LDF Starts Jana Jagratha Yathra in Kerala

November 11, 2017

The Jana Jagratha Yathra organised by the LDF in Kerala started on 21st October 2017. The two Yatras will expose the anti people policies of the Central government and hate politics practiced by the BJP-RSS combine. It will also popularize the development alternatives of the LDF government in Kerala. The Northern part of the Yatra will be led by CPI(M) State Secretary Com. Kodiyeri Balakrishanan, while the southern part will be headed by CPI State Secretary Kanam Rajendran.

The Jana Jagratha Yathra entered its second day with thousands lining up the streets to welcome the Northern leg of the Yatra lead by CPI-M Kerala State Secretary and Polit Bureau Member Comrade Kodiyeri Balakrishnan. The day kicked off with its first meeting in Uduma, in Kasaragode, where tens of thousands of people attended the meeting. Addressing the meeting, comrade Kodiyeri called upon the people to unite to fight the divisive forces of the saffron brigade and stop the corrupt Congress.

The northern leg of the Yatra, which was inaugurated by Com. D Raja, national secretary, CPI will be over at Thrissur on 3rd November. Pointing out the outline of the development model of the LDF government, Comrade Kodiyeri said that prime aim of the government is to ensure all-round development. “A government that is implementing policies based on social justice. The government will implement it in a time-bound manner. And the Congress and BJP know well that in the next few years, the Kerala model of development will become a model to look upon. Both Congress and BJP want to stop it.”

BJP is pulling all strings to destabilise the peace and harmony of Kerala. “BJP got over people from outside the state to show crowds in it’s recently completed yatra. And they are threatening to attack the party in Kerala. But, their attempts will fail in Kerala. We will resist and will .”

Courtesy: http://cpim.org

Objects in the Mirror are Closer that you Think – Beyond the Rhetoric of Otherness: Lata Mani

November 11, 2017

Political discourse in the contemporary period is by marked an affective intensity. Regardless of the issue an acute depth of feeling is in evidence. Righteousness, betrayal, entitlement, anguish and aggression suffuse arguments across the political spectrum. What seems at stake is not merely the desire to speak but to have the terms of one’s discourse deemed legitimate, to be understood as one understands oneself. The sizzle, crack and snap of rhetoric expresses the heightened temperature. One could credibly interpret it as the sound of an existing order breaking down under multiple pressures. This would however be a partial explanation. The surcharged atmosphere is equally evidence of the ties that bind those passionately disagreeing with each other. And therein lies a clue.

II
The politics of liberation in ‘societies structured in dominance’ (Stuart Hall, 1980) partly entails the effort to distinguish between diversity as a form of natural variation and difference that is socially produced. Put another way, it involves learning to differentiate between difference conceived as “otherness” carrying values assigned to it by the prevailing social order, and difference understood as a kind of specificity that exists in context of an interdependent diversity. Prevailing conceptions of gender, race and caste are examples of socially produced difference, difference as otherness. The diversity of plants, shrubs, trees, grasses are instances of difference conceived as specificity, a benign variation that manifests the play of interdependent diversity.

The two conceptions are not discontinuous. Otherness is most often produced through a negative and hostile evaluation of specificity on the spurious grounds that it diverges from and/or threatens a prevailing norm and must therefore be policed, domesticated or subordinated. A politics of liberation could have refused this distinction. It could have insisted that difference as otherness must in all instances cede ground to difference as specificity, as in the rest of nature. But with the exception of indigenous movements, whose histories require a different mapping, that has not been direction taken. For the most part, political movements have chosen to reclaim otherness, to re-signify its meaning, to challenge the identification of particular characteristics with specific groups, and to broaden the range of cultural, sexual, bodily and identitarian differences to which we must attend if we are to embrace a truly inclusive vision of liberation.

That this became – and still remains – the preferred strategy is not surprising. Post-Enlightenment thinking proposed a sharp divergence between humans and the rest of nature. Humans were held to be superior and other to the natural world of which they were a part. A part, yet apart. Bounded, autonomous entities possessing a singular awareness and agency, self-willed humans stood in stark contrast with the rest of nature which was construed as inert matter uniquely subject to its environment (broadly understood) and a resource for us to do with as we pleased. Extracting humans from our place in nature facilitated nature’s exploitation by humans. That said, difference in the non-human natural world was understood as the effect of irreducibly complex evolutionary processes that were multifaceted, trans-species and interlinked. This enabling notion of difference – as a kind of specificity expressing complex and multiple interdependencies – made diversity in non-human natural world a source of endless aesthetic pleasure and scientific curiosity, not to mention spiritual succor. Might radical politics stand to gain by extending this notion of difference to the human realm?

III
Dominant ideology interprets concepts and social relations in accordance with its own logic. The axes along which it divides and the hierarchies it proposes as legitimate vary depending on context. But most frequently at the heart of such maneuvers to exclude or oppress are gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion and where pertinent race, caste and tribe. The history of such contentions and their consequences is a complex one, the subject of extensive scholarship. But one recurrent strategy has been the invention of the lie of otherness via the “truth” of “history,” “science,” “biology” or “religion,” often deployed in some combination.

Regardless of the particularities of a given lie, such “othering” produced a state of estrangement. It rendered concepts, peoples and social relations other than what they were. One does not need to subscribe to a golden age theory of the past to consider what is being said here. To mark out a difference is to intervene. It is a deliberate act and as well an act of deliberation. It suggests something being made, re-made, made up even. In any event it inaugurates a shift whose contemporary forms and reverberations we inherit. And it is these that are challenged in current struggles for justice.
Arguments for equality generally combine pointing to similarity with insisting on difference. Sometimes this involves reclaiming a difference which had been disparaged (black is beautiful) at other times rejection of it (the association of purity with a particular caste or race). And at yet other times, the category is itself made incoherent as with gender post the emergence of the movement for transgender rights. Pressured to accommodate so much diversity gender risks imploding. What kind of difference does gender make? What kinds of genders does difference make? Add to gender non-conformism the proliferations of sexualities and matters become even more complex.

As always contradictory dynamics are simultaneously in play: an expansion and as well a consolidation. Even as the category of gender threatens to become meaningless it gains traction in medical and psychological literature via the idea of gender dysmorphia, the misalignment between one’s sense of one’s gender identity and the gender that would customarily be attributed to one’s physical body. Gender non-conformists are required to ground claims about their true gender identity on conventional notions even as their ways of embodying gender can stretch it beyond recognition. By way of example, a transwoman who has declined hormones and surgery and opted to keep their beard and move in the world in women’s clothing. Law may have created a third gender but the route to reclassification is haunted by the binary, as if transgender were a space holder for gender migrants who can expect to be denied full-citizenship in the gender(s) of their choosing. The binary is dead, long live the binary.

So long as difference is understood as otherness, proliferation and consolidation will feed on each other keeping the norm dynamically intact even while instigating impassioned counter discourse on the uniquely particular and/or exceptional nature of the experience of a given gender, caste, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion or tribe. The two processes are activated in tandem. The violence of othering initiates a hardening of categories and stances. It inclines us to talk at and past each other. Our mutual ignorance (at times incomprehension) become confirming signs of the incommensurablity of our experiences. We confront each other as distressed opponents across the divides of past and present injustice. The ensuing pain and antagonism is seen to vitiate the atmosphere, making dialogue impossible. But there is more to noticed. The emotional pitch also testifies to the intimacy of this stand-off. This aspect begs our attention.

IV
Othering is a strategy of power. It distorts complexity. It denies relationality. It asserts a hierarchy. Complex wholes are fragmented. Entities and processes that have evolved in multiplicitous contexts and interrelationships are deemed radically separable, wholly autonomous. Or else as existing only in the relationship of subordination proposed by the logic of otherness. Certain modes of understanding gender, race and caste may be located here.

