Drone food delivery is spreading across Australia. Research suggests we will eat more junk food as a result

Published: July 26, 2024 

Wing / AAP

Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from cafes and restaurants via the DoorDash app and have it brought to them in minutes by a small aircraft.

This is the first large-scale rollout of autonomous food delivery in Australia. What does it mean for our food ordering, and our health? Research (including ours) into online food delivery platforms suggests this extra convenience may come at a cost to public health.
Online food delivery is booming – but most of it’s unhealthy

In Australia, more than 7 million people use food delivery services such as DoorDash and UberEats. The typical users are 25–34-year-olds in capital cities.

The online food delivery industry is growing rapidly. In 2023, DoorDash generated US$8.6 billion (A$13.1 billion) in revenue, increasing from US$885 million (A$1.4 billion) in 2019.

Research has shown that the food available and promoted through Australian online food delivery platforms is mostly unhealthy, and more unhealthy food is available in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage. Our own research has also shown that unhealthy foods are also more likely to be promoted with discounts and higher visibility than healthy options on these platforms.

Autonomous delivery promises greener convenience

At the moment, most food delivery is carried out by humans. However, delivery via robots and drones is on the rise.

This is often referred to as “autonomous delivery”, but these machines are not truly autonomous. Instead they have some human supervision, much like a “self-driving” car. Wing says it has up to 50 drones being supervised by a single human pilot.

Autonomous food deliveries are operating in the United States, United Kingdom, and parts of Europe and Asia. Robots loaded with food have travelled along footpaths in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the US, as well as the UK, Finland and Estonia. Due to the small scale, the potential public health impacts of autonomous delivery are currently not well understood.

Beyond greater convenience, autonomous delivery has been hailed as an eco-friendly alternative to traditional methods, as a small electric quadcopter produces significantly less carbon emissions than a delivery van. One study found the environmental footprint of drone delivery is roughly one-sixth that of motorbike delivery. One robot manufacturer claims a delivery with one of its devices uses less energy than boiling a kettle.

Australians think they will use drone delivery to eat more junk

Drone deliveries have been operating in Australia on a small scale since 2017. Wing has trialled a handful of locations in Queensland and Canberra, but has faced resident complaints and bird attacks.

What do people think about drone delivery? Research suggests the Australian public has generally positive attitudes towards the idea.

Australians surveyed in one study believe drones would allow for lower delivery costs due to replacing human drivers. Another study found Australians say they would likely use autonomous delivery for groceries, fast food and alcohol.

However, survey respondents also believed the availability of drone delivery might lead to more consumption of unhealthy food and alcohol.

Given unhealthy foods saturate online food delivery platforms, the enthusiasm for drone delivery raises serious public health concerns.

Drone delivery may further concentrate power in the food industry

Online food delivery platforms are primarily operated by large, multinational technology companies. Powerful companies have faced criticism for their influence over the food system, the marketing of unhealthy food, and treatment of gig economy workers.

If drone food delivery becomes widespread, it is likely to further concentrate power in the hands of a few online food delivery companies and the big tech firms operating the drone services. Efforts by large companies to sway political decision-making in favour of commercial interests are increasing, and growing concentration in the food industry has led to companies prioritising profits over the health of their customers.

In Australia, Wing – one of only two companies licensed to make drone deliveries, with the other focused on medical supplies – has been an active contributor to the drafting of new drone regulations. The company is also getting in on the ground floor of drone air traffic management software.

As autonomous delivery becomes more common, we may well see people using it to consume more unhealthy food and alcohol – unless delivery platforms begin to promote health as well as convenience.

Authors

Rebecca Bennett
PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University

Rebecca Bennett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Kathryn Backholer
Co-Director, Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition, Deakin University
Disclosure statement
Kathryn Backholer receives funding from the National Heart Foundation, the Ian Potter Foundation, NHMRC, ARC, VicHealth, UNICEF and WHO. She is Vice President (Development) for the Public Health Association of Australia.

