected fieldwork. In metros and towns with better mobile connectivity, enumerators entered data directly on their phones. Elsewhere, they said they recorded details on paper or in notebooks and uploaded them on the app after going back home.

Read: Census 2027: heat, locked doors pose challenges for survey deadline

According to the Comprehensive Modular Survey: Telecom, conducted from January to March 2025 as a part of the 80th round of the National Sample Survey, 83.3 % of rural households and 91.6% of urban households had access to Internet. The total number of households surveyed was 34,950 (19,071 in rural areas and 15,879 in urban areas) and the total number of people was 1.42 lakh (82,573 in rural areas and 59,492 in urban areas). In the survey, a person was considered to have “used the internet” if they had accessed it at least once in the past three months.

“Connectivity is a huge issue, especially in rural areas. Once an enumerator has logged in, it is difficult to make changes, and if the network is poor, the data can get corrupted,” said an enumerator from U.P.

Enumerators use their own phones to collect the data and have been asked not to delete the apps during the enumeration phase. However, they said the app crashes often.

On the Google Play Store, the Census 2027 Houselist App, which has more than 10 lakh downloads, has a rating of 2.9. It can only be downloaded by authorised users — enumerators, supervisors, and charge officers. Of the 4,570 reviews submitted, 2,054 users gave it a one-star rating, while 1,735 rated it five stars.

Facing FIRs

On the outskirts of Delhi, in U.P.’s Noida, Sector-6, Indu Prakash Singh, charge officer, who oversees the work of enumerators and supervisors, set up a camp office at the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre to monitor Census-related work. Officials with technical expertise were stationed in a large hall, with computer screens placed on desks arranged in a semicircle.

Singh’s job was to ensure the smooth conduct of the exercise, which entailed surveying 2,309 house-listing blocks (HLBs), each comprising 150-180 households with a population of 800-1,000. The exercise ran from May 22 to June 20 in U.P.

Though Census activities are usually carried out by government employees, in U.P., private-school teachers were also enrolled to tide over the shortage of government school teachers.

“The district administration in Noida issued directions to engage teachers from private schools for Census work,” Singh said.

“But some of them moved the Allahabad High Court, which ruled in their favour, and 50% of the 1,000 teachers who were trained backed out at the last moment. We were forced to engage NGOs and other private people for the task,” said a government official in Noida.

In Maharashtra, over 500 private unaided and minority schools moved the Bombay High Court in May against notices, appointment orders, and coercive steps such as FIRs issued against their teaching and non-teaching staff for failing to report for Census duties.

On May 22, the Court granted interim protection to the school associations and observed that Section 4A of the Census Act applies only to “local authorities” and prima facie the Census Act and the Census Rules, 1990 do not impose any statutory obligation on private unaided schools to provide their staff as enumerators or supervisors.

There have been several instances of enumerators facing FIRs for not taking up the assigned work. Though the total figures are difficult to assess, at least two FIRs were filed in Haryana against 10 enumerators, while a case each was filed in Noida and Greater Noida against more than 80 enumerators on June 3.

The National Crime Records Bureau reports for 2010 and 2011, when the first and second phases of the Census were last conducted, do not mention any cases registered under the Census Act.

Enumerators took to social media to flag issues such as heat and connectivity problems. They also reported witnessing stark income inequality, and described pressure from superiors to edit data in the name of correcting discrepancies.

Editing data

Earlier, it often took months or even years to process Census forms. Mobile apps have now enabled real-time data monitoring through the Census Management and Monitoring System (CMMS) portal. Access to the data entered via the app is available not only to enumerators, but also to supervisors and charge officers. Enumerators said they were asked to change data, particularly for questions related to sanitation, electricity, and LPG connection.

A school teacher in Delhi said during training, for a question relating to “access to latrine”, they were asked not to select the “no” option. This is used as a category for households without access to a latrine, and indicates open defecation. The “Yes” option is further broken down into “Exclusively for household use only (1),” “Shared with other households (2),” and “Public latrine (3).”

