Showing posts with label migrant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label migrant. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 May 2024
Tuesday, 1 August 2023
Tuesday, 22 November 2022
Hypocrisy's Penalty Corner
Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn
THERE’S been severe criticism, primarily in the Western media, of the gross exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar’s bid to host football’s World Cup that began in Doha last week. There’s more than a grain of truth in the accusation, and there’s dollops of hypocrisy about it.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino brought it out nicely by calling out the Western media’s double standards in what is tantamount to shedding crocodile tears for the exploited workers.
The CNN, unsurprisingly, slammed Infantino’s anger, and quoted human rights groups as describing his comments as “crass” and an “insult” to migrant workers. Why is Infantino convinced that the Western media wallows in its own arrogance?
It is nobody’s secret that migrant workers in the Gulf are paid a pittance, which becomes more deplorable when compared to the enormous riches they help produce. As is evident, the workers’ exploitation is not specific to Qatar’s hosting of a football tournament, but a deeper malaise in which Western greed mocks its moral sermons.
As their earnings with hard labour abroad fetch them more than what they would get at home, the workers become unwitting partners in their own abuse. This has been the unwritten law around the generation of wealth in oil-rich Gulf countries, though their rulers are not alone in the exploitative venture.
Western colluders, nearly all of them champions of human rights, have used the oil extracted with cheap labour that plies Gulf economies, to control the world order. The West and the Gulf states have both benefited directly from dirt cheap workforce sourced from countries like India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the far away Philippines.
Making it considerably worse is the sullen cutthroat competition that has prevailed for decades between workers of different countries, thereby undercutting each other’s bargaining power. The bruising competition is not unknown to their respective governments that benefit enormously from the remittances from an exploited workforce. The disregard for work conditions is not only related to the Gulf workers, of course, but also migrant labour at home. In the case of India, we witnessed the criminal apathy they experienced in the Covid-19 emergency.
Asian women workers in the Gulf face quantifiably worse conditions. An added challenge they face is of sexual exploitation. Cheap labour imported from South Asia, therefore, answers to the overused though still germane term — Western imperialism. Infantino was spot on. Pity the self-absorbed Western press booed him down.
Sham outrage over a Gulf country hosting the World Cup is just one aspect of hypocrisy. A larger problem remains rooted in an undiscussed bias.
Moscow and Beijing in particular have been the Western media’s leading quarries from time immemorial. The boycott of the Moscow Olympics over the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan was dressed up as a moral proposition, which it might have been but for the forked tongue at play. That numerous Olympic contests went ahead undeterred in Western cities despite their illegal wars or support for dictators everywhere was never called out. What the West did with China, however, bordered on distilled criminality.
I was visiting Beijing in September 1993 with prime minister Narasimha Rao’s media team. The streets were lined with colourful buntings and slogans, which one mistook for a grand welcome for the visiting Indian leader. As it turned out the enthusiasm was all about Beijing’s bid to host the 2000 Olympics. It was fortunate Rao arrived on Sept 6 and could sign with Li Peng a landmark agreement for “peace and tranquility” on the Sino-Indian borders. Barely two week later, China would collapse into collective depression after Sydney snatched the 2000 Olympics from Beijing’s clasp. Western perfidy was at work again.
As it happened, other than Sydney and Beijing three other cities were also in the running — Manchester, Berlin and Istanbul — but, as The New York Times noted: “No country placed its prestige more on the line than China.” When the count began, China led the field with a clear margin over Sydney. Then the familiar mischief came into play.
Beijing led after each of the first three rounds, but was unable to win the required majority of the 89 voting members. One voter did not cast a ballot in the final two rounds. After the third round, in which Manchester won 11 votes, Beijing still led Sydney by 40 to 37 ballots. “But, confirming predictions that many Western delegates were eager to block Beijing’s bid, eight of Manchester’s votes went to Sydney and only three to the Chinese capital,” NYT reported. Human rights was cited as the cause. Hypocritically, that concern disappeared out of sight and Beijing hosted a grand Summer Olympics in 2008.
Football is a mesmerising game to watch. Its movements are comparable to musical notes of a riveting symphony. Above all, it’s a sport that cannot be easily fudged with. But its backstage in our era of the lucre stinks of pervasive corruption.
Anger in Beijing burst into the open when it was revealed in January 1999 that Australia’s Olympic Committee president John Coates promised two International Olympic Committee members $35,000 each for their national Olympic committees the night before the vote, which gave the games to Sydney by 45 votes to 43.
The Daily Mail described the “usual equanimity” with which Juan Antonio Samaranch, the then Spanish IOC president, tried to diminish the scam. The allegations against nine of the 10 IOC members accused of graft “have scant foundation and the remaining one has hardly done anything wrong”.
“In a speech to his countrymen,” recalled the Mail, “he blamed the press for ‘overreacting’ to the underhand tactics, including the hire of prostitutes, employed by Salt Lake City to host the next Winter Olympics.” Samaranch sidestepped any reference to the tactics employed by Sydney to stage the Millennium Summer Games.
This reality should never be obscured by other outrages, including the abominable working conditions of Asian workers in Qatar.
THERE’S been severe criticism, primarily in the Western media, of the gross exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar’s bid to host football’s World Cup that began in Doha last week. There’s more than a grain of truth in the accusation, and there’s dollops of hypocrisy about it.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino brought it out nicely by calling out the Western media’s double standards in what is tantamount to shedding crocodile tears for the exploited workers.
The CNN, unsurprisingly, slammed Infantino’s anger, and quoted human rights groups as describing his comments as “crass” and an “insult” to migrant workers. Why is Infantino convinced that the Western media wallows in its own arrogance?
It is nobody’s secret that migrant workers in the Gulf are paid a pittance, which becomes more deplorable when compared to the enormous riches they help produce. As is evident, the workers’ exploitation is not specific to Qatar’s hosting of a football tournament, but a deeper malaise in which Western greed mocks its moral sermons.
As their earnings with hard labour abroad fetch them more than what they would get at home, the workers become unwitting partners in their own abuse. This has been the unwritten law around the generation of wealth in oil-rich Gulf countries, though their rulers are not alone in the exploitative venture.
Western colluders, nearly all of them champions of human rights, have used the oil extracted with cheap labour that plies Gulf economies, to control the world order. The West and the Gulf states have both benefited directly from dirt cheap workforce sourced from countries like India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the far away Philippines.
Making it considerably worse is the sullen cutthroat competition that has prevailed for decades between workers of different countries, thereby undercutting each other’s bargaining power. The bruising competition is not unknown to their respective governments that benefit enormously from the remittances from an exploited workforce. The disregard for work conditions is not only related to the Gulf workers, of course, but also migrant labour at home. In the case of India, we witnessed the criminal apathy they experienced in the Covid-19 emergency.
