In the world’s biggest ship recycling center of Alang on India’s Arabian Sea coast, workers with blow torches cut segments of steel stripped from the rusting hull of a towering cargo ship, sold for scrap by its Japanese owner. But in this town – located in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat – more than half of the ship-breaking yards have shut in the past two years and the future of the trade in India and neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan is bleak. The industry has been hit by a flood of cheap Chinese steel and new European Union environmental rules due later this year threaten to push business to more modern yards in places like China and Turkey – in turn devastating local […]