“During training, we were told to fill in the data observed by us,” said an enumerator from Rajasthan. “On the field, many residents in my enumeration block said they defecate in the open. When I submitted the data, I was asked by my supervisor to revisit the homes and revise the data to show that the households had access to a latrine, even if a public toilet was anywhere in the vicinity.”

Another enumerator from U.P. said they were also asked to edit data on the main source of drinking water. The options include tap water from treated source/untreated source, well, hand pump, tubewell/borehole, spring, river/canal, tank/pond/lake, packaged/bottled water and other sources. Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, one of the flagship schemes of the Bharatiya Janata Party government, nearly 81.97% households in India have tap water connection.

“When I filled untreated tap water as an option, the supervisor and the charge officers asked me to change the entry to tap water from treated source. What is the point of door-to-door enumeration then,” asked the enumerator.

The question on the availability of a kitchen and LPG/PNG connection were also edited, the enumerator added. “Even if the house has an LPG connection in their name, they were using cow dung cakes or wooden logs to cook as they had not refilled the cylinders for several months. If we mentioned firewood or charcoal as the response, which is what we observed, we were asked to change the entry to show that the main fuel is LPG,” said an enumerator from Rajasthan. According to the Press Information Bureau, national LPG coverage rose from 55.9% in April 2014 to 107.2% in April 2026. Consumers grew from 14.51 crore to 33.39 crore in the same period.

On June 2, the Director of Census Operations, Rajasthan, wrote to all district functionaries saying “during the analysis of field data collected so far, some discrepancies have been noticed”. Charge officers were instructed to “verify the block-level data through the CMMS portal, in accordance with the actual field situation.”

Around 11 a.m. on June 12, Manish Kumar, a government employee, went to a building in Noida’s Sector-2. An open drain flowed on the side. Several doors were locked since many of the occupants, largely migrants, were away at work. In the courtyard of the three-storey building, a woman was washing bedsheets in a corner using two tubs of water. A man was taking a bath in a narrow veranda outside his one-room accommodation, which he shared with six other members of the family.

Kumar knocked on each door to ensure that every household was enumerated. The rooms that were open mostly had women and children inside. While some residents responded immediately, others were suspicious of Kumar. He noted down the details, stepped out of the building, and then logged the information into the Census app on his phone.

He said he would return in the evening and over the weekend to reach residents whose doors were locked. “A household must be labelled vacant or locked only after multiple visits,” he said.

Lying at the foothills of the Mao mountains in southern China, the Temple of King Ashoka is one of the main attractions in Ningbo, a port city in southern Zhejiang Province, around 200 km south of Shanghai. Hymns fill the courtyards of the massive temple complex, which is largely empty on a busy weekday.

The temple’s history goes back more than 1,700 years, when it was built during the Western Jin Dynasty. It is one of the 19 Ashoka stupas constructed in China as Buddhism spread. In Ningbo, Buddhist culture, coupled with a long tradition of maritime commerce, has been an important part of the city’s history since the 7th-century Tang Dynasty, when it emerged as a major port.

Also Read: How is China leading the green energy sector?

Today, the city has emerged at the heart of a different kind of global commerce. It is a key hub for China’s booming Electric Vehicles (EV) industry, where new energy automotives are manufactured in sprawling, modern factories and then exported around the world.

‘A future factory’

“The future is our history,” reads the sign above the entrance to the factory of Zeekr, a high-end EV brand headquartered in Ningbo and part of the Chinese automaker, the Geely Auto Group. Geely also manufactures Volvo Cars, having acquired the company from Ford in 2010, and luxury Lotus autos, after garnering a controlling stake in the British automaker in 2017. EVs have become central to Geely’s future. The group sold close to 1.7 million EVs in 2025, a stunning 90% rise from the previous year.

In China, Zeekr is the group’s flagship product in this space. Zeekr’s cars that roll off the assembly line in Ningbo are transported across China and shipped to Europe and Southeast Asia, its two biggest overseas markets. The Ningbo plant, company representative Zhang Ting said, has been dubbed “a future factory”.

