WASHINGTON: US Vice President Kamala Harris is engaged in a delicate balancing act, playing cheerleader for President Joe Biden while standing by as a leading contender to replace him if he ends his reelection bid.
Biden’s dismal performance in last week’s debate with Donald Trump has triggered panic in much of the Democratic Party as people question whether Biden is physically and mentally able to beat Trump and serve another four years.
Former congressman Tim Ryan, while professing his admiration for Biden, wrote in a piece for Newsweek that “the Democratic nominee in 2024 should be Kamala Harris.”
Jim Clyburn, a senior House Democrat and Black leader, told MSNBC: “We should do everything we can to bolster her — whether it’s in second place or at the top of the ticket.”
Harris herself has not publicly voiced any desire to replace Biden.
“Look, Joe Biden is our nominee,” she said in an interview Tuesday with CBS News. “We beat Trump once, and we’re going to beat him again, period.”
She said she was proud to be on the current ticket with the president.
Shortly after the debate, Harris rushed onto TV to defend Biden, admitting he had started off slowly in the clash with Trump, but saying he ultimately finished strong.
The official schedule for Biden on Wednesday said he had lunch with Harris, which is not a regular event, though it was a weekly fixture for Biden when he was vice president under Barack Obama.

Harris, 59, is the first woman, the first Black person and the first person of Asian origin — her mother was from India — to hold the job that puts her a heartbeat from the presidency, as Americans like to say.
Harris would become president if Biden died in office or became incapacitated.
But she would not necessarily replace Biden if he were to end his candidacy, and Biden has insisted he has no plans to do so.
“For three and half years there has always been this drumbeat that someone other than the VP should be the Democratic candidate,” said Ange-Marie Hancock, professor of political science at The Ohio State University.
Hancock said it was possible an “undercurrent of racism and sexism” was at work against Harris.
For years Harris has been less popular among Americans than other Democrats seen as possible candidates, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom or his Michigan counterpart Gretchen Whitmer.
US media have reported extensively on mistakes she made early in this administration, mainly on the diplomatic front, and on tension among her staffers.
But Hancock said things could turn in Harris’s favor, because she has spent time out visiting battleground states, in particular to promote abortion rights as it came under repeated fire from conservatives judges and governors.
Flickers of that turn could be seen on social media, where supportive Harris-related memes have begun going viral under the hashtag #KHive.
Harris is sometimes criticized as disappointing as an orator. But she got a warm welcome recently when she made a tour of universities that was focused on schools with high numbers of minority students.
She’ll make more stops in July to speak with African American audiences, particularly women, with three trips to Louisiana, Texas and Indiana.

A CNN poll released Tuesday had Harris doing better than Biden against Trump, although not beating him.
This poll gave Harris 45 percent of voter intentions against 47 percent for Trump, while Biden scored 43 percent to 49 percent for the Republican former president in a race between the two men.
In the event Biden were to drop out, Harris, thanks to her name recognition, her ties to powerful people in the government and the prospect for brisk fundraising, would go into the Democratic convention next month in a position of strength.
But the Republicans are ready and waiting.
“Kamala Harris is very much on the GOP’s radar,” Hancock said, referring to Trump’s party.
The Trump campaign on Wednesday broadcast a video montage of Biden suffering falls and other embarrassing moments, and questioned whether he can serve another term.
It concludes with the question, “And you know who is waiting behind him, right?” and footage of Harris laughing.
 