Brazil court overturns Amazon highway decision

DW

JULY 26, 2024

Plans to pave a highway running through the Amazon have been suspended over fears it would increase deforestation. It was first introduced by former President Jair Bolsonaro.

A Brazilian federal court on Thursday ruled against a plan to pave a key highway that runs through the Amazon rainforest, citing environmental concerns.

The BR-319 roadway is a largely dirt road that runs through the rainforest, connecting the city of Manaus to the rest of the country.

Before leaving office, far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro gave permission for the road to be paved, ignoring environmentalist concerns over deforestation.

Judge Maria Elisa Andrade cited the "absence of a climate impact study" in her ruling, saying that the government lacked a plan to prevent rampant deforestation.
What were the concerns over the road?

"Justice was done. The importance of this decision is gigantic," said Suely Araujo, a policy expert with environmental lobby group Climate Observatory, which brought the lawsuit seeking to block the road.

"There are no conditions to control the explosion of deforestation that paving the road will cause."

The main worry is that a major paved road would make it easier for illegal loggers and land grabbers to access more remote parts of the forest that have so far remained relatively untouched.

According to one study, the paving of the road could lead to a fivefold increase in deforestation by 2030, leading to the loss of an area the size of the US state of Florida.

Amazon deforestation slows in Brazil, Colombia  02:36

Key road to remain unpaved for now

The BR-319 was built by the military government in the 1970s to connect Manaus, now a city of 2.2 million people, to other urban centers.

It quickly fell into disrepair and now turns into an impassable mud road during the rainy season, blocking access for loggers.

President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftwinger who took over from Bolsonaro in 2023, has a favorable attitude to paving the road, arguing that it could be achieved while also protecting the environment.

His government launched a working group on the issue, but had not commenced the work.

Brazil is the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, responsible for almost 3% of total global emissions.

Brazil's emissions are largely due to the cutting down of the world's largest rainforest.

ab/sri (Reuters, AP)

 

Latest Gallup Creationism Poll

Published by Steven Novella under Creationism/ID, Evolution

Surveys are always tricky because how you ask a question can have a dramatic impact on how people answer. But it is useful to ask the exact same question over a long period of time, because that can indicate how public attitudes are changing. This is one of the benefits of Gallup, which was founded in 1935 and is dedicated to high quality and representative polls. They have been asking the following question since 1982:

“Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings — 1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, 2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process, 3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so?”

It’s an imperfect way to ask these questions – the “less advanced life forms” is not really accurate, and the questions all assume or imply the existence of God. But by asking “which one comes closest” it does capture the essence of this issue. Option 3 is basically young-Earth creationism, option 2 is pure scientific evolution, and option 1 is everything else. From my view as a skeptic and science communicator, the results of this survey are dismal but also encouraging. At the start of the survey in 1982 the numbers were stark: 1 – 38%, 2 – 9%, and 3 – 44% (the rest undecided). Therefore 82% of Americans endorsed some form of creationism, and only 9% were willing to say that life resulted from evolution acting all by itself.

The most recent poll from this perspective is encouraging: 1 – 34%, 2 – 24%, and 3 – 37%. There is still a plurality endorsing young-Earth creationism, but those endorsing scientific evolution is up to 24%. These numbers also track with surveys on religion in the US. The young-Earth creationism figure is about the same as the number of Americans who identify as some kind of evangelical (something between 30 and 39%). Admittedly, this number can be squirrely depending on how you define “evangelical” and ask the question, but broadly defined, the numbers track. The scientific evolution numbers also track with those who answer on surveys that they are religiously unaffiliated, also now in the 20’s.

One way to look at these numbers is that, on this specific issue, science education and communication may be entirely irrelevant. How you answer this question may be entirely due to your religious affiliation. But this can also mean that two thirds of Americans are open to the concept of evolution and could benefit from science communication on this topic. I also find that discussing claims surrounding creationism and evolution is a great way to teach science and critical thinking.