It is not hard to see why. The factory floor is a scene out of Star Wars. Automated yellow robotic transports that look like toy cars whizz around the factory floor. One beeps in protest as it brushes up against my feet. Frames of yet-to-be-completed EV cars descend from massive yellow platforms onto the assembly line, where the only humans on site are inspectors checking them for flaws. “Around 60-70% of the work is done by robots,” Zhang said. There are still some 2,300 people working in this factory, where the EVs are assembled into their final form. The welding factory, also in Zhejiang, is completely autonomous.

A dashboard notes that as of 4 p.m. on a recent afternoon, 366 cars had rolled off the production line, somewhat below the maximum daily capacity of 1,300. The reason, one Zeekr executive explains, is an intended nimbleness. The quick turnaround time allows the company to follow a model where it only manufactures cars for which it has already received a confirmed order.

Zeekr’s “future factory” was the result of a 10 billion RMB ($1.47 billion) investment. At every turn, the emphasis is on “green”. One live dashboard measures the factory’s carbon footprint at any given minute, including the electricity and water use per vehicle, and the savings from a waste heat recovery system designed to be energy-efficient. This year, the savings have so far amounted to the equivalent of the annual gas consumption of 736 Chinese households.

On top of the ‘green charts’

Going green appears to have become an obsession in Zhejiang, a province in China’s southern manufacturing heartland that played a key role in the country’s reform and opening-up period starting in the 1980s.

Wang Hao, an official from the provincial government, reels off statistics showing the Province at the top of China’s ‘green charts’. Zhejiang’s PM 2.5 particulate air pollution fell last year to an average slightly under 25 — “like Europe,” another official said. Last year, the Province notched two other landmarks: renewables, for the first time, accounted for 50% of total installed energy capacity; and 100% of the surface water met national standards, following a massive campaign to crack down on industrial waste.

Also Read: Will China capture the electrolyser market? | Explained

Across the city from the sleek Zeekr factory is a symbol of Ningbo’s past — the towering smoke stacks of the Ningbo Iron and Steel Company, or Ninggang, one of China’s oldest and biggest steel producers. Local officials cite the company’s story as a snapshot of China’s green transition — and how Beijing spent billions in overhauling older polluting industries and holding them to stricter emission standards.

At Ninggang, around 4 billion RMB ($588 million) was spent on “more than 100 emission renovation projects,” Yang Zhenzhu, a representative of the company, said. Many of these were aimed at reducing emissions and more efficiently recycling the wastewater from steel production. Today, the company hosts visitors from companies around China, who come to study it as a model of change.

The first stop on the Ninggang tour for visitors, who are separated from burning hot furnaces carrying golden, molten iron by thin glass walls, is an elaborate water treatment arrangement. All of the water that is used is recycled, coming from the city’s major wastewater treatment plant. This water is piped to Ninggang’s own treatment station for further treatment, and the excess is desalinated and reused. Zero solid waste is allowed to leave the factory. Waste containing iron and carbon is treated at another treatment facility and reused.

Pollution remains a serious problem in China. Even in Beijing, despite the undeniable progress — “airpocalypse” days that were regular in the winters of Beijing a decade ago are now far less common — maintaining clean skies is a continuing battle. One clear takeaway from Zhejiang is that the green transition neither came easily nor for free. Indeed, it required serious and sustained investment on the one hand, and no-nonsense policing and enforcement on the other.

Corruption is rarely spoken of in the context of pollution. Yet, Chinese officials often point to how, in the past, lax enforcement was a huge challenge. Bribes to local officials to look the other way were a common phenomenon. But a crackdown on corruption over the past decade has changed that. It is much harder for polluting factories to pay their way out of punishments for violating standards, while “big data” is being deployed to track factories in real time.

If investment and enforcement have been two key pillars of China’s green transformation, technology is a third. Chinese companies making EVs, batteries, and solar panels are in an apparent unending race to come up with technologies that are more efficient and cheaper. Technology, more than cost, explains China’s dominance of the global EV market, He Xiaopeng, who is the founder of another Chinese EV player, Xpeng Motors, a competitor of Zeekr’s, said. “Meaningful competition lies in capabilities, technology and systems. It is not only about price,” he said.