Concepts are not the world but an attempt at its description. The world precedes and exceeds them and it cannot be simplified by dint of will. Discourse about the world is thus intrinsically vulnerable to disputation, permanently unsettled. Difference as otherness is at odds with the heterogeneous complexity of the social world. The affective intensity of our debates is a sign of this. It registers a kind of intuitive discomfort with the idea of otherness even as it is being deployed. It is discursive static overlaying the pulse of all that is suppressed, all that can at any time erupt and disrupt the arguments being made.

Difference as specificity within interdependent diversity is a much more capacious and flexible conception, one that offers the added benefit of not carrying the burden of an a priori value judgement. It enables one to analyze social variation in all its multi-constitutedness. In an interdependent universe, everything emerges out of relationality and exists as relationality. Relatedness is a fact of nature and the grounding truth of sociality. To posit difference as otherness is to refuse to integrate this reality, to wittingly or unwittingly collude in its distortion. Any ideology or perspective that segments, separates, divides and hierarchizes individuals, communities or experiences obscures this first principle.

Regardless of what supremacists might falsely claim about gender, caste, race, sexuality or religion, we are a complexly interconnected diversity; mutually and multiply constituted in relation to each other and all that exists, human and non-human. Segregation spatializes some people’s fear of proximity, contamination and pollution. But it does not alter the fundamental truth of mutuality. Which is why such elaborate and violent mechanisms are needed to enforce the lie of hierarchy and separateness. And why the assertion of essential difference is less threatening to supremacists of all stripes than insistence on intersectionality, inextricability and syncretism.

Our lives are composed of myriad intimacies. Yet we experience these as so many estrangements, antagonisms and irrelevances. To speak of equality is to tacitly acknowledge multiplicity and relationality: equality is always with-within-among-between-across. But we are yet to embrace the full implications of this. Which is why we can so easily take recourse to a rhetoric of otherness or position ourselves outside the structures of which we are a part, no matter how differentially we may be located within them.

But there is no outside. There is no other. There is only intimacy. It may be denied, resisted, violated, distorted or celebrated. It may be eclipsed by our indifference, inattention and ignor(e)ance. Still it hides in plain sight. Patiently awaiting language adequate to its truths.

Reference:
Stuart Hall, “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance.” In UNESCO, Sociological Theories Race, and Colonialism, Paris: UNESCO Press, 1980, 305-45.

Courtesy: Kafila.online

The Drama of the Crusade Against Black Money

November 11, 2017

FOR quite some time, corruption and black money has been agitating the public mind in this country. This was particularly more so, in the urban landscape. This was elevated to an unprecedented height in the run-up to the last general elections in 2014. The background music was provided by the anti-corruption campaign under the banner of India against corruption led by the `Gandhian icon’ Anna Hazare.

Black Money
Image: PTI

However, the central demand of the Anna Hazare-led movement which doubtlessly captured the public mood against growing instances of corruption and scam under the UPA dispensation was to have an all-powerful Lokpal in place; an institutionalised ombudsman who would be invested with no holds barred powers for nabbing corruption in high places. This campaign brought a sting into the prime ministerial campaign of Narendra Modi. The Modi campaign, of course, added spice by making a very specific claim that within hundred days of his assumption of office, each Indian citizen would be richer by Rs 15 lakhs which would directly find its way into the individual bank accounts!

That is now history; and, indeed, a ‘bad joke’! No less than Modi’s man-Friday, BJP president Amit Shah has publicly admitted that it was a mere electoral rhetoric – a jumla. But nobody talks of the Jan Lokpal which added the urgency in the momentum to oust the Congress and to install Modi in South Block. After three and a half years, India awaits the establishment of a new Lokpal.

‘CRUSADE AGAINST BLACK MONEY’
The Modi bandwagon’s familiar trait has been to adopt a hit and run approach. To shrug off these obvious omissions, an anti-corruption, anti-black money narrative has been their mainstay. The initial honeymoon period and the comparative demobilised state of the principal opposition helped the government to have its writ run with consummate ease.

Having no less comprehension than anybody else, the Modi government’s narrative on black money stashed in secret foreign bank accounts and tax havens have remained largely confined to repeating mundane details of number of investigations, number of possible cases, number of individuals involved and so on and so forth. The Special Investigating Team (SIT) set-up at the behest of the Supreme Court has reportedly completed its primary study of the material. Based on that, the SIT is also said to have given its recommendations to the government. However, the opacity with which the government functions ensured these recommendations are not shared in the public domain.

Obviously, the Modi government with its aggressive neo-liberal policies which fringes on completely abrogating personal freedom of individual citizens, in its bid to create a National Security State, much in the line of most ultra-rightwing regimes in other parts of the world, knows well that the legal framework of the country is ill-equipped to deal with the international financial flows which make ‘black money’ to be stashed in foreign locations and often, re-routed back to the country for super profits.

In fact, this is all too well-known. After the share market scam, in the first years of this century, the parliamentary committee enquiry concluded that new financial instruments which marked the current phase of financial globalisation like participatory notes, incorporation of Overseas Corporate Bodies and their activities which made financial flows both outside and inside the country to facilitate tax evasion and other activities for enhancing the wealth of the super rich were beyond the reach for our regulators. Therefore, any meaningful initiative to stop generation of black money using the foreign route would require a new law. That law needs to take into account the experience internationally define new types of financial crimes and so on and so forth. Specifically, the UN convention on corruption could be a good starting point, enabling us better access to offshore data. But, alas, this was not to be!

DEMONETISATION: ‘SPEARHEAD TO WEED OUT BLACK MONEY’
Knowing full well that in the present age of international finance driven globalisation, only 6 per cent of India’s black income are held in cash, the fateful announcement by the prime minister to the nation on November 8, 2016 unleashed an unprecedented campaign which targeted the large denomination notes which accounted for 86 per cent of cash in circulation. With black incomes mainly held in real estate, shell companies formally located in tax havens, precious mineral, gold and ornaments and so on and so forth, the government was destined to fail in its mission against black money.

Naturally, almost the entire amount of extinguished currencies have come back proving the government’s claims and estimates even made in statements before the Supreme Court to be totally without any practical basis. It has brought untold miseries to the ordinary people starving the informal and unorganised sector, the peasantry and millions of common citizens and small depositors in banks who had been debarred from accessing their own money deposited in savings accounts. The overall impact of this disaster is now for all to see. The growth rate of the economy has plummeted. But the main burden of the catastrophe has been borne by the more vulnerable sections of the working population. The most severe impact has been on the employment sector, with not only the failure to create new jobs but even slashing existing ones. Whichever way the employment figures are being calculated, the grave crisis is palpable.

But far from admitting their mistake, the government is continuing with its grand narrative of this ‘crusade against black money’. While responding to the opposition’s call for observing the anniversary of demonetisation to bring out the tragic outcome on the life and livelihood of the people, the government has announced its celebration of this crusade on November 8. Deceit could not be more sinister!

PARADISE PAPERS: A STRANGE IRONY
But an earthshaking revelation of the dynamics of international finance capital and the architecture of the present, globalised international financial and economic order has hit the global media space with unprecedented strength and velocity. The Paradise Papers have been brought into the public domain.

The Paradise Papers constitute a stock of 13.4 million corporate records primarily from the Bermuda firm Appleby and Singapore-based Asiaciti Trust and corporate registries maintained by governments in 19 secrecy jurisdictions which go by the description of `tax paradises’. The leaks of these corporate records were secured by the German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung. The German media group shared their great acquisition with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), obviously realising that the humongous material could not be processed in a publishable form without international cooperation. The Indian Express, as the Indian collaborator of this international media effort, has now come out with the results of their stupendous scrutiny of information and data.

Unlike the earlier material from Offshore Leaks (2013), Swiss Leaks (2015) and Panama Papers (2016), Paradise Papers focused on the shadowy activities of giant corporate groups and their veiled offshore financial activities rather than those on individuals. Appleby, like the Mossack Fonseca (as in Panama Papers 2016), facilitates setting up of companies and bank accounts overseas providing for nominee office bearers and helping secure bank loans and transfer of shares behind multiple secrecy jurisdictions. In a true sense, Paradise Papers symptomatise the soft underbelly of the shenanigans of international finance capital, providing them the ‘veil of secrecy’. Entity like Appleby, although not a tax adviser, with an experience of 119 years is a leading member of the global network of lawyers, accountants, bankers and other operatives who helps set-up offshore companies, manage bank accounts for clients to avoid or evade taxes, manage real estate assets, open escrow accounts, purchase private aircrafts and luxury yachts paying low tax rates and simply employ offshore vehicles to move millions of dollars across the world.