So let me pivot to a brief summary of why, as a scientific question, there is little doubt that life on Earth is the result of organic evolution. What I mean by this is that once life arose on Earth (the origin of life is a distinct but related question), a combination of variation followed by differential survival lead to evolution of living forms over time, including speciation, and resulting in a nestled hierarchy of branching relationships, resulting in all life that we see today on Earth. Variation derives from genetic mutations and recombination, while differential survival results from selective pressures and “survival of the fittest” but also genetic drift and possibly other factors.

Creationists (now using the term to broadly refer to all forms of evolution denial) have attempted to prove that evolution in this way is impossible or cannot work, but all such attempts have completely failed. Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics (because the sun is inputting energy into the biosphere), is capable of generating an increase in information (through gene duplication and mutations), and does not have a problem with “irreducible complexity” (a concept that fundamentally misunderstands how evolution works).

Meanwhile the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, especially for the basic concept that all life is related through a nestled hierarchy of evolutionary relationships. We see this evidence when we look at the pattern of living things and how they are spread throughout the world. It’s not random – there is a reason, for example, that marsupials dominate in Australia. We see this in the fossil record, which extends our observations of anatomical patterns not only in space but time. The fossil record also fills in many gaps in the “tree of life”, revealing transitional species and the pattern of what evolved into what. l

Perhaps most powerful, however, is the molecular evidence. Genes evolved from other genes, and we can see this pattern as well, which nicely overlaps with species relationships. We see the same overlapping pattern when we look at protein structures, and at genetic sequences. We even see this pattern when we look at viral inclusions – bits of viral DNA that get stuck in the genome and get passed down. Species with shared ancestors tend to have shared viral inclusions as well. There is simply no possibility that the molecular patterns we seen in proteins and genes is a coincidence. You also cannot explain these clearly evolutionary patterns away by invoking function – we see these evolutionary patterns even when function is not involved, like in silent mutations and viral inclusions.

There is also evidence from developmental biology, as creatures develop in a pattern that reflects their evolutionary history. Develop does not exactly follow prior evolutionary forms, because there is no reason it should, but the stamp of evolutionary history is still clearly seen. The bones in our inner ear, for example, were previously part of the jaw, and when mammals develop these same bones migrate from the jaw to the inner ear.

Also, many times creationists point to “gaps” in the fossil record, eventually paleontologists find fossils that fill in those gaps. We now have an extensive record of bird and whale evolution, for example – previous favorite examples of creationists.

Most importantly, evolution as a scientific theory has proven to be extremely useful. It makes and has made many predictions about what we will find when we look at fossils and study living things, and these predictions have been remarkably successful. There is also no competing theory that can come close to explaining and making sense of all the evidence.

Creationism does not and cannot do this. If you drill down past all the noise and diversion, what creationists ultimately say about the evidence is that God simply chose to make life that way, for whatever reason – in essence God chose to make life look exactly as if it had naturally evolved. This, of course, is an unfalsifiable claim, which is part of the reason why creationism is not science. What creationists do is present a master class in deception, pseudoscience, and logical fallacies. They really have no choice. They reject for purely ideological reasons one of the most successful and powerful scientific theories that humans have come up with, one that is supported by a mountain of evidence.

New Zealand's flightless birds are retreating to moa refuges

Date: July 25, 2024

Source: University of Adelaide

Summary:

Researchers have found New Zealand's endangered flightless birds are seeking refuge in the locations where six species of moa last lived before going extinct.


FULL STORY

Researchers have found New Zealand's endangered flightless birds are seeking refuge in the locations where six species of moa last lived before going extinct.


An international team of researchers, led by scientists from the University of Adelaide, used fossils and computer modelling to make the discovery, shedding light on a mystery with important conservation benefits.