Asian women workers in the Gulf face quantifiably worse conditions. An added challenge they face is of sexual exploitation. Cheap labour imported from South Asia, therefore, answers to the overused though still germane term — Western imperialism. Infantino was spot on. Pity the self-absorbed Western press booed him down.
Sham outrage over a Gulf country hosting the World Cup is just one aspect of hypocrisy. A larger problem remains rooted in an undiscussed bias.
Moscow and Beijing in particular have been the Western media’s leading quarries from time immemorial. The boycott of the Moscow Olympics over the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan was dressed up as a moral proposition, which it might have been but for the forked tongue at play. That numerous Olympic contests went ahead undeterred in Western cities despite their illegal wars or support for dictators everywhere was never called out. What the West did with China, however, bordered on distilled criminality.
I was visiting Beijing in September 1993 with prime minister Narasimha Rao’s media team. The streets were lined with colourful buntings and slogans, which one mistook for a grand welcome for the visiting Indian leader. As it turned out the enthusiasm was all about Beijing’s bid to host the 2000 Olympics. It was fortunate Rao arrived on Sept 6 and could sign with Li Peng a landmark agreement for “peace and tranquility” on the Sino-Indian borders. Barely two week later, China would collapse into collective depression after Sydney snatched the 2000 Olympics from Beijing’s clasp. Western perfidy was at work again.
As it happened, other than Sydney and Beijing three other cities were also in the running — Manchester, Berlin and Istanbul — but, as The New York Times noted: “No country placed its prestige more on the line than China.” When the count began, China led the field with a clear margin over Sydney. Then the familiar mischief came into play.
Beijing led after each of the first three rounds, but was unable to win the required majority of the 89 voting members. One voter did not cast a ballot in the final two rounds. After the third round, in which Manchester won 11 votes, Beijing still led Sydney by 40 to 37 ballots. “But, confirming predictions that many Western delegates were eager to block Beijing’s bid, eight of Manchester’s votes went to Sydney and only three to the Chinese capital,” NYT reported. Human rights was cited as the cause. Hypocritically, that concern disappeared out of sight and Beijing hosted a grand Summer Olympics in 2008.
Football is a mesmerising game to watch. Its movements are comparable to musical notes of a riveting symphony. Above all, it’s a sport that cannot be easily fudged with. But its backstage in our era of the lucre stinks of pervasive corruption.
Anger in Beijing burst into the open when it was revealed in January 1999 that Australia’s Olympic Committee president John Coates promised two International Olympic Committee members $35,000 each for their national Olympic committees the night before the vote, which gave the games to Sydney by 45 votes to 43.
The Daily Mail described the “usual equanimity” with which Juan Antonio Samaranch, the then Spanish IOC president, tried to diminish the scam. The allegations against nine of the 10 IOC members accused of graft “have scant foundation and the remaining one has hardly done anything wrong”.
“In a speech to his countrymen,” recalled the Mail, “he blamed the press for ‘overreacting’ to the underhand tactics, including the hire of prostitutes, employed by Salt Lake City to host the next Winter Olympics.” Samaranch sidestepped any reference to the tactics employed by Sydney to stage the Millennium Summer Games.
This reality should never be obscured by other outrages, including the abominable working conditions of Asian workers in Qatar.
Monday, 10 January 2022
Thursday, 14 May 2020
Monday, 11 May 2020
India’s heartless capitalists deserve the labour shortages they are about to be hit with
The migrant labour crisis has arisen out of the refusal of businessmen to pay wages during lockdown. This is Indian capitalism’s hour of disgrace writes SHIVAM VIJ in The Print
The wages of sin
No doubt these same entrepreneurs have had it rough thanks to Modinomics since 8 November 2016. But a month’s wages?
What did these capitalists do when they suffered a setback when Modi sent the economy into a tailspin with demonetisation? The sucked it up, bore the losses, called the BJP names in private and hailed Modi in public. Then, what did they do when a confusing GST stalled the economy? They whined about it over their single malts at night and probably bought electoral bonds to donate to the BJP in the morning.
Migrant labour? They don’t fear workers like they fear Modi. Migrant labourers don’t affect the morning mood at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg. Migrant labourers have nothing to do with tax terrorism. It’s not as if any government is going to identify and penalise the employers who fired lakhs of daily wage labourers across India.
News reports tell you how these migrants haven’t had money to recharge their phones and talk to family back home, or money even to buy tickets once the government started special trains. If this is how you treat people, what do you expect in return?
What our heartless capitalists will get in return is an acute labour shortage when they try to finish those half-built buildings, or switch on the machines in the factories. The clock on these walls is going to be stuck on 22 March for a while even after all restrictions have been lifted.
Surely, you ask, this anger will subside and migrant labour will return because they’ve got to feed themselves? Sheer economics will make sure they will swallow their pride, pack themselves like sardines into the general compartments and travel back from Saran to Satara?
At some point, yes, but not anytime soon. The fear and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic along with the humiliation of the sub-human treatment is not going to make workers want to take those trains again for a few months. They’re going to make our small and small-minded capitalists beg for their sweat and blood.
We have already seen a trailer of this when Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa wanted trains for migrant labour to be scrapped. “The builders said that the labourers were given all essential facilities,” said Yeddyurappa. All ‘facilities’ except for a small thing called wages. One Karnataka company even went to the Supreme Court to request that the home ministry notice asking for paying full wages to be quashed.
The labourers will give in one day and return, but that day may not come before October, according to Chinmay Tumbe, economist and author of India Moving: A History of Migration. The next few months will see labour shortages in the prosperous industrial hubs and urban growth centres. This is bound to raise the cost of labour. That’s when our capitalist class will realise how they’ve shot themselves in the foot. If demand-supply and economic value is the only language they understand, that’s the language labour will and must reply to them in.
Saving the bribe money
Meanwhile, labour exporting states will have a massive crisis at hand. Already reeling with high unemployment, they will have many more mouths to feed. From Rajasthan in the west to West Bengal in the east, we will see a huge labour surplus.
Seeing the anxiety of state governments over a looming unemployment time bomb, India’s capitalists are pushing for abolition of labour laws. The skulduggery is to be admired. Some people should be in jail for not paying migrant workers. Instead, they are using this opportunity to be allowed greater exploitation of labour.
Yet, it’s not the labour laws that created this crisis. This crisis has taken place because labour laws are not implemented. Had the Migrant Workmen Act of 1979 even been barely implemented, governments would have been in a better position to help the stranded labourers.
The central government, for instance, asked state governments to spend Rs 31,000 crore lying with them for the welfare of construction labourers. State governments don’t even have a database of migrant workers they can reach out to.
Surveys show migrant workers don’t even know the name of their employers, letting the shady labour contractors disappear with the money. For example, Chennai Metro workers say they haven’t been paid but the Metro authorities say they’ve been paying the labour contractors on time. Who will catch these labour contractors and bring them to justice?
