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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2017

BRIGHT SPOTSTECH THAT MADEA DIFFERENCEPAGE 7 | BUSINESS

DYING BREEDROCK ’N’ ROLLLOSSES PILE UPPAGE 14 | CULTURE

POET IN HIS OWN LANDSEEING NICARAGUAAS RUBÉN DARÍO DIDBACK PAGE | TRAVEL

Rahul Verma’s son was born gravely illwith digestive problems, but over yearsof visits to the boy’s endocrinologist, Mr.Verma saw the doctor grow increas-ingly alarmed about a different prob-lem, one threatening healthy children.Junk food, the doctor warned, was espe-cially dangerous to Indians, who are farmore prone to diabetes than people fromother parts of the world.

One day in the doctor’s waiting room,Mr. Verma noticed a girl who had gottenfat by compulsively eating potato chips.He decided he had to do something.

“On one side you have children likemy son, who are born with problems,”said Mr. Verma, “and on the other sideyou have children who are healthy andeverything is fine, and you are damag-ing them giving them unhealthy food.”

Mr. Verma, who had no legal training,sat late into the nights with his wife, Tul-lika, drafting a petition in their tinyapartment, which was bedecked with

Christmas lights and pictures of the godGanesh, who is believed to overcome allobstacles. Mr. Verma filed the public-in-terest lawsuit in the Delhi High Court in2010, seeking a ban on the sale of junkfood and soft drinks in and aroundschools across India.

The case has propelled sweeping,

court-ordered regulations of the food in-dustry to the doorstep of the Indian gov-ernment, where they have languished.They could have outsize importance inIndia, population 1.3 billion, because itspeople are far more likely to develop dia-betes — which can lead to heart disease,kidney failure, blindness and amputa-

tions — as they gain weight than peoplefrom other regions, according to healthexperts.

Since 1990, the percent of children andadults in India who are overweight orobese has almost tripled, to 18.8 percentfrom 6.4 percent, according to data fromthe Institute for Health Metrics andEvaluation at the University of Wash-ington.

The International Diabetes Federa-tion projects that the number of Indianswith diabetes will soar to 123 million by2040 as diets rich in carbohydrates andfat spread to less affluent rural areas.

“We are sitting on a volcano,” said Dr.Anoop Misra, chairman of a diabeteshospital at Fortis Healthcare, one of In-dia’s biggest private hospital chains.

In the years since the court orderedthe government to develop guidelines toregulate junk food, the case has encoun-tered ferocious opposition from the AllIndia Food Processors Association,which counts Coca-Cola India, PepsiCoIndia and Nestlé India as members, aswell as hundreds of other companies.

Subodh Jindal, the president of the as-sociation, said in an interview that junkfood was unfairly blamed for diabetesand obesity. It was overeating, not thefood itself, that has caused the problem,he said, asking, “Do you eat two pizzas aday or two pizzas a week?”INDIA, PAGE 5

Rahul Verma serving khichdi, a dish of rice, lentils and vegetables, to patients outside a hospital in New Delhi. Mr. Verma has sued to ban junk food sales in or near schools.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ATUL LOKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A lone battle against junk foodNEW DELHI

With diabetes climbing across India, determinedfather takes a stand

BY GEETA ANAND

Street meals in New Delhi. Health experts have found that Indians are more likely toget diabetes as they gain weight than people from other regions.

Ethnic profiling is business as usual inthe contemporary art market. Artistsfrom outside the Euro-Americansphere, if they want to be noticed, are re-quired to a) present evidence of their or-igins, like a badge, in their work, and b)package that identity in forms, stylesand images that the West can readilyrecognize.

The Emirati artist Hassan Sharif(1951-2016), who has a sensational retro-spective at the Sharjah Art Foundationhere on the edge of the Persian Gulf, wasa born contrarian. Working in a range ofseemingly unrelated media and styles,he made art that belongs to no locatableculture, or maybe to several. Dodging

definitions, he referred to himself, half-jokingly, as a nomad, though he didn’tlive like one. Apart from a few youthfulyears in England, he spent his entire lifein the Persian Gulf region, where he isrevered today as a pioneer.

Born in Iran, Sharif was raised in Du-bai, which before the 1960s oil boom wasa low-rise town that made money fromharvesting pearls. His father was abaker and Sharif speculated that hisown interest in art as an activity — ma-nipulating materials, pushing ideasaround — began with watching his fa-ther make cakes. When, a bit later, hecame across reproductions of Cézanne,van Gogh and Picasso in books, he knewthat an artist — and a modern one —was what he wanted to be.