"Our research overcame past logistical challenges to trace the population dynamics of six species of moa at resolutions not considered possible before," said senior author Associate Professor Damien Fordham, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute.


"We did this by combining sophisticated computational models with extensive fossil records, paleoclimate information, and innovative reconstructions of colonisation and expansion of people across New Zealand.

"Our research shows that despite large differences in the ecology, demography and timing of extinction of moa species, their distributions collapsed and converged on the same areas on New Zealand's North and South Islands."

This recent discovery, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, found these moa graveyards to be in the same isolated, cold, mountainous environments that today harbour many of the last populations of New Zealand's most threatened flightless birds. These include Mount Aspiring on the South Island, and the Ruahine Range on the North Island.

"Populations of moa are likely to have disappeared first from the highest quality lowland habitats that Polynesian colonists preferred, with rates of population declines decreasing with elevation and distance travelled inland," said lead author Dr Sean Tomlinson, from the University of Adelaide.

"By pinpointing the last populations of moa and comparing them with distributions of New Zealand's living flightless birds, we found that these last havens shelter many of today's persisting populations of takahē, weka and great spotted kiwi."

"What's more, these ancient refugia for moa overlap with the last mainland populations of the critically threatened kākāpō."

Although recent drivers of decline of New Zealand's native flightless birds are different from those that caused the ancient extinctions of moa, this research shows that their spatial dynamics remain similar.

"The key commonality among past and current refugia is not that they are optimal habitats for flightless birds, but that they continue to be the last and least impacted by humanity," said author Dr Jamie Wood, also from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute.

Like earlier waves of Polynesian expansion, habitat conversion by Europeans across New Zealand, and the spread of the animals they brought, was directional, progressing from lowland sites to the less hospitable, cold, mountainous regions."

This new research shows that the ghosts of species past can provide invaluable insights for conservation efforts directed at New Zealand's living flightless birds, highlighting the immense importance of protecting remote, wild places.

It also provides an important new method for understanding past extinctions on islands where fossil and archaeological data are limited, which is the case for most Pacific Islands.


Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Adelaide. Original written by Johnny von Einem. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:Sean Tomlinson, Mark V. Lomolino, Jamie R. Wood, Atholl Anderson, Stuart C. Brown, Sean Haythorne, George L. W. Perry, Janet M. Wilmshurst, Jeremy J. Austin, Damien A. Fordham. Ecological dynamics of moa extinctions reveal convergent refugia that today harbour flightless birds. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41559-024-02449-x


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Mesmerizing NASA Video Reveals Carbon Dioxide Churning in The Sky

ENVIRONMENT26 July 2024

By  EVAN GOUGH, UNIVERSE TODAY 

(NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

Our CO2 emissions are warming the planet and making life uncomfortable and even unbearable in some regions. In July, the planet set consecutive records for the hottest day.

NASA is mapping our emissions, and while what they show us isn't uplifting, it is visually appealing in a ghoulish way. Maybe the combination of visual appeal and ghoulishness will build momentum in the fight against climate change.

NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio has released a video showing how wind and air currents pushed CO2 emissions around Earth's atmosphere from January to March 2020. The video's high-resolution zooms in and sees individual sources of CO2, including power plants and forest fires.

"As policymakers and as scientists, we're trying to account for where carbon comes from and how that impacts the planet," said climate scientist Lesley Ott at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "You see here how everything is interconnected by these different weather patterns."

The video starkly shows that it doesn't matter where CO2 emissions come from; we all deal with the outcomes. Yet there are some interesting global differences.

Above the USA, South Asia, and China, most of the carbon comes from industry, power plants, and transportation. But over Africa and South America, most of the emissions come from burning, including forest fires, agricultural burning, and land clearing. Emissions also come from fossil fuels like oil and coal.

The image pulses for a couple of reasons. Forest fires tend to flare during the day and then slow down at night. Also, trees and plants photosynthesize during the day, releasing oxygen and absorbing CO2. The land masses and the oceans act as carbon sinks.

