Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh – A small cavalcade of cars, mini trucks and autorickshaws weaves its way through the cramped and dusty lanes of Ghaziabad, a suburb of India’s capital, New Delhi.

One of the mini trucks has large, black speakers tied at the back, which blare out patriotic songs from Bollywood films. Supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), wearing saffron scarves and caps, line both sides of the roads as they raise slogans for their high-profile candidate, General Vijay Kumar Singh.

Singh, a former chief of the Indian army and minister of state for foreign affairs in the Narendra Modi government, is seeking re-election in the constituency he won with a record margin in 2014. Standing with local BJP leaders in a red Toyota convertible, he waves at his supporters holding marigold garlands to present to their leader.

The windshield on Singh’s vehicle has a large sticker that says: “Chowkidaar” (watchman).

In the 2014 elections, “Vikas” (development) was the war cry that helped the Hindu nationalist BJP post a thumping victory against the Congress-led alliance.

But in 2019, “national security” has become the party’s call to arms as it prepares to defend the political turf it captured in the last election.

“National security is always an issue. At times it goes up and at times it comes down,” Singh told Al Jazeera at the end of his road show in Ghaziabad on Sunday.

The recent military standoff with Pakistan in the wake of a deadly suicide attack on security forces in India-administered Kashmir and the resultant surge in nationalist sentiment across the country appear to have handed the BJP the perfect ruse.

Hindu nationalist base

Until then, the ruling party was seen struggling to counter opposition attacks over rising unemployment, the highest in 40 years, and the deepening farm crisis.

The security-themed campaign received a boost last month when Prime Minister Modi added “Chowkidar” as a prefix to his Twitter handle. In less than a day, dozens of top BJP leaders and hundreds of thousands of Modi’s online fans added “Chowkidar” to their twitter handles.

The prime minister even held a video conference with nearly two million security guards from across the country, where he said the word “chowkidar” has become synonymous with patriotism and honesty.

“I want to ask first-time voters: Can you dedicate your first vote to the courageous pilots who struck Balakot [in Pakistan-administered Kashmir]? Can your first vote be in the name of the courageous martyrs who lost their lives in Pulwama (India-administered Kashmir)?” said Modi, addressing an election rally in Ausa in Maharashtra.

Speaking with Al Jazeera, BJP spokesperson Vijay Chauthaiwale said that his party expects the security issue to “definitely resonate” with the people, “especially due to the attack in Kashmir”.

He accused the opposition of weakness on the issue of security and terrorism, saying: “That is why they don’t want to debate it.”

Using platforms of national security and patriotism, issues which hang heavily in these elections, has also allowed the BJP to revive some of the traditional Hindu nationalist demands.

In its election manifesto released on Monday, the party said it would scrap article 370 of the Indian constitution that grants special status and political safeguards to the disputed territory of Kashmir under Indian control.

The manifesto also underlined the party’s commitment to constructing a temple for the Hindu god Ram at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh in place of a medieval-era mosque destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992.

Pressing issues

Critics have accused the BJP of trying to divert voters’ attention from far more pressing issues such as unemployment or farmers’ distress.

“We are not shy of our performance on economy, job creation or building infrastructure. But at the same time, we are also drawing people’s attention towards security, while the Congress [party] is shying away from it,” BJP’s Chauthaiwale said.

Security analyst Ajai Shukla said he is not surprised that the discourse in the general elections has moved to security and not issues of economy or rural distress.

“This is convenient for the BJP because they can make a better case on security given the tone of jingoism that suffuses the political dialogue and the political narrative in India today,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shukla believes the BJP’s campaign strategy is going to pay it dividends.

“Other issues may be on the voters’ minds, but the BJP is hoping it would be compensated by those who would be won over to its cause on the strong leadership issue and on taking strong steps against Pakistan and in Kashmir.”

Shukla believes the opposition Congress is no match to BJP’s high-pitched election campaigning.

“You have got two arguments: the national security argument made by the BJP and the job creation and farmer distress argument made by the Congress. The arguments may be juxtaposed against one another, but the skill and vigour with which the parties make the case before the voters is what will govern which one of them carries the day. And in that the BJP is doing better than the Congress,” he said.