He had talent. A natural draftsmanwith, as he put it, “a sarcastic outlook onlife,” in the 1970s he landed magazinegigs drawing political cartoons thatskewered the newly formed, oil-richUnited Arab Emirates for their pursuitof consumerist modernization. At thesame time, he had some of his Cubist-in-SHARIF, PAGE 2

Materials man of the Emirates

Part of the Hassan Sharif retrospective “I Am the Single Work Artist.” His work oftenmocked the rampant consumerism he saw overwhelming the United Arab Emirates.

KATARINA PREMFORS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

SHARJAH, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Hassan Sharif shaped his country’s art scene from its street trash

BY HOLLAND COTTER

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

HAMBURG, GERMANY If ChancellorAngela Merkel gets her way, the nextGerman government will include thebig loser of the September elections, hercenter-right Christian Democrats, andthe even bigger loser, the center-leftSocial Democrats. After a failed attemptto forge a coalition made up of the Chris-tian Democrats, the pro-business Liber-al Party and the Green Party, Ms.Merkel is urging the Social Democrats,who allied with her in the previousgovernment and were punished at thepolls for it, to enter into yet anothergrand coalition.

The Social Democrats are under-standably wary of Ms. Merkel’scourtship. Ms. Merkel used the coalition

to co-opt many oftheir ideas, andanalysts here believethey need time fortherapy rather thananother opportunityto ruin themselves inoffice. But theirproblems go furtherand deeper than thepast four years; theirparty has been insteady decline fortwo decades — get-

ting 20 percent of the vote today com-pared with 40 percent in 1998.

This downward trend is not limited toGermany — in most major WesternEuropean countries, center-left partiesare in retreat, and in some cases theyhave practically ceased to exist. Justwhat has happened to social democra-cy?

In Germany, the Social Democrats’woes are as simple to explain as theyare difficult for the party to accept. Itbegins with a rift between politicalconsciousness and practice: Despite itsinternationalist outlook, social democ-racy has always relied on the nation-state as the framework for safeguardingthe rights of workers and redistributingwealth.

During the late 19th and much of the20th century, this made sense. But now,this framework is shaken. Ironically, itwas the Social Democrats themselveswho, after 1989, embraced the idea of aglobalized, post-national, post-wall era.In this brave new world, like-mindedstates fostered transnationalism tolimber up for the increased competitionof a global economy.

But this concept came with two built-in contradictions, a democratic and asocial one. Both took their time to be-come visible, but today they loom large.

The first contradiction is that democ-

Of Germanyand Social DemocratsJochen BittnerContributing Writer

OPINION

BITTNER, PAGE 11

Once thelargest partyin Germany,it failed to seethe contradic-tion betweenglobalizationand thewelfare state.

From inside the control room carvedinto the rock more than half a mile un-derground, Mika Persson can see the ro-bots on the march, supposedly comingfor his job here at the New Boliden mine.

He’s fine with it.Sweden’s famously generous social

welfare system makes this a place notprone to fretting about automation — ormuch else, for that matter.

Mr. Persson, 35, sits in front of fourcomputer screens, one displaying theloader he steers as it lifts freshly blastedrock containing silver, zinc and lead. Ifhe were down in the mine shaft operat-ing the loader manually, he would be in-haling dust and exhaust fumes. Instead,he reclines in an office chair while usinga joystick to control the machine.

He is cognizant that robots are evolv-ing by the day. Boliden is testing self-driving vehicles to replace truck driv-ers. But Mr. Persson assumes peoplewill always be needed to keep the ma-chines running. He has faith in theSwedish economic model and its protec-tions against the torment of joblessness.

“I’m not really worried,” he says.“There are so many jobs in this minethat even if this job disappears, they willhave another one. The company willtake care of us.”

In much of the world, people whoselivelihoods depend on paychecks are in-creasingly anxious about a potentialwave of unemployment threatened byautomation. As the frightening talegoes, globalization forced people inwealthier lands like North America andEurope to compete directly with lower-cost laborers in Asia and Latin America,sowing joblessness. Now, the robots arecoming to finish off the humans.

But such talk has little currency inSweden or its Scandinavian neighbors,where unions are powerful, governmentsupport is abundant, and trust betweenemployers and employees runs deep.Here, robots are just another way tomake companies more efficient. As em-ployers prosper, workers have consis-tently gained a proportionate slice of thespoils — a stark contrast to the UnitedStates and Britain, where wages havestagnated even while corporate profitshave soared.

“In Sweden, if you ask a union leader,‘Are you afraid of new technology?’ theywill answer, ‘No, I’m afraid of old tech-nology,’ ” says the Swedish minister foremployment and integration, Ylva Jo-hansson. “The jobs disappear, and thenwe train people for new jobs. We won’tprotect jobs. But we will protect work-ers.”ROBOTS, PAGE 8

The robotsare coming,and Swedenis all for itGARPENBERG, SWEDEN

Technology is embraced by workers who see their job prospects improve

BY PETER S. GOODMAN

Issue NumberNo. 41,926

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