There's more pulsing in South America and the tropics because the data was collected during their growing season.

In this version, the video zooms in on the USA, showing individual CO2 sources.

(NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

These visualizations are based on GEOS, the Goddard Earth Observing System. GEOS is an integrated system for modelling Earth's coupled atmosphere, ocean, and land systems.

NASA calls it a "high-resolution weather analysis model," and it uses supercomputers to show what's happening in the atmosphere.

GEOS is based on billions of data points, including data from the Terra satellite's MODIS and the Suomi-NPP satellite's VIIRS instruments. GEOS has a resolution that's more than 100 times greater than typical weather models.

Interested users can download the visualizations at the Scientific Visualization Studio.

Development of 'living robots' needs regulation and public debate

Bio-hybrid robotics creates unique ethical challenges

Date: July 22, 2024

Source:

University of Southampton

Summary:

Researchers are calling for regulation to guide the responsible and ethical development of bio-hybrid robotics -- a ground-breaking science which fuses artificial components with living tissue and cells.


FULL STORY

Researchers are calling for regulation to guide the responsible and ethical development of bio-hybrid robotics -- a ground-breaking science which fuses artificial components with living tissue and cells.

In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a multidisciplinary team from the University of Southampton and universities in the US and Spain set out the unique ethical issues this technology presents and the need for proper governance.

Combining living materials and organisms with synthetic robotic components might sound like something out of science fiction, but this emerging field is advancing rapidly. Bio-hybrid robots using living muscles can crawl, swim, grip, pump, and sense their surroundings. Sensors made from sensory cells or insect antennae have improved chemical sensing. Living neurons have even been used to control mobile robots.

Dr Rafael Mestre from the University of Southampton, who specialises in emergent technologies and is co-lead author of the paper, said: "The challenges in overseeing bio-hybrid robotics are not dissimilar to those encountered in the regulation of biomedical devices, stem cells and other disruptive technologies. But unlike purely mechanical or digital technologies, bio-hybrid robots blend biological and synthetic components in unprecedented ways. This presents unique possible benefits but also potential dangers."

Research publications relating to bio-hybrid robotics have increased continuously over the last decade. But the authors found that of the more than 1,500 publications on the subject at the time, only five considered its ethical implications in depth.

The paper's authors identified three areas where bio-hybrid robotics present unique ethical issues: Interactivity -- how bio-robots interact with humans and the environment, Integrability -- how and whether humans might assimilate bio-robots (such as bio-robotic organs or limbs), and Moral status.

In a series of thought experiments, they describe how a bio-robot for cleaning our oceans could disrupt the food chain, how a bio-hybrid robotic arm might exacerbate inequalities, and how increasing sophisticated bio-hybrid assistants could raise questions about sentience and moral value.


"Bio-hybrid robots create unique ethical dilemmas," says Aníbal M. Astobiza, an ethicist from the University of the Basque Country in Spain and co-lead author of the paper. "The living tissue used in their fabrication, potential for sentience, distinct environmental impact, unusual moral status, and capacity for biological evolution or adaptation create unique ethical dilemmas that extend beyond those of wholly artificial or biological technologies."


The paper is the first from the Biohybrid Futures project led by Dr Rafael Mestre, in collaboration with the Rebooting Democracy project. Biohybrid Futures is setting out to develop a framework for the responsible research, application, and governance of bio-hybrid robotics.

The paper proposes several requirements for such a framework, including risk assessments, consideration of social implications, and increasing public awareness and understanding.

Dr Matt Ryan, a political scientist from the University of Southampton and a co-author on the paper, said: "If debates around embryonic stem cells, human cloning or artificial intelligence have taught us something, it is that humans rarely agree on the correct resolution of the moral dilemmas of emergent technologies.