Setting up offshore financial facilities for corporate benefit in a rapidly globalising world may not be per se illegal. But, for a growingly unequal world, firms like Appleby hold a key in helping MNCs to exploit loopholes in respective domestic laws to avoid legitimate taxes thereby accentuating the inequality which is eventually threatening those economies.

In the wake of the Paradise Papers, Bernie Sanders has rightly posed the question – “The major issue of our time is the rapid movement towards international oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires own and control a significant part of the global economy. The Paradise Papers shows how these billionaires and MNCs get richer by hiding their wealth and profits and avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”

THE INDIAN STORY
Among the 180 countries whose references appear in the data, India ranks 19th. Their numbers amount to 714 individuals. Among Appleby’s clients, Sun Group, an Indian corporate, is the second largest, internationally. A large number of Indian corporate including the Adanis and Ambanis also appear in the references along with well-known politicians including sitting and former ministers.

It is clear that the offshore footprints of some of India’s major corporate players came to incorporate shell overseas companies on a huge scale. The memos show how most of these were controlled from India. The papers reveal that assets of Indian companies were being used to guarantee loans by offshore companies without disclosure to Indian regulators, change in ownership of offshore companies to actually change the ownership of shares held in Indian companies without paying taxes and, of course, round tripping.
All these could take place because of absence of appropriate provision in the Statute Book or the text of the bilateral treaties for avoiding double taxation.

Paradise Papers should definitely help Indian regulators to access information for plugging revenue leakages and criminal actions.

DECEIT OF MODI GOVERNMENT IS PARAMOUNT
The Paradise Papers have actually proved that black money or rather black incomes arising from avoidance and evasion of taxes on income and wealth at the cost of public exchequer is not so much through manipulation and concealment of cash held; but essentially through such web of transactions concealed through the ‘veil of secrecy’. It is also clear that the government whose initiative should be in evolving clear laws to plug the loopholes for such activities to deny information to regulators. As much as demonetisation had a disastrous impact on the economy in general and the poor and the vulnerable in particular, it was more of a charade to cover up the delinquencies of the rich and the powerful corporates who are backing the government.

The changes brought in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and Companies Act through Finance Acts of 2016 and 2017 have resulted in removing the cap on corporate donations to political parties, enabling of foreign contributions conducive to influx of foreign and corporate capital flooding their coffers, obviously for a quid pro quo and removing the requirement of disclosure of the recipients of such donations.

While the ‘brave new world of global finance’ as revealed in the Paradise Papers is wreaking havoc for the public exchequer, the corporates are being further facilitated to gain further stranglehold on the political process and government formation.
The demonetisation exercise is, therefore, a distraction to create an impression that the government is seriously waging a war against black money! In every other way, the rich and the powerful have been its beneficiary and the most vulnerable its worst victims. The hypocrisy of the government is now way too obvious from these experiences!

Courtesy: http://peoplesdemocracy.in/

2,000 Odisha Tribals Face Arrest After Govt Issues Warrants for Re-Occupying Land Earlier Granted to POSCO

November 10, 2017

The Odisha government through it’s administration has issued warrants against 2,500 villagers of the Paradip region of Odisha. These persons were earlier protesting the POSCO plant and since May 2017 have been agitating peacefully against the granting of fertile and cultivable lands to JSW steel. Of these 400 have already been arrested and 2,000 therefore now face the threat of arrest.

Image: Amir Rizvi / CJP

Since May 2017,the POSCO PratirodhSangramSamiti (PPSS) has demanded that the construction of a boundary wall that began Nuagaon area that month must immediately be stopped. PPSS says that as of November 6, 2017, it has been fighting a long and hard legal battle to provide legal defence for 420 individuals who were involved in the struggle. Additionally, warrants have also been issued against 2500 people which includes 500 women. Of these, 400 individuals were arrested. The remaining 2000 face a constant threat of arrest.

Protesting villagers and betel cultivators from the Paradip region of Odisha formed themselves into the POSCO PratirodhSangharshSamiti (PPSS), in June 2005- after an MoU was signed between POSCO and Odisha state government. After winning a hard fought battle against POSCO, the PPSS is now strongly resisting the handing over of 27, 000 acres of land in Odisha’sParadip area to JSW steel.

It was after a long and tedious struggle of more than a decade, that PPSS had managed to secure a victory in its struggle against the South Korean company POSCO earlier this year, in March. Due to its persistent and peaceful resistance, POSCO was forced to exit finally.

Despite the success of the struggle, recent media reports indicate that an unrelenting state has now joined hands with the JSW steel for a new project, in which JSW has demanded 4500 acres of land and it is likely to invest Rs. 50, 000 crores for the 10 mtpa steel plant and a 900 mw power plant. The company also pledged to make an investment of Rs. 2000 crore to set up a captive port in Odisha’s coast at JatadhariMuhan near Paradip.

While the PPSS has declared that they will continue their resistance against all such attempts to take over the forest land and also struggle for justice in the false and fabricated cases against their activists, we take you through the twelve year long journey of resistance led by the PPSS.

Background of Harassment and Intimidation

Until end of December 2014, 350 criminal false and fabricated cases have been filed against members of the PoscoPratirodhSangramSamiti (PPSS)
In 2011, in Nuagaon and Gadakjunga Gram panchayat ( proposed POSCO area), the government undertook an allegedly forceful land acquisition process for acquiring 2000 acre of forest land.
In 2013, in Govindpur village of Dhikia Gram panchayat, 700 acres of forest land was again allegedly forcefully acquired by the government. Out of the 2700 acres of land, government handed over to POSCO multinational giant1000 acres of land.
The PPSS took the decision from 2014 onwards to re-occupy the land falsely acquired by POSCO and the government land. Villagers of Gadakujangpanchayat re-occupied the the land acquired by POSCO.
As a result, POSCO has filed cases against 30 people The cases are both criminal(invoking section 447, 426 of the IPC) and civil cases(invoking the offence of encroachment)
Again in 2015, Villagers of Govindpur re-occupied the government land. As a result, the local government filed criminal and civil cases against 40 people.
Villagers of Nuagaon re-occupied the government land in 2015. The government has threatened to file cases against the people. At this point of time, there are apprehensions that the local government will again, more and more, file criminal and civil cases.
Though, the local people have constructed a fence across the boundary of reoccupied land, most local people not yet started the beetle vine cultivation due to this impeding threat from the government.
At this stage, the total criminal cases are 350 + 30 (criminal and civil cases) + 40 (criminal and civil cases) which totals as many as 420 cases.
To date, warrants have been issued against 2,500 people among which 500 are women. This actually means that those issued a warrant can be arrested at any time and false cases will then again be lodged against them.
Local lawyers from the PPSS state that over the past 11 years, approximately 400 from among the protesters have been arrested. Therefore, 2000 warrants have been pending, simply kept on ‘hold by government’ and the villagers against whom these have been issued face arrest.

Media Blacks Out Massive Workers’ Protest in Delhi

November 10, 2017

With nearly 1 lakh workers joining the mahapadav on the first day, most mass media outlets chose to ignore it – like an ostrich!

Nearly 100,000 workers gathered at Delhi’s Parliament Street from 9 November 2017 to protest against the central government’s policies that have adversely affected the working class of India. The protest – called ‘mahapadav’ or mega sit-in – will continue till 11 November. (See reports here: https://goo.gl/1TSzYE and videos such as: https://goo.gl/WQvE8o )

It is one of the biggest workers protests in recent times and comes as a culmination of a long campaign which covered practically all districts of the country. It is organised by 10 central trade unions and several workers’ and employees federations representing about 10 million workers of the country.