Social justice?

If “Chowkidar” is the name of the mood in the BJP camp, the Congress campaign is trying to hammer home the word ‘Nyay’ (justice) which is also an acronym for the flagship income guarantee programme proposed in its manifesto: Nyoontam Aay Yojana (NYAY).

The Congress leadership rejects the assessment that it has failed to match the BJP on security and says it is only a distraction from the real election issues.

“The BJP knew it had not delivered in the last few years. They knew that their promises to the people of the country had turned into jokes. It was expected that they would resort to some emotive issue,” Syed Naseer Hussain, member of parliament from the Congress party, told Al Jazeera.

Tehran, Iran – As Iranians continue to deal with the aftermath of deadly floods across the country and the government scrambles to provide relief, the need for a natural disasters insurance fund is once more deeply felt.

Since mid-March, massive floods have hit 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces, leaving at least 70 dead. They have forced evacuations, ravaged infrastructures, and incurred heavy losses on the agriculture sector.

The government of President Hassan Rouhani has been mounting relief efforts, enlisting the help of the cash-strapped banking system in the form of cheap or interest-free loans.

The growing but underdeveloped insurance sector has also quickly started reimbursing for damage, while municipalities in some areas hit hardest by the floods provided insurance coverage for local citizens.

However, as might have been predicted under current harsh economic conditions amplified by US sanctions, the annual budget was never going to be enough to cover the hefty damages.

Left with no other choice, officials are mulling withdrawal of as much as 2 billion euros ($2.25bn) from the country’s already strained sovereign wealth fund.

This has suddenly revived a long-standing discussion surrounding the formation of a nation-wide natural disasters insurance fund and whether Iran’s response to the floods would have been different if such a fund had been in place.

“I call on all relating entities to regard the bill to establish a natural disasters insurance fund much more seriously as it can be very consequential,” Gholamreza Soleimani, head of Central Insurance of Iran, said in a speech last week.

“The recent floods are a serious warning for occurrence of natural disasters in the country and the more serious measures that need to be adopted to contain them,” he said.

The idea of establishing such a fund was first floated 16 years ago. It has since been going back and forth within Iran’s complicated and time-consuming legislative apparatus.

‘Unfounded expectations’

The bill for the formation of the fund was last in the spotlight in November 2017 when a massive 7.3 magnitude earthquake shook the western parts of Iran. That catastrophe killed more than 600 and left much devastation, some of which has yet to be repaired.

There has been unprecedented flooding across most of the country since mid-March with 70 people killed, according to the country’s emergency services. [Hossein Mersadi/AFP]

At the time, then head of Central Insurance Abdolnasser Hemmati, who currently sits at the helm of the Central Bank of Iran, highlighted the bill and called for its immediate passage through government and parliament.

The main mandate of the envisioned fund was to accelerate renovation and rebuilding of houses that are affected by earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters.

“More than 85 percent of residential units are not currently covered by fire insurance, the type of insurance that also contains earthquake coverage,” Hemmati said in 2017.

The fund was slated to contain mandatory insurance policies in addition to a host of optional features to better cover flood, earthquake, hurricane, lightning and tsunami damages. Central Insurance had also proposed making fire insurance policies mandatory across the country.

The bill was fast-tracked and managed to receive a green light from the parliament.

However, the Guardian Council, Iran’s top constitutional watchdog that needs to approve parliament-ratified legislation before they are turned into law, refused to pass the bill.

State of limbo

The 12-member body cited ambiguities concerning the resources of the fund, arguing that the Rouhani government needs to own up to the expenses and formally commit to providing them.

Facing a widening budget deficit, the government declined, leaving the bill in a state of limbo with no sign of breakthrough in sight.

The fund has no chance of being established until the Guardian Council is appeased. Members of parliament have therefore been pushing the government, but to no avail.

“The government says the bill must be approved as was presented and there is no need for new resources to be injected to the fund, but the parliament believes the fund will fall short without new resources,” Farid Mousavi, a member of the parliament’s economic commission told the Persian-language daily newspaper Aftab-e Yazd. 

“An ineffective fund would only create unfounded expectations for the people, which could end up doing more damage than good,” the Tehran MP added.