"Compared to related technologies such as embryonic stem cells or artificial intelligence, bio-hybrid robotics has developed relatively unattended by the media, the public and policymakers, but it is no less significant. We want the public to be included in this conversation to ensure a democratic approach to the development and ethical evaluation of this technology."

In addition to the need for a governance framework, the authors set out actions that the research community can take now to guide their research.

"Taking these steps should not be seen as prescriptive in any way, but as an opportunity to share responsibility, taking a heavy weight away from the researcher's shoulders," says Dr Victoria Webster-Wood, a biomechanical engineer from Carnegie Mellon University in the US and co-author on the paper.

"Research in bio-hybrid robotics has evolved in various directions. We need to align our efforts to fully unlock its potential."


Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Southampton. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:Rafael Mestre, Aníbal M. Astobiza, Victoria A. Webster-Wood, Matt Ryan, M. Taher A. Saif. Ethics and responsibility in biohybrid robotics research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024; 121 (31) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2310458121


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Warming has more impact than cooling on Greenland's 'firn'

Date: July 25, 2024

Source: University of Colorado at Boulder

Summary:  A new study finds disproportionate effects of temperature shifts on an icy glacier layer.


FULL STORY

Scientists have known from ice core research that it's easier to melt an ice sheet than to freeze it up again. Now, they know at least part of the reason why, and it has to do with ice's "sponginess," according to a new study published July 24 in The Cryosphere.

The study uses a physics-based numerical model to assess the impacts of warming and cooling on firn, the porous layer between snow and glacial ice, over the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. Megan Thompson-Munson, a CIRES and ATOC PhD student, led the study alongside her advisors: CIRES Fellow Jen Kay and INSTAAR Fellow Brad Markle.

"The amount of change that occurs within the firn layer due to warming and cooling is not equal in magnitude," Megan Thompson-Munson said. "If we look at thousands or millions of years, we see asymmetric ice sheet behavior overall: Ice sheets can melt away quickly, but take a long time to grow. This firn asymmetry we identify is a small piece of that puzzle."

Firn covers about 90 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet, located at higher elevations where, along with snow, it covers hundreds of meters of ice and acts as a buffer against sea level rise -- making it integral to preserving Arctic glaciers in a warming climate. Firn is porous and spongy, which allows water to pass through on its way to the solid ice layer below, where it can refreeze, adding to the existing ice sheet instead of flowing to the ocean.

In this study, researchers found warming temperatures are rapidly changing how efficiently firn can store meltwater, and cooling temperatures may not help the firn fully recover as much as scientists might have hoped.

"The warming depletes what we call the 'firn air content' or the 'sponginess," Thompson-Munson said. "So you lose more of the sponginess due to warming than can be regained due to cooling. And it's important because this porous firn can buffer the ice sheet's sea level rise contribution."

To understand how firn responds to both warming and cooling temperatures, the team used a physics-based computer model called SNOWPACK, and honed in on one variable: temperature. The study is the first of its kind in two ways. First, researchers looked at the impacts of both warming and cooling temperatures on Greenland firn. Second, the scope of the research covered the entire ice sheet, while previous studies focused on smaller geographical areas.

"The Greenland ice sheet loses mass faster under warming than it gains mass under cooling," said Kay. "The key advance of this study is that Greenland's firn contributes to this greater warming-than-cooling asymmetric response."


Thompson-Munson said the study brings up an important question regarding geoengineering and the ability to reverse our Earth's warming. Any geoengineering concepts designed to decrease temperatures in the Arctic might not preserve ice and snow as efficiently as imagined; the degree of cooling will have to exceed the degree of warming to help firn and glaciers return to normal.

"To get back to initial conditions, we'd have to cool a lot more or start changing other variables a s well," Thompson-Munson said. "It's hard to reverse what we've already done."