It is a myth that labour laws have held back the Indian industry. They’ve, at best, held back formalisation. Some in our business class have managed to do well despite labour laws by simply bribing labour inspectors. If our labour laws worked, we wouldn’t have had this crisis. Let’s see how many millions of jobs are created now that the much-maligned and un-implemented labour laws are put aside.
PM Garib Vinash Package
This is not to put all the blame on the business community and give the Narendra Modi government a clean chit. Yet, the Modi government’s biggest failure is not the refusal to let migrant workers go home, or to be cruel enough to make them pay for tickets when they don’t have money to buy food.
Narendra Modi and Nirmala Sitharaman failed in their duty to work with MSMEs to make sure wages are paid. When activist Harsh Mander asked the Supreme Court to order the government to pay minimum wages, the SC said it didn’t want to interfere. The government told the Supreme Court it was taking good care of migrant labourers, of course.
Many countries are shelling out money for workers. Some have been directly giving money or rebates to companies, unemployment allowance or direct benefit transfers. And not just rich Western countries. Even a developing country like Brazil is giving informal workers $120 a month. Narendra Modi is putting a princely sum of Rs 500 in Jan Dhan accounts — a baksheesh of $6.6. Meanwhile, he is unwilling to suspend the government’s plan to spend thousands of crores to rebuild the Central Vista.
This also exposes the fraud called the ‘PM Garib Kalyan package’. So wonderful has been this plan to do ‘kalyan’ (welfare) of the ‘gareeb’ (poor) that they’re dying walking on the highways after having been paid zilch by employers. The truth about this so-called Rs 1.7 lakh crore package is that most of it was existing schemes, throwing not even peanuts into the pockets of migrant labour.
Between the government and our small companies, no one has been willing to pay lakhs of migrant labourers. They’re just happy to pass the buck on to each other. The government is being called out for this, but our business community must also be called out. This is Indian capitalism’s hour of disgrace.
The great labour crisis of 2020 will not leave politics untouched. Remember that it was migrant labourers in Gujarat who went back home to their villages and spread the word about heaven-like Gujarat for the Modi campaign in 2014. These are the crores of rural poor whom the BJP will have to assuage now.
The result will be more socialism and greater populism. We have already seen how the pro-poor rhetoric helped Modi despite the failure of demonetisation. In the years to come, we will likely see a lot more of it, and our Seth-jis could thus suffer even greater apathy from the government. Modinomics is exactly what they deserve.
File photo | Migrant labourers wave from a train as they leave for Barauni in UP from Amritsar, during the nationwide lockdown, 10 May | PTI
The Indian public discourse around migrant labour largely ignores the main reason why the labourers have been so desperate to go back home: their employers stopped paying them wages.
One survey in May found that almost 8 out of 10 migrant labourers had not been paid at all during the lockdown.
No wonder they’ve come to hate the cities and factories because of the way they’ve been treated by their employers. Migrant labourers across India have told reporters they won’t return to see such humiliation again. “We’ll live on salt,” they say.
In the prosperous western and southern states, labour contractors, factories and small companies washed their hands off migrant labour the moment India went into lockdown.
On 29 March, the home ministry made it legally compulsory for salaries and wages to be paid even during the lockdown period. Yet, many of our disgraceful capitalists didn’t even pay wages or the month of March, not even for the days the labourers had worked. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, a survey found 63 per cent labourers hadn’t been paid wages they were owed from before the lockdown. In Gujarat, the diamond industry hasn’t been paying workers despite repeated government orders.
Governments, NGOs, middle-class volunteers, political parties and even the police have been busy feeding migrant workers meals. Yet this charity, this munificence, would not have been needed if employers hadn’t abdicated their responsibility.
These employers are mostly small businessmen and they also seem to be rather small-minded. They are your ‘micro, small and medium enterprises’ or MSMEs. These capitalists have refused to bear the cost of paying even a month’s wages to migrant labourers who are the engine of their economic enterprises.
The Indian public discourse around migrant labour largely ignores the main reason why the labourers have been so desperate to go back home: their employers stopped paying them wages.
One survey in May found that almost 8 out of 10 migrant labourers had not been paid at all during the lockdown.
No wonder they’ve come to hate the cities and factories because of the way they’ve been treated by their employers. Migrant labourers across India have told reporters they won’t return to see such humiliation again. “We’ll live on salt,” they say.
In the prosperous western and southern states, labour contractors, factories and small companies washed their hands off migrant labour the moment India went into lockdown.
On 29 March, the home ministry made it legally compulsory for salaries and wages to be paid even during the lockdown period. Yet, many of our disgraceful capitalists didn’t even pay wages or the month of March, not even for the days the labourers had worked. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, a survey found 63 per cent labourers hadn’t been paid wages they were owed from before the lockdown. In Gujarat, the diamond industry hasn’t been paying workers despite repeated government orders.
Governments, NGOs, middle-class volunteers, political parties and even the police have been busy feeding migrant workers meals. Yet this charity, this munificence, would not have been needed if employers hadn’t abdicated their responsibility.
These employers are mostly small businessmen and they also seem to be rather small-minded. They are your ‘micro, small and medium enterprises’ or MSMEs. These capitalists have refused to bear the cost of paying even a month’s wages to migrant labourers who are the engine of their economic enterprises.
The wages of sin
No doubt these same entrepreneurs have had it rough thanks to Modinomics since 8 November 2016. But a month’s wages?
What did these capitalists do when they suffered a setback when Modi sent the economy into a tailspin with demonetisation? The sucked it up, bore the losses, called the BJP names in private and hailed Modi in public. Then, what did they do when a confusing GST stalled the economy? They whined about it over their single malts at night and probably bought electoral bonds to donate to the BJP in the morning.
Migrant labour? They don’t fear workers like they fear Modi. Migrant labourers don’t affect the morning mood at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg. Migrant labourers have nothing to do with tax terrorism. It’s not as if any government is going to identify and penalise the employers who fired lakhs of daily wage labourers across India.
News reports tell you how these migrants haven’t had money to recharge their phones and talk to family back home, or money even to buy tickets once the government started special trains. If this is how you treat people, what do you expect in return?
What our heartless capitalists will get in return is an acute labour shortage when they try to finish those half-built buildings, or switch on the machines in the factories. The clock on these walls is going to be stuck on 22 March for a while even after all restrictions have been lifted.
Surely, you ask, this anger will subside and migrant labour will return because they’ve got to feed themselves? Sheer economics will make sure they will swallow their pride, pack themselves like sardines into the general compartments and travel back from Saran to Satara?
At some point, yes, but not anytime soon. The fear and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic along with the humiliation of the sub-human treatment is not going to make workers want to take those trains again for a few months. They’re going to make our small and small-minded capitalists beg for their sweat and blood.
We have already seen a trailer of this when Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa wanted trains for migrant labour to be scrapped. “The builders said that the labourers were given all essential facilities,” said Yeddyurappa. All ‘facilities’ except for a small thing called wages. One Karnataka company even went to the Supreme Court to request that the home ministry notice asking for paying full wages to be quashed.