But that’s not “news” for the major media houses in India. Most newspapers and television channels did not carry any report on the protest or carried small items buried deep inside their advertisement filled pages. As far as one could make out, The Hindu, The Indian Express and The Hindustan Times had no report while there are small reports in The Times of India and The Business Line (which claims the protest is by “hundreds of workers” – without pictures so that people don’t get to know of the real size of the gathering).

These are the same newspapers that spare no column inches in reporting about Prime Minister Modi’s smallest statements and activities. They are at the forefront in discussing what the CII or FICCI has said on this and that. They go gaga over Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai. But towards the suffering and anger of millions in this country, there is no ink to be spared.

What about the so-called alternative media? Sorry, but not a single report in The Wire, Scroll, Newslaundry and so on until this morning.

This is not the first time this is happening, of course. Mass protests by the working class have either been ignored by the Indian media, or denigrated as nuisance which causes traffic jams. There were two massive all India strikes – first in 2015 involving about 150 million workers and the world’s biggest industrial strike in 2016 involving 180 million workers. But the media just reported it as partial or even failed strike. On the other hand, protests of 40 people led by an Anna Hazare or some NGOs or what Modi’s followers are saying on his own app tend to make it to the front pages of these newspapers and web portals.

These are nothing but manifestations of the class bias and utter contempt for the working class – which is really fear of the working class and its organised actions. Businessmen who own these media outlets cannot bear the thought of printing or airing something that would harm their own interests. Most newspapers and TV channels themselves employ thousands of people, most of whom are on contract. They are paid low wages, they work long hours and they suffer humiliation and insecurity at their workplaces. While most of the journalists would sympathise with the workers’ demands, they dare not write about it out of fear of their bosses and the owners. Also, Modi’s policies of labour reform or privatisation are precisely the ones that are ardently supported by these media outlets.
To be fair, there are some honourable exceptions to this disgusting trend – NewsClick.in , which has been covering the protest extensively, the Latin American network teleSUR English , and non-English media outlets such as Deshabhimani – ദേശാഭിമാനി , Janayugom, Ganashakti and so on.

Little do the mass media outlets, today so indifferent and scornful of workers and their demands, realise that tomorrow, when this govt. turns against any one of them and starts arm-twisting them – then it is these trade unions only that will stand by them. But probably this is a lesson everyone has to learn the painful way.

Courtesy: Newsclick

Understanding Socialism, Affluence and Inefficiency

November 10, 2017

Excerpts from a lecture by Dr. Vivek Monteiro

SOCIALISM

After 1917, socialism wasno longer a theoretical concept. It became a practical reality in the USSR. It showed to the world, for the first time, that basic needs for every citizen, housing, food security, universal free education, free medical facilities was possible. At the same time when the capitalist world was hit by severe unemployment, in socialist USSR, unemployment was completely eliminated. The USSR showed that the socialist worker’s state could defend itself against all attacks, though sometimes at a great price.

Dr. Ambedkarwanted a socialist constitutionfor India. Thisis sharplyoutlined in his monograph ‘States and Minorities’, published in early 1949 as a draft constitution for India. Here he proposes State socialism, along with Parliamentary democracy, protected as a fundamental right. In defence of this radical proposal, he writes :

The soul of Democracy is the doctrine of one man, one value.
Unfortunately, Democracy has attempted to give effect to this doctrine only so far as the political structure is concerned by adopting the rule of one man, one vote which is supposed to translate into fact the doctrine of one man, one value. It has left the economic structure to take the shape given to it by those who are in a position to mould it. This has happened because Constitutional Lawyers ….have never advanced to the conception that the Constitutional Law of Democracy must go beyond Adult Suffrage and Fundamental Rights… (they) believed that the scope and function of Constitutional Law was to prescribe the shape and form of the political structure of society. They never realised that it was equally essential to prescribe the shape and form of the economic structure of society, if Democracy is to live up to its principle of one man, one value.
Time has come to take a bold step and define both the economic structure as well as the political structure of society by the Law of the Constitution.

The Constitution of India that was finally drafted with Dr. Ambedkar as Chairman was a document of consensus and compromise. Many of Dr. Ambedkar’s concerns about economic democracy found their place not as fundamental rights but as Directive principles. The socialist concept of a welfare state and public ownership of natural resources found expression in articles 38 and 39. The right to work, education, health facilities, a living wage, and social security in times of old age and incapacitation in articles 41 to 43 A.

But on certain fundamental principles there was no compromise- such as the principle of secularism, and freedom of religion. In States and Minorities, these are expressed succinctly and unambiguously;

The State shall not recognise any religion as State religion…..Every religious association shall be free to regulate and administer its affairs, within the limits of the laws applicable to all.

The other basic principle on which Ambedkar refused to compromise was the principle of one man, one vote irrespective of class, caste, creed or gender.

Apart from being the leader of the fight against caste discrimination and untouchability, Ambedkar was also an important labour leader .Of course he had serious ideological differences with the red flag leaders. These centered around the issue of methods and values in the political struggle. Ambedkar also felt that the red flag unions neglected issues of social inequality, neglected to pay attention to the elimination of caste based exclusions within the workers such as existed in the textile mills. Ambedkar had opposed the historic 1928 textile strike of the GirniKamgar Union. But in 1938, both Ambedkar and the communists came together to organize a general strike against the Industrial Disputes Bill, which sought to make strike illegal.

On one important issue there was no difference- the necessity of trade unions to have a political agenda. In an address to workers Ambedkar states:

“to protect purely trade union interests cannot be the only reason, why trade unions must enter politics. To confine your attention to trade unionism is to mistake the immediate task forthe ultimate goal; it is to assure that slaving for others is a destiny which the labouring classes cannot escape. On the contrary, your aim should be to replace this system of wage slavery by a system which will recognize the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. This means rebuilding of society.’

The Constitution of India confers democratic rights to citizens which go well beyond what was demanded by the Chartists. All adult Indian citizens have the right to vote. There are no property qualifications on suffrage. Workers can stand for elections…

The working people in the unorganized and organized sectors comprise the vast majority of Indian citizens. Why have they repeatedly elected to power capitalist governments? Why is it that they have not yet voted to establish a working class government of their own? These are simple but basic questions that have to be raised and examined scientifically.

THE REALM OF AFFLUENCE

Can the working class shape politics?

The October revolution whose centenary we will observe this year is of course a definite answer to that question. But if we ask it as a scientific question we are compelled to ask more questions, for example:

Why has there been no workers’ revolution in Europe or North America thereafter? Why is the working class party so weak in the   world’s most advanced capitalist nation? Why did such a large section of working people vote for a capitalist billionaire like Donald Trump?

The task for Marxism, understood as the scientific method, is not only to analyse working class revolutions, but also to understand and contend with conservatism in the working class.

An important development not anticipated in the Communist manifesto is the development of what Eric Hobsbawm calls a ‘realm of affluence’ in developed capitalism. Instead of the general pauperization of the proletariat predicted by the Manifesto, what is observed in these countries is the phenomenon of a large section of the working class achieving a ‘middle class’ standard of living. Engels uses the term “labouraristocracy’’. Lenin argues that Imperialism engenders “super profit” for the capitalist class of a nation, which in turn allows giving the workers a petty bourgeois standard of living. Baran and Sweezy in their analysis of ‘monopoly capital’ attribute super profits to monopoly of the market by the big corporations.

I would like to examine the phenomenon of ‘the realm of affluence’ – from a different angle.

INEFFICIENCY

There has been much talk about the ‘increase in GDP growth rate’ under neoliberal economic policies. This is attributed to a supposed “greater economic efficiency” achieved due to these policies. In fact, capitalist development is characterized by growing mechanization of the production process. This results in a reduction of costs due to increase in output per unit of labour employed.

However, if we calculate the output per unit of energy expended in the production process, a different picture emerges, as the following few examples show.