China accounted for around 60% of all global EV sales, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global EV Outlook 2024. Its dominance in batteries is starker, with China controlling 76% of global lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing, giving its firms a major cost advantage, according to Bloomberg data. Solar photovoltaics are a similar story. To give a sense of the scale, China in 2023 commissioned as many PVs as the rest of the world did, according to the IEA. China’s overwhelming presence in the critical minerals industry underpins its dominance of supply chains, with the country processing 90% of rare earth elements, and 60-70% of lithium and cobalt, which are key for manufacturing batteries.

Indeed, China’s proposition to the world is “a complete supply chain”, Qian Zhimin, who is Deputy Director of China’s Committee on Population, Resources and Environment, said.

For Chinese policymakers, the ongoing crisis in West Asia has only further driven home the urgency of green transformation and the advantages of diversifying energy sources. “Today, energy security and green transition are converging,” Qian said. “The recent tensions [in West Asia], and the tensions we are seeing in maritime routes like the Strait of Hormuz, mean traditional energy systems continue to face strong external shocks. So, the green transition is now a practical choice to enhance energy security and self-reliance in a complex external environment. And China offers a complete supply chain,” he said.

Impact on the world

If China sees its “complete” supply chain as a strategic advantage, for the rest of the world, dependence on China in these industries of the future is a cause for concern. China’s cost competitiveness and technological edge may be enablers of green transformations, but the other side of the equation is the enormous impact of Chinese imports on companies in these sectors around the world that are struggling to stay afloat. The European Union (EU) is a case in point.

The EU, along with Southeast Asia, has more than any other region opened up to Chinese EV and renewable energy companies. China’s exports, warned a February 2026 report from an advisory body to the French government, were “affecting the core of Europe’s industrial strongholds: automotive, batteries, industrial equipment, chemicals, and others.”

“On average, nearly a quarter of European exports is currently exposed to Chinese competition that we deem critical,” it said. “On the domestic market, up to 55% of European manufacturing output could be threatened over the medium term if current trends persist. This proportion varies significantly across countries: it reaches around 70% in Germany, 60% in Italy, 50% in Spain and 36% in France,” the report added, noting that in 2024, the EU imported €11.1 billion worth of solar panels, €2.9 billion of liquid biofuels, and €0.5 billion worth of wind turbines from extra-EU countries, totalling about €14.5 billion in imports of green energy products. China accounted for 98% of these imports.

Fearing the prospect of “accelerated deindustrialisation”, the report said the cost gap estimated by European companies with regard to China was 30-40%. It cited PVs as an early indicator of what may come in other sectors. Since the mid-2000s, when China began massive investments in solar, its growth has led to “a near-monopoly situation for China in photovoltaics” with market share “exceeding 80% across all segments of the value chain.”

Leadership on climate change

For much of the Global South, however, China is seen as offering the prospect of an affordable green transformation — a proposition that, many countries note, the West has been unable to compete with, even as the U.S. withdraws from global leadership on climate change.

“China is a leader in this area not for no reason,” Fazeel Najeeb, who is the Maldives Ambassador in Beijing, said. He was recently in Ningbo along with the country’s Minister of State for Climate Change, Environment and Energy, Mohamed Faiz, at a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation green forum convened by China, reflecting its global ambitions in the sector. “China’s leadership is undeniable, whether or not others are withdrawing from issues such as climate change that have a huge bearing on countries like us.”

The Maldives, for instance, is clear about seeking opportunities from China, including for its landmark RasMale project, an initiative pushed by President Mohamed Muizzu, which envisages building a zero-carbon safe island on 1,153 hectares of reclaimed land.

“We are requesting China to work with us to make this island a future city powered by renewable energy entirely, with electric cars and no fossil fuels. Right now, we spend around 33% of our GDP on fossil fuels. We would like to change this,” Najeeb said

The Maldives is among the many countries in the midst of energy shortages. The Iran crisis, Qian notes, has driven home the lesson that renewable energy “reduces vulnerability to fluctuations in international oil price and enhances economic resilience.” He points out that coal still accounts for 52% of primary energy consumption in China and 56% in India. “The fact is that energy security and green transition are not a binary choice for us,” he said, “but a strategic pathway on which both complement each other.”