The labourers will give in one day and return, but that day may not come before October, according to Chinmay Tumbe, economist and author of India Moving: A History of Migration. The next few months will see labour shortages in the prosperous industrial hubs and urban growth centres. This is bound to raise the cost of labour. That’s when our capitalist class will realise how they’ve shot themselves in the foot. If demand-supply and economic value is the only language they understand, that’s the language labour will and must reply to them in.
Saving the bribe money
Meanwhile, labour exporting states will have a massive crisis at hand. Already reeling with high unemployment, they will have many more mouths to feed. From Rajasthan in the west to West Bengal in the east, we will see a huge labour surplus.
Seeing the anxiety of state governments over a looming unemployment time bomb, India’s capitalists are pushing for abolition of labour laws. The skulduggery is to be admired. Some people should be in jail for not paying migrant workers. Instead, they are using this opportunity to be allowed greater exploitation of labour.
Yet, it’s not the labour laws that created this crisis. This crisis has taken place because labour laws are not implemented. Had the Migrant Workmen Act of 1979 even been barely implemented, governments would have been in a better position to help the stranded labourers.
The central government, for instance, asked state governments to spend Rs 31,000 crore lying with them for the welfare of construction labourers. State governments don’t even have a database of migrant workers they can reach out to.
Surveys show migrant workers don’t even know the name of their employers, letting the shady labour contractors disappear with the money. For example, Chennai Metro workers say they haven’t been paid but the Metro authorities say they’ve been paying the labour contractors on time. Who will catch these labour contractors and bring them to justice?
It is a myth that labour laws have held back the Indian industry. They’ve, at best, held back formalisation. Some in our business class have managed to do well despite labour laws by simply bribing labour inspectors. If our labour laws worked, we wouldn’t have had this crisis. Let’s see how many millions of jobs are created now that the much-maligned and un-implemented labour laws are put aside.
PM Garib Vinash Package
This is not to put all the blame on the business community and give the Narendra Modi government a clean chit. Yet, the Modi government’s biggest failure is not the refusal to let migrant workers go home, or to be cruel enough to make them pay for tickets when they don’t have money to buy food.
Narendra Modi and Nirmala Sitharaman failed in their duty to work with MSMEs to make sure wages are paid. When activist Harsh Mander asked the Supreme Court to order the government to pay minimum wages, the SC said it didn’t want to interfere. The government told the Supreme Court it was taking good care of migrant labourers, of course.
Many countries are shelling out money for workers. Some have been directly giving money or rebates to companies, unemployment allowance or direct benefit transfers. And not just rich Western countries. Even a developing country like Brazil is giving informal workers $120 a month. Narendra Modi is putting a princely sum of Rs 500 in Jan Dhan accounts — a baksheesh of $6.6. Meanwhile, he is unwilling to suspend the government’s plan to spend thousands of crores to rebuild the Central Vista.
This also exposes the fraud called the ‘PM Garib Kalyan package’. So wonderful has been this plan to do ‘kalyan’ (welfare) of the ‘gareeb’ (poor) that they’re dying walking on the highways after having been paid zilch by employers. The truth about this so-called Rs 1.7 lakh crore package is that most of it was existing schemes, throwing not even peanuts into the pockets of migrant labour.
Between the government and our small companies, no one has been willing to pay lakhs of migrant labourers. They’re just happy to pass the buck on to each other. The government is being called out for this, but our business community must also be called out. This is Indian capitalism’s hour of disgrace.
The great labour crisis of 2020 will not leave politics untouched. Remember that it was migrant labourers in Gujarat who went back home to their villages and spread the word about heaven-like Gujarat for the Modi campaign in 2014. These are the crores of rural poor whom the BJP will have to assuage now.
The result will be more socialism and greater populism. We have already seen how the pro-poor rhetoric helped Modi despite the failure of demonetisation. In the years to come, we will likely see a lot more of it, and our Seth-jis could thus suffer even greater apathy from the government. Modinomics is exactly what they deserve.
Rahul Gandhi is back. Now with two economists, a migrant aid pack and an ethical hacker
Zainab Sikandar in The Print
It takes a lot to be defeated twice over, ridiculed for years and still care enough to show up for your country, the majority of which has rejected you for a national leadership role. Rahul Gandhi continues to surprise us. He simply won’t give up. He just doesn’t turn cynical and walk away.
He keeps coming back with his empathy as well as his willingness to find viable solutions to pressing issues induced by the pandemic: an economy in doldrums, a huge migrant workers’ problem that’s slowly turned into a humanitarian crisis as well as transparency of the government’s Arogya Setu app being used to map Covid positive patients. Rahul Gandhi’s comeback is all the more conspicuous against the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unwillingness to have a press conference
Rahul is ready to talk
Rahul Gandhi is the eternal unputdownable comeback kid. He has managed to hold the attention of the media by continuously participating in the process of finding answers to the problems that Covid has thrown at India. He has had two conversations with two economists par excellence, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee. Add to this, the migrant aid pack that Sonia Gandhi offered, where the Congress party would have paid the train fare for every migrant labourer who wants to go home. This “masterstroke” has made the fiercest of critics of the Congress party applaud the Gandhis. The Gandhis are consciously and conspicuously placing themselves polar opposite to Narendra Modi. Whatever Modi is avoiding, the Gandhis are accepting and dealing squarely.
Right-wing editorials are claiming that Rahul Gandhi is trying to come off as an “intellectual”. This, for a man who till recently they caustically made fun of. But this perception is cracking because for the first time, the entire BJP PR machinery is being used to not make fun of Rahul Gandhi, but to discredit his interactions with the two economists by either calling the interaction a “repackaged Socialist snake oil” or by spinning fake news related to the guests. MoneyControl.com and News18 misquoted Abhijit Bannerjee as criticising UPA’s schemes, which the BJP had embraced. Banerjee had said no such thing.
Ending obsession with Modi
Then there’s Rahul Gandhi’s two press conferences (via Zoom). We got to see a visibly more calmer and zen Rahul Gandhi who is neither shaken nor stirred by the six-year-long vicious slander by the BJP or the media, which has more often than not dealt rather unfairly with him. He has significantly altered his behaviour from the Rahul of yore, who would either attack Modi with his ‘Chowkidar Chor hai’ jibe or give him a hug in Parliament and say that he loves the prime minister.
Rahul’s detachment from Modi is palpable when he urges the government to transfer direct cash to the poor, as envisaged in Congress’s NYAY scheme, by saying “Call it ‘nyay’ (justice) or call it by any other name but do it.”
Rahul, it appears, has specifically distanced himself from acts of political pettiness and his statements reflect a sense of political maturity: “We can defeat the virus if we fight it together, we lose if we fight with each other”. Even though he also unapologetically added that he does not agree with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on most things but wanted to offer “constructive suggestions”.