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:Megan Thompson-Munson, Jennifer E. Kay, Bradley R. Markle. Greenland's firn responds more to warming than to cooling. The Cryosphere, 2024; 18 (7): 3333 DOI: 10.5194/tc-18-3333-2024

Why BJP’s election upset failed to halt the persecution of Muslims in India

Rather than engaging in introspect, authorities in BJP-governed states responded to the electoral setback by inventing novel methods to harass, humiliate and attack Muslims.

Apoorvanand

Published On 26 Jul 2024

AL JAZEERA

Mohammad Azeem's Pan and Coldrink Stall at Vehalna Chowk displays his name following a police order. [Mohd Abuzar Choudhary/Al Jazeera]

Muslims continue to be persecuted in India despite the weakening of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the fountainhead of anti-Muslim hate and violence, in the recently held elections.

The BJP failed to secure a majority and was only able to form a government with support from a number of regional parties which claim to be secular. It was hoped that having a smaller number of MPs in the Parliament of India would chasten the BJP and its new “secular” allies would act as a brake on the party’s anti-Muslim policies.

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Just over a month after the formation of the new government, those hopes have already been belied. Authorities in BJP-led states, including the police and civil administration, have started inventing novel methods to harass, humiliate and attack Muslims following the election.

The most recent example is from Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-ruled state that sends the largest number of MPs to Parliament.

Earlier this month, the state police issued orders requiring restaurants and even roadside food carts along a route taken each year by thousands of Hindu pilgrims to put the names of their owners and employees on display boards.

The police claimed the order was given to “help pilgrims” who travel on foot to sacred sites during the holy month of Shravan to avoid buying food from establishments that may be serving items that do not conform with the holy conduct that they have to follow in their pilgrimage.

The states of Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh quickly followed suit and issued similar orders, making it compulsory for all their business establishments to display the names of their owners and their employees prominently. The authorities in the city of Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, an important Hindu pilgrimage destination, went as far as to say that those who fail to implement the order would be penalised with hefty fines.

This, of course, is not just an innocent policy “helping” Hindu pilgrims keep to their vegetarian diet, but a clever way of identifying establishments owned by Muslims and ensuring that Hindus do not give them their business.

The authorities deny that the policy is discriminatory towards Muslim businesses, claiming that it is “religion neutral”. They say the new requirement does not target any particular religious group, but fail to explain how knowing the names of a restaurant’s owners and employees helps Hindu devotees decide whether it serves food that is in line with their dietary requirements.

The authorities say past instances of restaurant owners “hiding their identities” led to “confusion” in the minds of the Hindu devotees, which in turn caused “law and order problems”. What the police mean by this is that some Muslim business owners gave their eateries Hindu-sounding names, and when some of the pilgrims eventually learned that the owners or employees were actually Muslim, they indulged in violence. The police’s argument is that making all business owners and restaurant employees announce their names up front would prevent disorder and violence.

This is a strange argument. If it is the Hindus who cause disorder, over their perception of the identity of a shop’s owner and employees, why should Muslims be the ones to take action to prevent further aggression? And how would the revelation of the identities of the owners and employees of a given eatery remove confusion from the minds of the Hindus?

For example, McDonald’s gives franchises to both Muslims and Hindus all across India, but every branch serves exactly the same food. Is there a difference, from the point of view of customers, between a McDonald’s branch owned by someone called Ram and one that is owned by another called Rahim Ali? Does the identity of the owner or the servers in any particular branch impact in any way the content of the food on offer?

This new rule is obviously designed not to help Hindu pilgrims avoid consuming food that is in foul of the holy conduct they are expected to follow in some inexplicable confusion, but to encourage them to not visit Muslim-owned establishments with the implicit assumption that any food they consume in such a place could somehow pollute their bodies

To strengthen their arguments, some in favour of the new rule recirculated with renewed vigour old propaganda that Muslims “sell food items after spitting on them” and that they “deliberately mix impure things in the food to defile Hindus”. They tried to justify the police orders by saying Muslims can simply not be trusted to keep to food hygiene standards and thus Hindus have the right to know if an eatery is owned by one of them.