Which is more efficient- a handloom or a powerloom? A handloom weaver produces about 6-8 metres of cloth in a day. A powerloom weaver produces about 72-80 metres of cloth in a day, tending four looms. Each loom consumes about 5 kwh of electric energy.

The manual work humans perform can also be measured in units of energy. A human can do manual work continuously over 8 hours with a power output of about 30 watts. This means than in a day of 8-10 hours of manual labour, the human being can perform about 240-300 watt-hours of work. One manday thusis equivalent to ¼ to 1/3^rd kwh of energy.

What the above figures indicate is that in handloom production about 20-25 metres of cloth is produced per kwh of energy expended. In powerloom production, about 4 metres of cloth is produced per kwh of energy expended (80 metres/20 kwh) . If we measure output per unit of energy expended, powerloom is about five to six times less efficient than handloom.

A similar comparison can be made between cycle transport and motorcycle, or, in earth moving between manual digging and a mechanized shovel. In each case, machine powered production process is much less efficient than manual work, when we measure output per unit of energy expended.

We can also compare the energy contents of food and fossil fuels by converting kilocalories into kwh, as shown in the following table:

Petrol            13 kwh/kg
Diesel            13.3
LPG               12.8
Ethanol           8.5
Methanol        5.5
LNG               15
Veg oil           10.5
Cereals          4.2
Coal               8.3

According to David Pimentel, each year the USA uses about 200 million tonnes of oil to produce and consume 100 million tonnes of foodgrains. That is 2 kg of fossil fuels to produce and consume 1 kg of food grains or about 6.5 kwh of fossil fuel energy to produce and consume 1 kwh of food energy.

If the human digestive system could have digested hydrocarbons the way it digests carbohydrates, it would be irrational to do capitalist agriculture. Pumping and eating hydrocarbons would be less irrational.

The belief in capitalist efficiency is created because we measure cost in financial terms. Finance is a social construct arising in the context of exchange value .In financial terms, human-power energy is not cheap. If we assume a minimum wage of Rs 400 per day, human-power energy costs aboutRs 1600 per kwh. By contrast, petrol costs Rs 6 per kwh. Coal is even cheaper- about Rs 1.50 per kwh. Electricity costs about Rs 5 per kwh.
In financial terms, human-power energy costs about 300 to 1000 times the cost of fossil fuel energy, and this is what capitalism is all about, replacing human-power energy with ‘cheaper’ fossil fuel energy through mechanization.

Why is fossil fuel cheap? This is only because of an irrational pricing convention. There is extensive literature on the subject of pricing of non-renewable resources in capitalist economic theory, all essentially based on a 1930 paper by Hoteling. Capitalistic pricing of fossil fuels is based on the cost of extraction, refining and transportation plus a profit mark-up. . This is as rational as fixing the price of a bag of foodgrains in a godown as the cost of its transportation from the godown to the point of use plus a profit mark-up, say about five rupees for a 50 kg bag. With this method of pricing it is cheaper to produce wheat by burning wheat in steam engine tractors, rather than growing wheat with only manual labour. Capitalist pricing of fossil fuels thus obscurantist, because it obscures the real inefficiency of automotive machines.

With this flawed and irrational method of costing it costs less money per unit output to deploy machines rather than humans, though energetically speaking, machines are generally less efficient than humans. An important factor for both profit and super profit is this contrived and notional ‘machine productivity’. A higher margin of profit can be earned by producing at a money cost less than the social average money cost of production, by replacing human labour by machines.

Increasing mechanization and automation, which is at the core of ‘technological upgradation’, results in higher margin of profit in the short run. It also lowers the average social money cost of production in the longer run. This results in a constant lowering of the margin of profit as more and more units mechanize their production process..

When we measure production costs in terms of energy, i.e. output per kwh of energy expended, it turns out that capitalism is intrinsically inefficient, perhaps the most inefficient mode of production in human history. The ‘realm of affluence’ is based on “off balance sheet creative accounting”, on fossil fuel energy subsidy, on deprivation of our grandchildren and future generations of their entitlement in the finite stock of non-renewable resources of the earth. The present ‘realm of affluence’ is thus predicated on a ‘realm of scarcity and hunger’ for the future. If the previous calculations are correct, and they can all be verified, capitalism is not freedom, as ideologists like Milton Friedman have tried to argue. Capitalism is a form of social vandalism based on obscurantist mumbo jumbo of bourgeois economics, a rapacious trade off of our children’s survival for the petty consumerism of the present.

Also Read
— Can the working class shape politics?
— Human Activity and Social History: Understanding Politics and the Concept of Equality

A Year After Demonetisation: Small Retailers Report Further Losses But Support BJP

November 10, 2017

“Notebandi ka kya faayda hua? [What was the use of demonetisation]” asked Lalita Yogesh Patil, her face red, voice terse and breath short. Heaving a sigh, the diminutive mother of two sank into her withered plastic chair and said softly, “It has only brought us ruin.”

Lalita Yogesh Patil, 31, in her shop, Tanish kirana store, in Vishwabharti Phata village, in Thane district. Since demonetisation a year ago, her store has been in losses of 50% and more, Patil said

It has been a year since India announced the scrapping of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes–86% of India’s currency in circulation, by value, at the time. Four months and eight days ago, a new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime was introduced. The government claimed that both policy actions were aimed at cleaning up the economy, modernising payment systems, and setting India on a path of prosperity.

“We used to earn Rs 10,000-12,000 a month a year ago, now it’s down to Rs 5,000-6,000. After household expenses and what is needed to send the children to school–pens, books, etc.–we are left with practically nothing,” Patil told IndiaSpend on October 30, 2017.

At the time of demonetisation, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), had promised the situation would return to business-as-usual in 50 days. On days 54 and 55, IndiaSpend visited and reported from 24 corner shops in Mumbai and semi-urban, peri-urban and rural areas north of Mumbai about the impact of demonetisation on small retail stores. Patil was one of the 19 shopkeepers who had reported losses of 50% or more.

A year after demonetisation, IndiaSpend returned to the 24 stores to check if the situation has improved (we were able to track down and speak to 17 store owners, the others either having relocated or being unavailable at the time of our visit). Largely, they said, the situation has not improved.

The owners of 14 stores said their stores were still running losses. During our last visit (in January 2017), 13 stores had reported losses.
Among these 14, owners of 12 stores said their losses were higher than 50%, and eight said business was now worse than 10 months ago.
All shopkeepers said GST had made goods more expensive, reduced business and customer walk-ins, but their estimates for business lost ranged between 10% and 50%.
None of the store owners said business was better than before November 8, 2016.
All shopkeepers said fewer customers wanted to pay through cashless modes, so fewer shopkeepers have invested in non-cash payment infrastructure such as card swipe machines.
Support for the BJP among kirana store owners remains strong, despite their losses.
Nearly every shopkeeper we spoke to (15 of 17), including supporters of the BJP, said they could not see any benefit from demonetisation.

Source: IndiaSpend interviews

Jobs vanish, as does business

In Vishwabharti Phata, off Kawad highway in Thane district, Patil runs the tiny Tanish Kirana Store, which is attached to her pakka house flanked by rice fields, a few hundred metres from the village centre. We visited at noon. Her sons, Harshad (11) and Tanish (6), were playing a game of marbles on the porch. Inside the store, half-empty jars lay scattered across empty shelves.

Patil’s husband’s death in a motorbike accident in 2012 had forced her to close down the store. She reopened it two years ago, after having tried her hand at working in a chocolate factory. “I was earning Rs 6,000 a month, but was spending Rs 50 a day to travel to and fro. It made no sense,” she said.

The shop had just begun to do well again when demonetisation hit and Patil’s income dwindled. Four months later, in March 2017, she was diagnosed with a spinal condition, and was forced to borrow Rs 20,000 from her brother for treatment. “I haven’t been able to pay him back yet,” she told IndiaSpend, adding that she has to incur further treatment-related expenses every two weeks.

Lalita Patil and her sons Harshad and Tanish outside their home and the attached shop. Patil had reopened the store two years ago after her husband passed away in 2012. Her family of three is entirely dependent on the shop’s earnings.