Gandhi’s well-directed tweets with suggestions to the government are now also being affirmed by experts.
Turning Aarogya to his advantage
While the BJP is in pathological denial of anything substantive that Rahul Gandhi or the two economists had to say, an ethical hacker had the government promptly take notice and admit to its mistake. French hacker Elliot Alderson on Twitter looked into the Aarogya Setu app and confirmed Rahul’s fear that it was nothing more than a “sophisticated surveillance system”. The app’s user agreement states that the data can be used in the future for purposes other than epidemic control if there is a legal requirement. The privacy policy of the app states that the data on the app may be shared with as many agencies as the government sees fit.
Alderson went on to confirm and tweeted to the government that “A security issue has been found in your app. The privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake.” He ended the tweet with a post script that read; “@Rahul Gandhi was right.”
Although the Modi government confirmed that there could be no security breach in the app, they thanked the ethical hacker on engaging with them. Alderson on the other hand has confirmed that some of the issues he reported were fixed in the app and that he did receive calls from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT), both government bodies.
In fact the press note of Aarogya Setu thanked Alderson for engaging with them. “We thank the ethical hacker on engaging with us. We encourage any users who identify a vulnerability to inform us immediately.” Anderson, however, maintained that the app should “stop lying, stop denying”.
Rahul’s initial warning, as early as 12 February, foreboding the government of ignoring the contagion almost seems prophetic today. The BJP can go on to dismiss him but it’s getting harder for the party and the government to ignore Rahul in these Covid times.
It takes a lot to be defeated twice over, ridiculed for years and still care enough to show up for your country, the majority of which has rejected you for a national leadership role. Rahul Gandhi continues to surprise us. He simply won’t give up. He just doesn’t turn cynical and walk away.
He keeps coming back with his empathy as well as his willingness to find viable solutions to pressing issues induced by the pandemic: an economy in doldrums, a huge migrant workers’ problem that’s slowly turned into a humanitarian crisis as well as transparency of the government’s Arogya Setu app being used to map Covid positive patients. Rahul Gandhi’s comeback is all the more conspicuous against the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unwillingness to have a press conference
Rahul is ready to talk
Rahul Gandhi is the eternal unputdownable comeback kid. He has managed to hold the attention of the media by continuously participating in the process of finding answers to the problems that Covid has thrown at India. He has had two conversations with two economists par excellence, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee. Add to this, the migrant aid pack that Sonia Gandhi offered, where the Congress party would have paid the train fare for every migrant labourer who wants to go home. This “masterstroke” has made the fiercest of critics of the Congress party applaud the Gandhis. The Gandhis are consciously and conspicuously placing themselves polar opposite to Narendra Modi. Whatever Modi is avoiding, the Gandhis are accepting and dealing squarely.
Right-wing editorials are claiming that Rahul Gandhi is trying to come off as an “intellectual”. This, for a man who till recently they caustically made fun of. But this perception is cracking because for the first time, the entire BJP PR machinery is being used to not make fun of Rahul Gandhi, but to discredit his interactions with the two economists by either calling the interaction a “repackaged Socialist snake oil” or by spinning fake news related to the guests. MoneyControl.com and News18 misquoted Abhijit Bannerjee as criticising UPA’s schemes, which the BJP had embraced. Banerjee had said no such thing.
Ending obsession with Modi
Then there’s Rahul Gandhi’s two press conferences (via Zoom). We got to see a visibly more calmer and zen Rahul Gandhi who is neither shaken nor stirred by the six-year-long vicious slander by the BJP or the media, which has more often than not dealt rather unfairly with him. He has significantly altered his behaviour from the Rahul of yore, who would either attack Modi with his ‘Chowkidar Chor hai’ jibe or give him a hug in Parliament and say that he loves the prime minister.
Rahul’s detachment from Modi is palpable when he urges the government to transfer direct cash to the poor, as envisaged in Congress’s NYAY scheme, by saying “Call it ‘nyay’ (justice) or call it by any other name but do it.”
Rahul, it appears, has specifically distanced himself from acts of political pettiness and his statements reflect a sense of political maturity: “We can defeat the virus if we fight it together, we lose if we fight with each other”. Even though he also unapologetically added that he does not agree with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on most things but wanted to offer “constructive suggestions”.
Gandhi’s well-directed tweets with suggestions to the government are now also being affirmed by experts.
Turning Aarogya to his advantage
While the BJP is in pathological denial of anything substantive that Rahul Gandhi or the two economists had to say, an ethical hacker had the government promptly take notice and admit to its mistake. French hacker Elliot Alderson on Twitter looked into the Aarogya Setu app and confirmed Rahul’s fear that it was nothing more than a “sophisticated surveillance system”. The app’s user agreement states that the data can be used in the future for purposes other than epidemic control if there is a legal requirement. The privacy policy of the app states that the data on the app may be shared with as many agencies as the government sees fit.
Alderson went on to confirm and tweeted to the government that “A security issue has been found in your app. The privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake.” He ended the tweet with a post script that read; “@Rahul Gandhi was right.”
Although the Modi government confirmed that there could be no security breach in the app, they thanked the ethical hacker on engaging with them. Alderson on the other hand has confirmed that some of the issues he reported were fixed in the app and that he did receive calls from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT), both government bodies.
In fact the press note of Aarogya Setu thanked Alderson for engaging with them. “We thank the ethical hacker on engaging with us. We encourage any users who identify a vulnerability to inform us immediately.” Anderson, however, maintained that the app should “stop lying, stop denying”.
Rahul’s initial warning, as early as 12 February, foreboding the government of ignoring the contagion almost seems prophetic today. The BJP can go on to dismiss him but it’s getting harder for the party and the government to ignore Rahul in these Covid times.
Sunday, 10 May 2020
Will it be a downsized Dubai that emerges from pandemic?
Simeon Kerr in Dubai and Andrew England in The Financial Times
Dubai’s leaders headed into 2020 brimming with confidence. After four years of tepid growth, that had fuelled questions about the durability of the Gulf trade hub’s business model, the optimism was inspired by the emirate’s hosting of Expo 2020, which was predicted to draw 25m visitors and reassert Dubai’s position on the international stage.
On January 29, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai’s leader, said the expo would mark the start of a 50-year phase of “achievements” for the United Arab Emirates and “offer new hope for creating a better tomorrow”. But just as he was inaugurating Al-Wasl plaza, at the heart of the expo site, the UAE was making a separate announcement — a portent for the grim reality ahead — the seven-member federation had recorded the Middle East’s first case of Covid-19.
The economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with the spectacular collapse of crude prices, have wrought havoc across the oil-rich Gulf as lockdowns strangle businesses and finance ministers cut state spending. Few in the region are as exposed to the crisis as Dubai; the strengths that have long made the city stand out — and put the UAE on the map — make it more vulnerable.
