The week in 5 charts | Chandrayaan-3 lands on the moon, BRICS expands its group, and more

Here are five charts that will help you understand some of the key stories from last week

From India’s Chandrayaan-3 successfully landing on the south pole of the Moon to the BRICS group extending membership to six countries, here are five charts that will help you understand some of the key stories from the last week.

(1) India is on the moon

Cementing India’s status as a global power in space, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scripted history as Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft made a soft landing on the surface of the Moon Wednesday evening. India has become the fourth country to successfully land on the moon and the first nation to touch down on the polar region of the celestial body.

Precisely at 6.03 p.m. the lander touched the lunar surface and there were euphoric celebrations at the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network (ISTRAC), Bengaluru, as India joined an elite list of countries including the United States, Russia and China to achieve the feat.

Around 5.44 p.m., the powered descent of the lander module was initiated. The powered descent is divided into four phases — rough braking, attitude-hold, fine-braking, and terminal descent phase. The lander completed each of these phases seamlessly and 19 minutes later at 6.03 p.m. the lander had made a safe and soft landing on the moon.

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Hours after the historic moment, the Pragyan rover rolled out from the Vikram lander and took its first “walk on the moon” in the early hours of Thursday. Instruments aboard the lander and rover will now study the moon’s mineral composition and the seismic activities in its atmosphere.

(2) BRICS welcomes six new members

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) grouping invited six new members (Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Argentina) on Thursday. After the induction, the Prime Minister said that BRICS has become a platform for discussing the challenges facing the Global South.

BRICS has long pitched itself as an alternative platform to the Global South amidst what it sees as west-dominated international platforms like the United Nations and International Monetary Fund. This new addition cements this purpose. The move has sent out the message to the west that the grouping is an attractive club for members of the Global South.

Another takeaway comes from the expanded BRICS’s energy position. In 2016, the new and founding members of the grouping produced a little over 45% of the world’s oil. Six of 10 of the biggest global oil suppliers will be BRICS countries, giving BRICS new heft in the field of energy.

However, for India, it might be a more complicated situation. Many international observers have pointed out that all the new members have very close economic ties to China, and the acceptance of Iran and Saudi-UAE to the same grouping has only been made possible by the peace deal brokered by Beijing earlier this year. This factor means that in the future, India may have to lobby harder to make its vote in the BRICS grouping count. 

Besides this, India and other countries like Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Brazil will have to walk an uncomfortable tightrope in case the group takes any overtly political, anti-western stance.

The expansion might have made a point about the Global South’s representation, but BRICS countries still fall short in showing a coherence of purpose, and are still mired by inner contradictions. 

(3) Residents flee in the thousands as wildfires intensify in Canada

Canada is experiencing its worst wildfire season on record with tens of thousands of people being driven out of their homes and the federal government forced to deploy the military to several regions over the past months.

Thousands of residents fled Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, some driving hundreds of miles to safety and others waiting in long lines for emergency flights. Canada has seen a record number of wildfires this year — contributing to choking smoke in parts of the U.S. — with more than 5,700 fires burning more than 137,000 square kilometers (53,000 square miles) from one end of Canada to the other, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

Meanwhile, Canada’s British Columbia declared a state of emergency on August 18 as an out-of-control fire in the province’s southern region grew more than one hundredfold in 24 hours, according to Al Jazeera. An evacuation order was declared for 35,000 people.

The fire – centred around Kelowna, a city of 150,000 people and located some 300 kilometres (180 miles) east of Vancouver has partially shut down some sections of a key transit route between the Pacific coast and the rest of western Canada. Moreover, it has also caused damage to many properties. The province accounts for more than a third of Canada’s 1,062 active fires.

The blazes in British Columbia during the strong winds and dry lightning due to a cold mass of air interacting with hot air built-up in the humid summer. Additionally, those conditions have further intensified existing forest fires and have also ignited new ones, Al Jazeera reported.

(4) Renouncing Indian citizenship

A growing number of Indians are opting to surrender their passports, eventually renouncing their citizenship. Last month, the Central government told Parliament that more than 15 lakh Indians had relinquished their citizenship in the past decade, including around 87,000 this year, with most headed to the United States of America.

While the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) claimed that many are taking up foreign citizenship to explore the global workplace and for reasons of “personal convenience”, the ‘great Indian migration’ is primarily believed to be an outcome of the search for better economic opportunities and improved social security.

Data show that even millionaires are leaving the country. According to a recent report by the London-based Henley & Partners (H&P), around 6,500 high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) are expected to move out of India this year — the second-highest estimated net outflow globally after China.

Currently, India has the largest emigrant population in the world. It is the top origin country with nearly 1.8 crore people living outside their homeland. Mexico ranks behind India as the second-most significant origin country, at around 1.1 crore, followed by Russia and China, according to the World Migration Report 2022 report prepared by the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM). 

The latest data provided by the government shows that more than 17.5 lakh Indians acquired the citizenship of another country since 2011. The number stood at 1.22 lakh in 2011 and witnessed a moderate proportional increase over the next few years.

The United States remains the most preferred destination among the 114 countries chosen by Indian settling abroad. Since 2018, over 3.2 lakh Indians have given up their Indian citizenship to settle in the U.S., including 28,230 this year.

(5) Chinese economy in distress

China’s economy, the world’s second-largest, is now in deep distress and its successful model of growth for 40 years stands “broken”, a prominent American financial publication has said, noting that signs of trouble extend beyond China’s dismal economic data to distant provinces.

Explainer | How much worse can China’s economic slowdown get?

The Wall Street Journal in a major Sunday story wrote that economists now believe China is entering an era of much slower growth, made worse by unfavourable demographics and a widening divide with the U.S. and its allies, which is jeopardising foreign investment and trade. Rather than just a period of economic weakness, this could be the dimming of a long era, it commented.

According to the report, the total debt, including that held by various levels of government and state-owned companies, climbed to nearly 300% of China’s GDP as of 2022, surpassing U.S. levels and up from less than 200% in 2012, according to Bank for International Settlements data.

China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.5% year-on-year in the first half (H1) of 2023, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in June.

China’s GDP reached 59.3 trillion yuan (about 8.3 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first half, according to the NBS data. In the second quarter, the country’s GDP expanded 6.3% year on year, China’s official media quoted the NBS as saying.