Patil’s shop would have enabled her to afford treatment were it not for demonetisation, she said. Her most regular patrons were local adivasis (tribals) employed by small businesses in the area. Hit by demonetisation, these businesses downed shutters and laid off workers, so Patil’s regular business disappeared. Since November 9, 2016, she has suffered 65% losses, Patil estimated.

Losses pile up

In conversations with IndiaSpend, 14 of the 17 store owners we revisited said they were facing losses, one more than in January 2017. Among these, 12 said their losses amounted to 50% or more, and eight said their businesses were now doing worse than 10 months ago.

Source: IndiaSpend interviews

Three of the store owners who now admit losses had told IndiaSpend during our previous visit in January 2017 that their businesses had not been affected by demonetisation.

None of the 17 revisited stores said earnings were now better than before November 8, 2016.

Four kirana store owners said business had improved slightly by June 2016 but the gains had been quickly lost with the introduction of GST on July 1, 2017.

“Business was improving before GST came in. Now any chances of profit have been completely ruined,” said Jagdish Chaudhari, a 23-year-old kirana store owner in Kupari Naka, Virar, a rural fringe of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. In January 2017, Chaudhari’s brother Chaganlal, an avid BJP supporter, had said business had not been greatly affected by demonetisation.

Now, the family told IndiaSpend, the shop’s losses amount to 50%. “Earlier, if the maximum retail price was Rs 10, companies would sell to us at a discounted rate of Rs 8 so we could earn Rs 2 in profit. Now with GST we sell at the same rate we buy. There are no savings, no profits–only losses,” Chaudhari said.

Jagdish Chaudhari of Poornima Kirana stores in Kupari Naka, Virar, said that since the introduction of GST in July, his shop’s profit margin had dropped and the inflow of customers had reduced by half with many buying goods in lesser quantities.

“Iss saal Diwali kuch khaas nahin tha [this year Diwali was nothing special],” said Ramesh Kumar, 34, another shopkeeper in Kupari Naka who reports 50% losses. “I have yet to sell 80% of the store’s festive season stock of rawa, sugar, etc. We could not even buy new clothes for ourselves or burst crackers at home. We hardly made sweets.”

All the kirana stores we revisited said GST had made consumer goods more expensive, leading to a drop in earnings of between 10% and 50%. The waning trickle of customers for an entire year has visibly dampened spirits–14 of the 17 store owners said they did not hope things would get better.

“Kabhi kabhi lagta hai ki dukaan band karke kheti mein hi kaam karna chahiye [sometimes I think it is better to shut the store and work on the farm],” said kirana store owner Megha Patil, 29, of Hivali village. What prevents her is the fact that farming is risky too–heavy rains in October this year washed away the bhindi (ladyfinger) crop on her land, causing losses of Rs 10,000-15,000.

Patil mortgaged her gold to meet farm expenses, hoping to pay off the loan from the shop’s earnings. “Now we are struggling to even pay the interest of Rs 1,200,” she said, sitting in her 100-sq-ft home, a bamboo hut patched with mud, attached with which is her 50-sq-ft kirana store.

Farmer and kirana-owner Megha Patil mortgages her gold every year to meet farm expenses. With heavy rains ruining the crop, and the shop in losses from demonetisation and GST, she says it is now difficult to pay the interest.

“Who wants to get their hopes high? Anytime the government can decide anything it wants–we are left with no choice but to just deal with it,” said Narayan Chaudhari, a shopkeeper in the Ghodbunder area of Thane, who reported over 50% losses. “Only big businesses can survive in this climate,” he said, a common refrain across stores in the urbanised parts of Palghar, Thane and Mumbai districts.

“Big supermarkets like D-Mart buy in such large quantities that companies can sell to them at even bigger discounts. So even if they offer goods to customers at amazing discounts they are still earning a profit. Obviously people will flock to them–how do we compete?” said 18-year-old Ashish Dharaviya, whose family-run kirana store in Borivali reported 50% losses over the last year.

Still, two of the 17 stores we revisited said they were hopeful business would improve, in six months to a year from now. “Even if prices rise, these are basic goods. People will have to buy to survive,” said Raksha Patel, 19, who said the situation in her shop was back to normal, and was unaffected by GST. “Everything is as it was before. Nothing better, nothing worse.”

After initial surge, digital payments report a slump

In the days after demonetisation, the government’s demonetisation narrative changed from an attack on “black money” and “fake currency” to the promise of a “cashless/digital” economy, as IndiaSpend reported on December 5, 2016.

During our visit to kirana stores, we found that 12 of the 17 stores’ owners did not have a mobile wallet to offer customers a digital payment option. In January 2017, four of these 17 shopkeepers had owned digital wallets, and the number had gone up to five in 10 months. It was mainly shop owners in urbanised areas who chose to maintain this option.

Only two of the 17, located in the densely populated areas of Vasai and Mumbai, used point of sale (PoS) machines, down from five in January 2017. Three shopkeepers had cancelled their request for PoS machines.

Source: IndiaSpend interviews

“Running this shop on cash is itself so expensive now. Who’s going to bother keeping other options,” said Kumar of Kupari Naka.

All shopkeepers using PoS machines and mobile wallets said customers prefer to pay by cash.

In January 2017, more than half of the interviewed store owners (14 of 24) had said their stores were too small and sales too little in value to warrant cashless modes of payment. They had also said that like themselves, their customers were not educated or wealthy enough for such options, as IndiaSpend had reported.

With the value of cash in circulation now restored to nearly 92%, about half, or eight of 17 kirana owners, now reported choosing cash because customers prefer it anyway, while the rest said these technologies were beyond their customers’ literacy levels.

While digital payments have not seen an uptake, eight store owners, all located in urban areas, said they now accept and receive cheques as an alternative method of payment. In January 2017, only one shopkeeper had reported accepting or receiving cheques.

“We get cheque payments but this too has reduced as compared to some months ago since cash flow is back to normal,” said Mahendra Chheda, a shopkeeper in Dahisar, Mumbai’s northernmost suburb, adding that he receives five to six cheques a month as payment from customers.

Notably, all shopkeepers now reported being aware of cashless technologies, compared with 35% who were not previously.

Despite this increased awareness, 16 of 17 kirana store owners did not report using banking services more than they earlier did. In fact, more than half the shopkeepers we met, in rural and semi-urban areas, reported using these services even more rarely as earnings have plummeted, hitting savings and investments.

“We are hardly making money to bother going to the bank. Whatever we earn goes to the house or back to the shop,” said Nilesh Patil, a shopkeeper based in Kawad in Thane district, who said his shop is facing losses of 50%. “The bank itself would reject our tiny deposits.”

Nilesh Patil (right) runs Sadguru Krupa Stores in Kawad, currently in losses of over 50%. His joint family of nine members depend entirely on the shop’s income.

Yet, continuing support for Modi

Off the Bhiwandi-Wada highway, kirana store owner Ambika Kumbhar said savings and investments aside, losses and inflation have hit her home budget. “Earlier we could make more food for the house because we could afford more. Now we make lesser. This is how we cope,” she said. While her store has now recovered some of the 75% losses it suffered in January 2017, it still suffers a 25% loss. The shop, which stays shut during the monsoon season, is the primary source of income for the family of potters, traditionally set on the lowest rung of the Maharashtrian Hindu caste order. They also sell a pot or two a month for Rs 50 to Rs 100, she said.

“A couple of months ago, I found Rs 10,000 in old notes kept in an old book. I had saved it from years ago and had completely forgotten about it. By then the banks had stopped exchanging currency so they became useless pieces of paper,” said Kumbhar, her hands shaking, her voice terse. “It felt like 500 pots crashing.”

Ambika Kumbhar runs Shree Swami Samarth kirana store which has recovered 50% of the losses reported in January 2017. After this, the store is now running at 25% loss.