For decades, Dubai’s success has been built on its transformation from pearl-diving backwater into global entrepot with some of the world’s busiest ports and airports, as well as a financial centre that hosts top international banks — the Middle East’s version of Singapore or Hong Kong.
But today the emirate’s main economic drivers — trade, transportation, tourism, retail and real estate — are slammed shut with the world in lockdown. Dubai has minimal oil resources, and lacks the financial muscle of its wealthier neighbours such as Abu Dhabi and Qatar to cushion the economic impact of Covid-19. Expo 2020, which was scheduled to open in October, has been pushed back 12 months — joining a long list of global events that have fallen victim to the pandemic.
The global crisis has raised concerns about the emirate’s high debt burden — which the IMF found last year “exceeds 100 per cent of Dubai gross domestic product”, including government-related entities — and revived painful memories. During the 2008-09 crisis, Dubai came to the brink of defaulting and was forced to downsize and restructure distressed state entities.
It survived, and later thrived, largely thanks to $20bn in bailout loans underpinned by Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s wealthy capital. But that crisis was primarily contained within Dubai’s real estate sector and government-related entities, which had gorged on debt as the city expanded.
This time the impact is broader and, in a worst-case scenario, could result in a slimmed down version of Dubai Inc.
“There is no choice but restructurings, downsizing, mergers,” says Karen Young, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank. “Staff numbers from cleaners to interior designers, accountants to general managers, will be affected.”
Even before the crisis struck, Dubai was in a downturn. Property prices had slumped more than 30 per cent from 2014 highs, and bankers and analysts were speculating whether the “build it and they will come” model had run its course.
The model is now expected to come under its severest financial pressure yet and force the emirate to re-evaluate how it operates. Government officials accept it will not be “business as usual”.
“The global economic situation will not return to what it was,” Sami al-Qamzi, director-general of Dubai’s economic department, told local media in April, adding that the emirate could respond quickly to challenges. “The strategy and economic model will be adjusted.”
Minimising the exodus
Instead of people arriving in vast numbers for Expo 2020, a mass exodus of expatriates — who make up the bulk of Dubai’s 3.3m population — is more likely.
Foreigners account for 98 per cent of Dubai’s private sector workforce — mainly migrant workers from south Asia — and those without jobs are unlikely to remain for long. To ease the burden, the UAE has extended all residency visas until the end of the year, allowing redundant expatriates to look for work or wait for flights home to restart.
Diplomats say hundreds of thousands of foreign workers risk losing their jobs across the UAE in the next few months. Around 260,000 Indian and Pakistani workers have already applied for repatriation as employers try to offload staff in sectors ranging from construction to retail and tourism.
“We’re looking at a minimum population contraction of 10 per cent for the year,” Nasser al-Shaikh, a former head of Dubai’s department of finance, tweeted in April.
Farhan, who has been driving taxis for eight years, used to send $300 a month to his family in Pakistan. But last month his earnings collapsed to $60. Even with a loan of $110 from his employer, he is borrowing from friends to survive. “Corona has stopped everything,” he says. “So many drivers need to go home.”
The hardship extends into the white collar workforce. A fifth of the Indians applying to return home are professionals, the Indian embassy says. “I will give it two months and then take my family home,” says one Indian retail consultant on unpaid leave.
Hasnain Malik of Tellimer, an emerging markets research company, says Dubai should consider expanding access to long-term residency for expatriates, who currently have limited rights to remain. That could boost longer-term investment in property and businesses, as well as consumer spending.
“To return to high economic growth in a world where trade, travel and tourism are under threat, new technology is displacing traditional business models, and regional rivals are catching up, Dubai may have to contemplate a much more competitive cost of living and operating,” he says.
Big Brother Bailout
As in 2008-09, Abu Dhabi is expected to ride to Dubai’s rescue if needed. But bankers believe any support could come with “quid pro quos”, such as asset sales and mergers involving Dubai’s state-affiliated entities.
The two emirates have long been brotherly competitors, and Abu Dhabi's ambitious diversification agenda has raised the capital's profile over the past 15 years. The 2009 debt crisis, however, played out in the glare of international scrutiny, was a humbling experience for the Dubai brand.
Both emirates control their own utilities, airlines, ports and stock markets despite being members of a small federation of 9.6m people. “There is likely to be consolidation, it will be forced consolidation, wrapped nicely under the PR strategy of the [UAE], and it's all a matter of time,” says a senior Gulf-based banker.
Jihad Azour, the IMF’s regional head, notes that many government-related entities have restructured their operations and “deleveraged significantly” in recent years. But he says “some of them still have large levels of liabilities and need to be monitored carefully”.
Capital Economics says some state-owned enterprises may struggle to service their debts. It estimates that over the next three years they face a total of $21.3bn in repayments — equal to 19.4 per cent of GDP. The consultancy, which predicts a “major crunch point” in 2023 when another $30bn of debt matures, says the scale of the downturn could see strains emerge sooner.
Much will depend on how long global travel and trade remain frozen. Thaddeus Best, a sovereign risk analyst at Moody’s, says those state-affiliated entities covered by the rating agency have adequate liquidity and moderate leverage, and are expected to continue servicing their debts. Many, he says, should be able to reschedule loans with local banks, if needed, while paying bondholders.
A large portion of the emirate’s outstanding bonds are held by the Investment Corporation of Dubai, a sovereign fund which owns high-quality assets, such as Emirates airline, and stakes in lender Emirates NBD and developer Emaar. Mr Best says issuers, such as ICD, could tap bond markets later in the year, “when some semblance of normality returns”.
The government is already in talks with more than 10 lenders for five-year loans of up to Dh2bn ($540m) each and private placement of bonds that avoid the glare of public debt markets. “They see these as bridge financing,” says one person briefed on the scheme, “and then [plan to] issue bonds in due course.”
Tough shutdown
The UAE stopped passenger air traffic — the lifeblood of the economy — in late March. Dubai, a transit point between east and west, is a popular destination for Chinese tourists — the first cases reported in January were family members who had travelled from Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak in China.
More restrictive measures were introduced, with Dubai requiring residents to obtain a police permit before leaving their homes. Covid-19 patients have been treated for free whether or not they hold health insurance. Residents broadly welcomed the decisive measures and the authorities’ zero tolerance approach, including imposing more than 50,000 fines on lockdown violators.
A nationwide campaign, backed by a coronavirus testing laboratory in Abu Dhabi that has the largest processing capacity outside China, has tested more than one in 10 of the UAE’s population, focusing on low-income areas where migrant workers live in cramped conditions. Carrying out the third highest number of tests per capita in the world, the outbreak has been relatively contained. The UAE has reported more than 17,000 cases and 185 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Dubai eased its 24-hour curfew on the eve of Ramadan in the last week of April, allowing residents to visit malls, which are operating at 30 per cent capacity, and to exercise outside.