NEW DELHI: In the Vivekananda Camp slum, adjacent to the US embassy in New Delhi, communal taps supply brackish water for about two hours a day. Water delivered by tankers provides one additional bucket to each of its 1,000 residents for drinking and cooking.
In parts of the arid state of Rajasthan, southwest of the Indian capital, tap water is available once every four days for an hour. In rural areas near Mumbai, women and children travel more than a mile to get water.
Bengaluru, India’s tech hub of 14 million people, reeled under a water shortage this year and had to rely on tanker deliveries.
“We don’t wash the floor or do the laundry for days sometimes,” said Sampa Rai, a 38-year-old in Delhi’s Vivekananda Camp, who scrambles before dawn every day to meet the first tanker delivering water. “Not even the dishes. We have to manage with what we have.”
The world’s most populous nation has suffered from water shortages for decades, but crises are coming around with increasing frequency. This year, for example, the summer has been one of the hottest on record and the crunch has worsened with rivers and lakes drying up and the water table falling.
The shortages are affecting rural and urban Indians alike, disrupting agriculture and industry, stoking food inflation and risking social unrest. Contaminated water kills about 200,000 Indians each year, according to the government. People and the economy are suffering.
That is adding urgency to public and private-sector efforts to conserve the resource, find ways to recycle waste water and reduce the country’s over-reliance on the annual monsoon, especially in the agricultural sector.
Ratings agency Moody’s warned last week that India’s growing water stress could affect its growth, which at a projected 7.2 percent this April-March fiscal year is the highest among major economies.
“Decreases in water supply can disrupt agricultural production and industrial operations, resulting in inflation in food prices and declines in income for affected businesses and workers, especially farmers, while sparking social unrest,” Moody’s said.
The government plans to more than triple waste water recycling by the end of the decade to 70 percent, according to a federal government policy document dated Oct. 21, 2023 that listed priorities for the next five years.
Krishna S. Vatsa, a senior official at the state-run National Disaster Management Authority, confirmed the targets in an interview last week.
Authorities also plan to cut the extraction of fresh water — ground water and surface water from rivers and lakes — to less than 50 percent by the end of the decade from 66 percent, the highest rate in the world, said the document, which has not been made public and was reviewed by Reuters.
It will also launch a national village-level program this year to recommend crops to farmers based on local water availability, Vatsa said.
Details of plans to address the water crisis have not been previously reported.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already ordered authorities to build or refurbish at least 75 lakes in each of the 785 districts of the country. The government says work has been started or completed on more than 83,000 lakes. Experts say such lakes can help recharge the water table.
Modi launched a near $50-billion program in 2019 to provide all rural households with tap water. The government says it has now covered 77 percent of more than 193 million such families, up from 17 percent five years ago, but residents and experts say not all pipes have water.
“It makes the issue of conservation far more urgent,” Vatsa said. “You cannot sustain such a national pipeline without the availability of water. The pipes will run dry.”
He agreed some taps could already be dry.

Water stressed
India relies substantially on the annual monsoon for its 1.42 billion people and its largely rural-based economy, where water-intensive crops like rice, wheat and sugarcane take up more than 80 percent of the overall supply.
The monsoon itself is prone to severe and extreme weather conditions. Catchment areas are getting scarce because of rapid urbanization, so even in a good monsoon, much of the rainwater drains off into the sea.
India’s annual per capita water availability, at about 1,486 cubic meters, is set to fall to 1,367 cubic meters by 2031 as its population grows, government projections show. The country has been “water stressed,” defined as per capita availability of less than 1,700 cubic meters, since 2011.
“We have a crisis now every year,” said Depinder Singh Kapur at Indian research body Center for Science and Environment.
“Earlier it used to be drought years versus normal years, now a water crisis is happening every year and with more intensity.”
There are pockets where private enterprise is addressing the crisis.
In Nagpur, a city of 3 million people, the Vishvaraj Group said it helped build a $100 million plant in 2020 that treats 200 million liters of sewage per day, extracting 190 million liters of treated water that it sells to two thermal power plants.
Founder Arun Lakhani said the freed up fresh water will be enough to take care of the expected population growth of the city for the next 35 years.
Some industries are investing in waste water recycling and rain harvesting to cut their dependence on fresh water.
Tata Steel plans to cut its fresh water consumption to less than 1.5 cubic meters per ton of crude steel produced at its Indian operations by 2030, from about 2.5 cubic meters now. JSW Steel also has similar plans.
“At least to plug the gaps in urban areas, treated waste water is going to be one important resource that we need to start acknowledging,” said Nitin Bassi at Indian think-tank The Council on Energy, Environment and Water.
Experts say nearly 90 percent of water supplied to homes can be recycled, but infrastructure for water distribution and sewage treatment has failed to match the growth of major cities and untreated waste ultimately flows into rivers.
Modi’s administration is adding sewage treatment capacity to lift the current rate of 44 percent in urban areas so more water can be recycled and used in industries, agriculture and other areas.
Between 2021 and 2026, it plans to invest about $36 billion to ensure equitable water distribution, reuse of waste-water and mapping of water bodies, the government has said.

Thirsty farmers
The cultivation of crops like rice in semi-arid states has led to rampant extraction of groundwater through borewells and steep falls in water tables, according to government and industry officials.
“The elephant in the room is agriculture,” said Lakhani of Vishvaraj. “We still use flood irrigation, we are not on drip or sprinkler irrigation. If we save just 10 percent water used in agriculture, it will take care of water problems of all the Indian cities.”
The government plans to implement a nationwide rural program on water use this year, said Vatsa, the disaster management official.
“For every village we need to have water budgeting,” he said. “How much water is available? How much should be used for irrigation? How much should be used for your domestic purpose? That would determine what kind of crops you are going to plant.”
Asked about possible resistance from farmers, who are a powerful voting bloc, he said: “There’s no other choice. The water table is just going down and at some point it becomes completely unviable. The borewells fail.”