Kumbhar said it would take years to recover the losses her family had suffered. Yet, her allegiance to the BJP and to PM Modi remains intact. “We support Modi because we are from Gujarat, he is of our community. Our village supports the BJP, so we do too,” Kumbhar said, adding, “I have been so angry, but what can we do? We just have to let it go. The effect is not as much on us as it would be on richer people.”

Ten of the 17 store owners we revisited continued to support the BJP and the Prime Minister. This is one fewer than in January.

Source: IndiaSpend interviews

Among those who still support the BJP, six, including Kumbhar, cited village or community ties as their reason. Two said they had no choice since the opposition still does not offer a strong leader to replace Modi.

However, in rural areas, fewer shopkeepers now support the BJP. “How can we support them after what they have done to us in the last one year? Modi made the rich richer, the poor poorer,” said Patil, the store owner from Hivali. She had previously supported demonetisation and the Prime Minister.

“People are angry. First notebandi, then GST, now losses on the farm have ruined us. We are not as enthusiastic as before. The Shiv Sena has also been capitalising on this, rallying villagers against the BJP,” said Vasant Bohir, 55, another kirana store owner and resident of the village.

Across the board, BJP supporters included, 90% of the store owners we revisited (15 of 17) said they failed to see the point of demonetisation, and that it had been of no use to them.

“Where have we got back any black money? Those who had to get away, got away,” said Kamlakar Patil, a kirana owner in Dugad village, off the Wada highway, who said his store had faced 50% losses.Yet, he supported the BJP: “Their intentions are good, just the implementation is bad.”

Ten months ago, eight of these 17 shopkeepers, including Kamlakar Patil, had supported the government’s demonetisation decision. At that time, Patil had said he hoped demonetisation would weed out the black money circulating among the rich, and bring justice to the poor.

“It may have been good for the government, but what good came of it for us? Nothing has changed except for our losses,” said shopkeeper Lalita Patil, a BJP supporter, back at Vishwabharti Phata.

“Chalo, hume kuchh naya to dekhne mila [Well, at least we got to see something new],” said Kishan Chaudhary of Virar, also a BJP supporter, who reported losses of 40%.

(Saldanha is an assistant editor at IndiaSpend.)

Field Notes:

On October 30 and 31, 2017, IndiaSpend went out to retrace each of the 24 stores featured in its January 16, 2017, report on the impact of demonetisation on small retail stores. We were able to interview 17 store owners. Among the remaining seven, four stores had relocated to other parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, closer to urban Mumbai and Thane, while the owners of three stores were absent when IndiaSpend visited.
The seven kirana stores not included in our anniversary study of the impact of demonetisation on small retail stores are spread across rural, semi-urban and urban areas. They had previously reported losses ranging between 25% and 60%. Three store owners had said they supported the BJP, two that they did not vote, and one that he was undecided.

Courtesy: India Spend

UK minister Priti Patel forced to resign over secret Israel meetings as questions continue to swirl

November 10, 2017

A British government minister was apparently so dedicated to her work that she spent a “family holiday” in Israel conducting 12 undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Priti Patel who had served as Secretary of State for International Development in Prime Minister Theresa May’s government. (Photo: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development)

Those covert meetings brought about the downfall of Priti Patel on Wednesday night. She was forced to resign as international development secretary, responsible for Britain’s overseas aid budget, admitting her actions “fell below the standards of transparency and openness” expected of a minister.

Her position became untenable as further revelations this week showed she had held two additional unrecorded meetings with Israeli officials in London and New York in September, organised and attended by a prominent Israel lobbyist.

All meetings conducted by British ministers on official business are supposed to be recorded by government civil servants.

Although the office of Theresa May, the British prime minister, has insisted it did not know of these meetings until the BBC revealed them on November 3, a report from Britain’s Jewish Chronicle newspaper suggested otherwise. It claimed that, while the meetings were not authorised beforehand, May’s officials learnt of them almost immediately through Israeli counterparts.

During her vacation in Israel, Patel also dispensed with sightseeing to head instead to the Golan Heights, Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Thoughtfully, the Israeli army accompanied her and had the chance to explain in detail their “humanitarian work” running a field hospital patching up those injured in southern Syria, including al Qaeda combatants.

Patel was reportedly so impressed she wanted to give the Israeli army a chunk of Britain’s limited international aid. Her department’s budget is apparently so tight that, according to the Independent newspaper, she approved cuts last year in aid to the Palestinians of £17 million, including projects in Gaza.

In other words, Patel hoped to give British aid intended for the most unfortunate directly to one of the best-funded and equipped armies in the world, one that already receives $4 billion a year in military aid from the United States, and which has used its swollen budget to sustain a five-decade belligerent occupation of the Palestinians and enforce its continuing occupation of the Syrian Golan.

All of this was done unofficially. In an example of under-statement, the British media called all of this a “breach of ministerial protocol”. The Guardian newspaper characterised Patel’s behavior as a sign of her “incompetence”. But is that plausible?

Was Patel so astoundingly ignorant of government protocol that she held meetings off the books with senior Israeli officials? Was it political naivety that led her to venture into the Golan under the auspices of the Israeli army and into an area from which Israel has been deeply meddling in the six-year Syrian proxy war raging just a few miles away?

And was it simply a coincidence that her unusual holiday excursion occurred as analysts have begun warning of an imminent renewed outbreak of hostilities between Israel and its northern neighbors, Syria and Lebanon?

It is worth picking through the debris in an attempt to work out what she, and Israel, might have been trying to achieve.

Meetings with Israeli officials

Patel is a prominent member of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a pro-Israel lobby group to which 80 per cent of the ruling Conservative party’s members of parliament, including most government ministers, belong. They and a similarly entrenched group of opposition Labour MPs belonging to Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) are there to advance Israel’s case in parliament and in British foreign policy.

Such MPs are invited on official “educational” trips to Israel where they get access to Israeli leaders and are wined and dined. The damaging influence of these lobbies on British politics – and the covert nature of their activities – were highlighted earlier this year in a four-part undercover investigation broadcast by Al Jazeera.

In the episode on the Conservative party, an Israeli embassy official was filmed plotting with party officials to “take down” a government foreign office minister, Alan Duncan. He is seen as a rare outpost of support for the Palestinians in the Conservative party. This disturbing incident was largely ignored by the Conservative leadership and the British media.

Patel’s membership of CFI is hardly surprising. But her level of commitment to Israel, beyond that of her CFI membership, is suggested by the nature of her choice of “holiday” destination and the endless round of meetings she held there. They were organised by Stuart Polak, who accompanied her and is the honorary president of CFI.

Patel has argued that the meetings touched on entirely innocuous topics. Netanyahu apparently took time out of his busy schedule – including his frantic efforts to staunch a corruption scandal that could lead to his resignation and jail time – to chat about Patel’s “experience growing up in an area of the UK with a thriving Jewish community” and “her political journey”.

More likely, Israeli officials were keen to talk to Patel for more pertinent reasons. Some are easier to identify than others. Most obviously, Patel’s role was to oversee Britain’s aid to the Palestinian Authority and human rights groups that monitor Israel’s appalling record of abuses in the occupied territories.

Patel had already proven her willingness to cut aid to the Palestinians. It was reported that in October last year she also temporarily suspended £25 million in funds to the Palestine, though her department denied the story.

A foreign office source told the BBC: “She has been pushing to get her hands on the PA aid budget and we have been pushing back.” Israeli officials may have hoped they could extract more concessions from her or persuade her to tie aid to greater Palestinian compliance with Israeli demands.

Netanyahu has additionally been leading an aggressive campaign to silence Israeli human rights groups and prevent them from receiving foreign, mainly European, funding. In a sign of how high a priority this is, Netanyahu asked the British prime minister at a meeting in May to end Britain’s supposed funding of an Israeli army whistleblower group, Breaking the Silence. In fact, the group receives no money from the British government.

Patel’s account of her meeting with Israel’s police minister, Gilad Erdan, at least hints inadvertently at another topic that both sides may have hoped would be of mutual benefit. Notably, she met Erdan a second time at the Houses of Parliament in September, in contravention of a decision by her department officials. The meeting was arranged through her constituency office and went unrecorded.