But businesses are already reeling from the shutdown and the prognosis for global travel demand. Many companies have cut salaries by up to 75 per cent or placed staff on leave as they seek to preserve cash, while praying for a recovery in autumn.
Dubai International, once the world’s busiest international airport by passenger numbers, has reopened for one-way rescue flights to allow unemployed expatriates to return home and to bring those stranded abroad back to the UAE. But regular services, originally planned to restart in early June, have been pushed back — Emirates airline, Dubai’s flagship carrier, has grounded most of its fleet and imposed salary cuts on many of its 105,000 staff. Support for the airline threatens to be expensive given last year's operating costs were $26bn.
Contractors working for the government and private sector are being urged to find cost cuts for existing projects of up to 30 per cent. Dubai government departments have also frozen hiring and cut administrative and capital spending by up to 50 per cent.
“Everyone is cutting costs to preserve cash,” says one private equity fund manager. “There is going to be a bloodbath in the SME sector — lots of failures, and most are going to happen as we come out of the lockdown.”
Survival mode
The UAE’s financial response to the crisis has been led by the federal government, with the central bank’s $70bn support package for lenders. The measures include extra liquidity to allow banks to extend debt relief.
But the most vulnerable smaller companies, the bedrock of the economy, making up half of output and providing the same in terms of jobs, say they have yet to see the benefits of the government's rescue package. “This is like giving mascara to the blind,” says one business owner. “Next month I will have no income, and what happens then?”
Dubai has extended direct support to businesses, including reducing government fees and utility bills. Mall operators and commercial property companies, as well as the city’s financial district, have offered rent relief to tenants. But the UAE’s direct fiscal stimulus equates to 2 per cent of GDP, compared with 5 per cent unveiled by Bahrain and 12 per cent by Singapore, says Mr Malik.
For businesses it is now a question of survival.
“Without proper support from the government and banks, it is going to be very difficult,” says Abdul Kader Saadi, whose Glee Hospitality consults on and operates restaurants. He has lost management contracts and closed some operations, while cutting salaries and encouraging staff to return home for three months’ unpaid leave.
His business thrived during the global financial crisis a decade ago, even as many expatriates left, with images of abandoned cars at the airport a symbol of that period. He says today’s crisis is worse.
A magnet for millions across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Dubai has a record of defying its sceptics. But like Mr Saadi’s business, the commercial hub’s ability to bounce back will depend as much on external factors as domestic.
“In Dubai, the question is which sector is not stressed? It all depends on how long it would take for oil to recover and Covid-19 to go away,” says the Gulf-based banker. “But don't bet against Dubai. Dubai is a survivor.”
Dubai’s leaders headed into 2020 brimming with confidence. After four years of tepid growth, that had fuelled questions about the durability of the Gulf trade hub’s business model, the optimism was inspired by the emirate’s hosting of Expo 2020, which was predicted to draw 25m visitors and reassert Dubai’s position on the international stage.
On January 29, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai’s leader, said the expo would mark the start of a 50-year phase of “achievements” for the United Arab Emirates and “offer new hope for creating a better tomorrow”. But just as he was inaugurating Al-Wasl plaza, at the heart of the expo site, the UAE was making a separate announcement — a portent for the grim reality ahead — the seven-member federation had recorded the Middle East’s first case of Covid-19.
The economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with the spectacular collapse of crude prices, have wrought havoc across the oil-rich Gulf as lockdowns strangle businesses and finance ministers cut state spending. Few in the region are as exposed to the crisis as Dubai; the strengths that have long made the city stand out — and put the UAE on the map — make it more vulnerable.
For decades, Dubai’s success has been built on its transformation from pearl-diving backwater into global entrepot with some of the world’s busiest ports and airports, as well as a financial centre that hosts top international banks — the Middle East’s version of Singapore or Hong Kong.
But today the emirate’s main economic drivers — trade, transportation, tourism, retail and real estate — are slammed shut with the world in lockdown. Dubai has minimal oil resources, and lacks the financial muscle of its wealthier neighbours such as Abu Dhabi and Qatar to cushion the economic impact of Covid-19. Expo 2020, which was scheduled to open in October, has been pushed back 12 months — joining a long list of global events that have fallen victim to the pandemic.
The global crisis has raised concerns about the emirate’s high debt burden — which the IMF found last year “exceeds 100 per cent of Dubai gross domestic product”, including government-related entities — and revived painful memories. During the 2008-09 crisis, Dubai came to the brink of defaulting and was forced to downsize and restructure distressed state entities.
It survived, and later thrived, largely thanks to $20bn in bailout loans underpinned by Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s wealthy capital. But that crisis was primarily contained within Dubai’s real estate sector and government-related entities, which had gorged on debt as the city expanded.
This time the impact is broader and, in a worst-case scenario, could result in a slimmed down version of Dubai Inc.
“There is no choice but restructurings, downsizing, mergers,” says Karen Young, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank. “Staff numbers from cleaners to interior designers, accountants to general managers, will be affected.”
Even before the crisis struck, Dubai was in a downturn. Property prices had slumped more than 30 per cent from 2014 highs, and bankers and analysts were speculating whether the “build it and they will come” model had run its course.
The model is now expected to come under its severest financial pressure yet and force the emirate to re-evaluate how it operates. Government officials accept it will not be “business as usual”.
“The global economic situation will not return to what it was,” Sami al-Qamzi, director-general of Dubai’s economic department, told local media in April, adding that the emirate could respond quickly to challenges. “The strategy and economic model will be adjusted.”
Minimising the exodus
Instead of people arriving in vast numbers for Expo 2020, a mass exodus of expatriates — who make up the bulk of Dubai’s 3.3m population — is more likely.
Foreigners account for 98 per cent of Dubai’s private sector workforce — mainly migrant workers from south Asia — and those without jobs are unlikely to remain for long. To ease the burden, the UAE has extended all residency visas until the end of the year, allowing redundant expatriates to look for work or wait for flights home to restart.
Diplomats say hundreds of thousands of foreign workers risk losing their jobs across the UAE in the next few months. Around 260,000 Indian and Pakistani workers have already applied for repatriation as employers try to offload staff in sectors ranging from construction to retail and tourism.
“We’re looking at a minimum population contraction of 10 per cent for the year,” Nasser al-Shaikh, a former head of Dubai’s department of finance, tweeted in April.
Farhan, who has been driving taxis for eight years, used to send $300 a month to his family in Pakistan. But last month his earnings collapsed to $60. Even with a loan of $110 from his employer, he is borrowing from friends to survive. “Corona has stopped everything,” he says. “So many drivers need to go home.”
The hardship extends into the white collar workforce. A fifth of the Indians applying to return home are professionals, the Indian embassy says. “I will give it two months and then take my family home,” says one Indian retail consultant on unpaid leave.
Hasnain Malik of Tellimer, an emerging markets research company, says Dubai should consider expanding access to long-term residency for expatriates, who currently have limited rights to remain. That could boost longer-term investment in property and businesses, as well as consumer spending.