Rouhani has already faced criticism over delayed or otherwise lackluster relief efforts. His administration, on the other hand, has pointed out that US sanctions have prevented flow of foreign financial aid, a claim that was corroborated by the Iranian Red Crescent.

So Rouhani will likely continue to redirect resources toward more immediate concerns.

Despite many natural disasters over the decades, costing the lives of citizens and billions of dollars in damages, Iran may postpont the establishment of a natural disasters insurance fund to a time when the government’s resources are not so constrained.

Auckland, New Zealand – New Zealand’s parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of legislation to ban semi-automatic and military style weapons.

The changes were first proposed by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern just days after a gunman carried out an indiscriminate shooting spree in two Christchurch mosques killing 50 Muslims.

“We are here because of them, and I believe they are here with us, supporting what we are doing here, because these weapons were designed to kill, and they were designed to maim and that is what they did on the 15th of March,” Ardern told parliament on Wednesday.

The gun reform bill also enacts a ban on pump action shotguns with detachable and non-detachable magazines, and parts that enable firearms to be converted into more powerful weapons.

Just one of the of 120 members of parliament opposed the legislation, called The Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazine and parts) Amendment Bill.

28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, the self-confessed white supremacist charged over the mosque attacks, purchased his weapons legally online and modified their capacity by using 30-round magazines.

He held an A category gun licence, the standard licence for gun owners in New Zealand.

“I cannot fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country,” Ardern said.

“We are here as an almost entirely united Parliament… there have been very few occasions when I have seen Parliament come together in this way and I can not imagine circumstances where that is more necessary than it is now,” she added.

‘The first step’

Police Minister Stuart Nash said the new law is “just the first step of many to make our country safer”.

The bill still needs to be granted Royal Assent by the Governor-General, seen as a formality, and is expected to officially pass into law on Friday, exactly four weeks after the attacks.

The legislation has been pushed through in under two weeks, with gun owners given just one day to make oral submissions on the fast-tracked laws.

More than 13-thousand New Zealanders provided written submissions on reforming The Arms Amendment Bill which were considered by the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.

It recommended only minor changes with Chairperson Michael Wood revealing around 60 percent of the submissions were in favour.

Farouk told Al Jazeera, “New Zealand is showing the world that the interest of wider society is greater than individual’s or lobbyists. Other countries can borrow a leaf from New Zealand regarding how to create a cross-party agreement and expedite passing such legislations.”

New Zealand has around 250,000 licenced firearm owners, many of them farmers who use weapons to help eradicate pests.

Exemption denied

Advocacy organisation Federated Farmers had asked for an exemption for hill and high country farmers who could demonstrate a genuine need for semi-automatic weapons.

That request was denied. Instead, farmers will now have to employ specialist contractors approved by police, to eliminate pests.

Rural security spokesperson Miles Anderson said the organisation understood the government’s desire to urgently put in place restrictions that could improve public safety.

“Right from the start, we came out in support of that aim. But we believe political expediency and the cramped time frame to get new restrictions into law has been at the expense of getting practical policies in place that will work both for public safety and animal pest control – and that will stand the test of time,” he told Al Jazeera.

New Zealanders will still be able to use guns capable of firing only 0.22 or lower calibre rimfire cartridges from a magazine that can hold no more than 10 cartridges, and lesser-capacity shotguns that can hold no more than 5 cartridges.

“One member of the Select Committee has already suggested that tweaks to the new legislation may well be required in the second tranche of firearms legislation changes to come later in the year. In our view, it would have been better to get the details right in the bill currently in front of Parliament,” Anderson added.

Owners of banned firearms and magazines will be able to claim compensation with the government also announcing on Wednesday the first details of a buy-back scheme.

An independent group of advisors will create a price list for the programme, with the age and make of the weapon to be taken into account.

Only people who legally obtained the firearms will be eligible.

To date, more than 300 weapons have been handed over during the amnesty, which is set to last until the end of September.

The amendments set to be passed into law are just the first in a set of reforms to the Arms Act which have been signalled by the Government.

Its focus will now turn to reforming the vetting process to address what the Police Minister describes as “long-debated” questions around gun registers and the licensing regime.

It’s expected that bill will be drafted by June.