She says she discussed with Erdan the problem of antisemitism in the UK. He, meanwhile, stated in a Tweet that they spoke about ways to “counter attempts to delegitimise Israel in international institutions”.

Erdan’s full title is minister of public security, communications (hasbara – or “propaganda” in English) and strategic affairs. He is charged with smearing Israel’s critics abroad and has established a “dirty tricks unit” to try to destroy the growing international BDS movement that campaigns for a boycott of Israel. Netanyahu has claimed that “delegitimisation” – criticism – of Israel is the biggest threat facing his country after an Iranian nuclear bomb.

As the Al Jazeera documentary indicates, the dirty tricks campaign has often relied on Israeli embassy officials and allies in western political parties, like the most zealous members of the CFI and LFI, to weaponise accusations of antisemitism against Israel’s critics.

Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the opposition Labour party two years ago, the British media have been flooded with stories of a supposed antisemitism crisis under his watch. In judging the plausibility of these accusations, it is hard to ignore the fact that Corbyn is the first leader of a major British political party to place the rights of Palestinians above Israel’s right to carry on regardless with the occupation.

Was Patel plotting with Netanyahu and Erdan to help Israel in further damaging Corbyn, possibly by stoking yet more claims of antisemitism in his party, at time when the Conservatives have no parliamentary majority and are in a permanent state of crisis that may yet force elections Corbyn is well placed to win?

And, more cynically still, as some of her fellow ministers have suggested to the BBC, might the ambitious Patel have seen seeking to prove her credentials with Israel and its wealthy supporters and lobbyists in the UK, including Lord Polak, to help in a future leadership bid?
And if that is what these meetings were at least in part about, did Patel take on this task on her own initiative or on behalf of CFI? And was there really no coordination with the party leadership?

Interestingly, when the meetings first came to light, Patel claimed that the foreign office was fully informed. Only under pressure from Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and May did she start backpedalling.

Now, the evidence appears to indicate that May’s office too may have been engaged in a cover-up. Michael Oren, deputy minister in the Israeli prime minister’s office, reportedly told senior British government officials about Patel’s meeting with Netanyahu the day it occurred.
The Jewish Chronicle has also reported that May and Patel spoke face to face in September about the latter’s meeting with Netanyahu, shortly before the British prime minister spoke at the United Nations General Assembly. May is said to have agreed with Patel on her “plan for UK aid to be shared with the Israelis.”

So given this context, what can we make of Patel’s extraordinary trip to the Golan?

Israel and the Syrian civil war

The field hospital that so impressed her is rather more than an example of altruistic “humanitarianism” by the Israeli army. Although it is widely reported that the hospital cares for “Syrian nationals” injured in the fighting in Syria, its primary role appears to be to treat foreign fighters from al Qaeda-affiliated groups injured in battles with Syrian government forces and their Lebanese ally, Hizbullah. A significant number of wounded have been transferred to hospitals inside Israel.

This barely concealed fact – it was even documented by the United Nations in 2015 – caused outrage among the Syrian Druze population living under Israeli occupation in the Golan, as well as Druze families in Israel. It looked to them like the Islamist fighters were being patched up so that they could carry on butchering Druze relatives a few miles away in southern Syria.

In summer 2015 that anger peaked, and several ambulances carrying fighters to Israeli hospitals were attacked by Druze, in the Golan and Israel. In one attack masked men managed to stop an ambulance and beat a fighter to death. In September two Israeli Druze men were convicted of another, failed attempt to stop an ambulance. They face up to 20 years in jail.

But in fact, Israel’s ties to al Qaeda groups and Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria extend beyond medical help. The UN reported that the Israeli army was seen transferring boxes to al-Qaeda groups in Syria. There are credible reports that Israel has also armed and trained al Qaeda fighters, and provided them with maps and intelligence. The strong suspicion is that Israel has forged links to these Islamic extremists to help them wear down Hizbullah and the Syrian army.

Israel has carried out more than 100 air strikes inside Syria, all against government forces, precisely to weaken the military alliance between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, and thereby helping al-Qaeda groups. The Islamic extremists have also received assistance from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and less directly from the US.

Why was a British minister in charge of humanitarian aid getting mixed up in all this?

Creating an “alternative” government policy?

The episode has troubling parallels with events from 2011 when Liam Fox, Britain’s defence minister, resigned after his own murky dealings with Israel. The official grounds for Fox’s departure were that he had broken ministerial protocol by allowing a close friend and lobbyist, Adam Werritty, to attend defence meetings posing as an adviser.

But in fact, Fox’s ties to Werritty were even more problematic than admitted. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador turned whistleblower, has argued that the official story about Fox was used to deflect attention from far more serious violations of government protocol.
Fox and Werritty were active in a shadowy group called Atlantic Bridge that had close ties to the neoconservatives who were deeply embedded in the administration of George W Bush. The neocons openly promoted an aggressive policy designed to destabilise the Middle East, all in a bid to help Israel.

The neocons had served as a long-standing pressure group for attacks on Iraq, Iran and Syria – chiefly because they were seen as bulwarks against Israel’s hegemonic influence in the region. In 2003 they succeeded in persuading the Bush administration to invade Iraq, unleashing a lethal collapse of central authority there.

Israel and the neocons have been trying to engineer a complementary attack on Iran ever since, and there is overwhelming evidence that they have been seeking to undermine Syria too.

The most significant of Fox’s off-the-books meetings occurred in February 2011 when he and Werritty, supported by the UK ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, secretly met Israeli officials in Tel Aviv.

According to Murray, drawing on his contacts in the diplomatic service, the Israeli officials were, in fact, Mossad agents. And the topic they discussed was Britain’s possible role in helping to create a favourable diplomatic environment for Israel or the US to carry out an attack on Iran.

Separately, the Guardian newspaper revealed that Fox’s ministry had drawn up detailed plans for British assistance in the event of a US military strike on Iran. That included allowing the Americans to use Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian ocean, as a base from which to launch an attack.

Unnamed government officials told the Guardian Fox had been pursuing an “alternative” government policy. Murray, more directly, suggested that Fox, Werritty and Gould had conspired in a “rogue” foreign policy towards Iran, against Britain’s stated aims.

Although Fox was forced to resign over his links to Werritty, he was quickly rehabilitated once May became prime minister. He was appointed secretary of state for international trade last year.

With fitting irony, Patel was on a trip to Africa with Fox when she was called back to the UK as the scandal deepened. Under pressure from an embattled May, she has resigned.

Was Patel pursuing an “alternative” policy towards Israel, or its neighbors? And if so, what was that policy, and did anyone senior to her authorise it?

Her role in talking to senior Israelis bypassed the foreign office. Did she do so because officials there like Alan Duncan were not seen as sympathetic enough to Israel, and might try to sabotage it? The permanent bureaucracy of the foreign office has often been seen as holding “pro-Arab” views not unrelated to western interests in the Gulf and its plentiful oil.

And how does May, a fervent supporter of Israel, fit into this picture?

Given British government secrecy, it will likely never be possible to provide definitive answers. But it is worth remembering that Israel, its still-powerful neocon allies in Washington and the Saudi regime are angling for the Israeli army to reverse the decisive gains Assad and his allies have made in taking back control of Syria in recent months.

This week Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper that the Saudis were meddling yet again in Lebanese politics, forcing Hizbullah into greater political prominence, to provide the pretext for Israel to renew its confrontation with the Lebanese militia and thereby stoke a new war between Israel and Lebanon and Syria.

In his words: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are fully aligned in this regional struggle, and the Saudis cannot help but be impressed by Israel’s increasing assertiveness to strike at Iranian threats in Syria … When the moment of truth arrives, Israel’s allies, with the United States in the lead, should give it full backing.”

When the time comes, Israel will, as ever, rely on well-placed friends in western capitals to support and misrepresent its actions. Until her resignation, Priti Patel would undoubtedly have been one of those prominent champions of Israel helping out in a time of need.

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net

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