These rules ordering restaurant and food cart owners to reveal their identities, at their core, are nothing but a state-sponsored instigation to Hindus to boycott Muslim shops, or even the Hindu-owned ones that dare to employ Muslim workers.

The order understandably caused an uproar, but the Uttar Pradesh government doubled down and said that it would apply the requirement not only to the businesses on the pilgrimage route, but to all establishments across the state. Other states later followed Uttar Pradesh’s lead and also expanded the scope of their orders.

The matter was soon taken to the Supreme Court. The bench tried to make sense of the police order . The justices wondered if the authorities would also like to know the identity of the farmer who had grown the crop of wheat or rice used to make the food items sold on pilgrimage routes. After all Ramsharan, a Hindu, can very well sell vegetables that were grown by Rahmat Ali, a Muslim! How far can one go in ensuring the sanctity of food?One of the judges went so far as to share his experience of choosing an eatery owned by a Muslim over a Hindu owned eatery as he ensured international standards of hygiene.

In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that restaurants cannot be forced to display the names of their owners, and stayed the controversial police orders. The justices said that while restaurants could be expected to state the type of food they serve, including whether it is vegetarian, they “must not be forced” to display the names and identities of their owners or employees.

Despite being suspended, at least for the time being, the police orders directed at restaurant owners and employees sent a clear message to India’s Muslims: the authorities in this country will never miss an opportunity to persecute you because of your identity.

Indeed, the BJP’s power and authority is tied to the continued persecution of Muslims. If they cannot kill Muslims in large numbers, they will push them into destitution through attacks on their livelihoods – all to communicate to their Hindu supporters that they are fighting to protect their supremacy in society.

This is why as they forced businesses to reveal the identity of their owners the authorities simultaneously banned halal certification. Observant Muslims need to know whether the things they are using which contain animal products – cosmetics, for example – are halal or not. It is important for observant Muslims to know whether alcohol or material related to prohibited animals has been used in the manufacture or processing of medicine or cosmetics that they use.

What objection can one have to Halal certification? It does not interfere with the religious practices of non-Muslims. It does not in any way affect the lives of Hindus. Does the sight of halal certification defile the BJP’s supporters?

What can be the reason for banning halal certification and forcing Muslim shop owners to reveal their identities other than making the lives of Muslims more difficult?
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This new cycle of violence against and persecution of Muslims in India has baffled many analysts. They had thought that the reduced strength of the BJP in Parliament would force it to introspect and discipline itself Instead, it has become more brazen and more violent.

This is believed to be the result of an inner power struggle within the BJP. Some claim Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to shift responsibility for electoral losses to state leaders like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. By dialling up the persecution of Muslims in his state, the argument goes, Adityanat is communicating that he is actually more cruel and committed to the cause than Modi, and therefore deserving of his position. There is likely some truth to this line of argument. Not only in Uttar Pradesh but all across BJP-led states, it appears the authorities are racing each other to increase the pressure on Muslims to prove their Hindu nationalist credentials and cement their positions within the party. Regrettably, when it comes to the BJP, even major electoral upsets and internal power struggles appear to translate into further violence against Muslims rather than more thoughtful governance.

Today, we are witnessing a renewed attack on Muslims in India because the ideology of the BJP is essentially anti-Muslim and anti-Christian and cannot survive without inflicting violence on these minority groups. The Muslims and other minorities will remain under attack in India as long as the BJP remains in a position of power – alone or within a coalition government. What is more concerning today, beyond the party’s continued instigation of violence against Muslims, however, is the newfound willingness of all state institutions like the police and civil administration to execute these ideologically motivated attacks. Completely aligned with BJP positions, they are now proactively harassing and persecuting Muslims and discriminating against them without being forced to do so by the political leadership. This means Muslims will be facing more immediate and serious threats in their daily lives in this new era in India.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at the University of Delhi. He writes literary and cultural criticism.