“To return to high economic growth in a world where trade, travel and tourism are under threat, new technology is displacing traditional business models, and regional rivals are catching up, Dubai may have to contemplate a much more competitive cost of living and operating,” he says.
Big Brother Bailout
As in 2008-09, Abu Dhabi is expected to ride to Dubai’s rescue if needed. But bankers believe any support could come with “quid pro quos”, such as asset sales and mergers involving Dubai’s state-affiliated entities.
The two emirates have long been brotherly competitors, and Abu Dhabi's ambitious diversification agenda has raised the capital's profile over the past 15 years. The 2009 debt crisis, however, played out in the glare of international scrutiny, was a humbling experience for the Dubai brand.
Both emirates control their own utilities, airlines, ports and stock markets despite being members of a small federation of 9.6m people. “There is likely to be consolidation, it will be forced consolidation, wrapped nicely under the PR strategy of the [UAE], and it's all a matter of time,” says a senior Gulf-based banker.
Jihad Azour, the IMF’s regional head, notes that many government-related entities have restructured their operations and “deleveraged significantly” in recent years. But he says “some of them still have large levels of liabilities and need to be monitored carefully”.
Capital Economics says some state-owned enterprises may struggle to service their debts. It estimates that over the next three years they face a total of $21.3bn in repayments — equal to 19.4 per cent of GDP. The consultancy, which predicts a “major crunch point” in 2023 when another $30bn of debt matures, says the scale of the downturn could see strains emerge sooner.
Much will depend on how long global travel and trade remain frozen. Thaddeus Best, a sovereign risk analyst at Moody’s, says those state-affiliated entities covered by the rating agency have adequate liquidity and moderate leverage, and are expected to continue servicing their debts. Many, he says, should be able to reschedule loans with local banks, if needed, while paying bondholders.
A large portion of the emirate’s outstanding bonds are held by the Investment Corporation of Dubai, a sovereign fund which owns high-quality assets, such as Emirates airline, and stakes in lender Emirates NBD and developer Emaar. Mr Best says issuers, such as ICD, could tap bond markets later in the year, “when some semblance of normality returns”.
The government is already in talks with more than 10 lenders for five-year loans of up to Dh2bn ($540m) each and private placement of bonds that avoid the glare of public debt markets. “They see these as bridge financing,” says one person briefed on the scheme, “and then [plan to] issue bonds in due course.”
Tough shutdown
The UAE stopped passenger air traffic — the lifeblood of the economy — in late March. Dubai, a transit point between east and west, is a popular destination for Chinese tourists — the first cases reported in January were family members who had travelled from Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak in China.
More restrictive measures were introduced, with Dubai requiring residents to obtain a police permit before leaving their homes. Covid-19 patients have been treated for free whether or not they hold health insurance. Residents broadly welcomed the decisive measures and the authorities’ zero tolerance approach, including imposing more than 50,000 fines on lockdown violators.
A nationwide campaign, backed by a coronavirus testing laboratory in Abu Dhabi that has the largest processing capacity outside China, has tested more than one in 10 of the UAE’s population, focusing on low-income areas where migrant workers live in cramped conditions. Carrying out the third highest number of tests per capita in the world, the outbreak has been relatively contained. The UAE has reported more than 17,000 cases and 185 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Dubai eased its 24-hour curfew on the eve of Ramadan in the last week of April, allowing residents to visit malls, which are operating at 30 per cent capacity, and to exercise outside.
But businesses are already reeling from the shutdown and the prognosis for global travel demand. Many companies have cut salaries by up to 75 per cent or placed staff on leave as they seek to preserve cash, while praying for a recovery in autumn.
Dubai International, once the world’s busiest international airport by passenger numbers, has reopened for one-way rescue flights to allow unemployed expatriates to return home and to bring those stranded abroad back to the UAE. But regular services, originally planned to restart in early June, have been pushed back — Emirates airline, Dubai’s flagship carrier, has grounded most of its fleet and imposed salary cuts on many of its 105,000 staff. Support for the airline threatens to be expensive given last year's operating costs were $26bn.
Contractors working for the government and private sector are being urged to find cost cuts for existing projects of up to 30 per cent. Dubai government departments have also frozen hiring and cut administrative and capital spending by up to 50 per cent.
“Everyone is cutting costs to preserve cash,” says one private equity fund manager. “There is going to be a bloodbath in the SME sector — lots of failures, and most are going to happen as we come out of the lockdown.”
Survival mode
The UAE’s financial response to the crisis has been led by the federal government, with the central bank’s $70bn support package for lenders. The measures include extra liquidity to allow banks to extend debt relief.
But the most vulnerable smaller companies, the bedrock of the economy, making up half of output and providing the same in terms of jobs, say they have yet to see the benefits of the government's rescue package. “This is like giving mascara to the blind,” says one business owner. “Next month I will have no income, and what happens then?”
Dubai has extended direct support to businesses, including reducing government fees and utility bills. Mall operators and commercial property companies, as well as the city’s financial district, have offered rent relief to tenants. But the UAE’s direct fiscal stimulus equates to 2 per cent of GDP, compared with 5 per cent unveiled by Bahrain and 12 per cent by Singapore, says Mr Malik.
For businesses it is now a question of survival.
“Without proper support from the government and banks, it is going to be very difficult,” says Abdul Kader Saadi, whose Glee Hospitality consults on and operates restaurants. He has lost management contracts and closed some operations, while cutting salaries and encouraging staff to return home for three months’ unpaid leave.
His business thrived during the global financial crisis a decade ago, even as many expatriates left, with images of abandoned cars at the airport a symbol of that period. He says today’s crisis is worse.
A magnet for millions across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Dubai has a record of defying its sceptics. But like Mr Saadi’s business, the commercial hub’s ability to bounce back will depend as much on external factors as domestic.
“In Dubai, the question is which sector is not stressed? It all depends on how long it would take for oil to recover and Covid-19 to go away,” says the Gulf-based banker. “But don't bet against Dubai. Dubai is a survivor.”
Monday, 6 April 2020
We're not all in coronavirus together
‘The virus does not discriminate,” suggested Michael Gove after both Boris Johnson and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, were struck down by Covid-19. But societies do. And in so doing, they ensure that the devastation wreaked by the virus is not equally shared writes Kenan Malik in The Guardian
We can see this in the way that the low paid both disproportionately have to continue to work and are more likely to be laid off; in the sacking of an Amazon worker for leading a protest against unsafe conditions; in the rich having access to coronavirus tests denied to even most NHS workers.
But to see most clearly how societies allow the virus to discriminate, look not at London or Rome or New York but at Delhi and Johannesburg and Lagos. Here, “social distancing” means something very different than it does to Europeans or Americans. It is less about the physical space between people than the social space between the rich and poor that means only the privileged can maintain any kind of social isolation.
In the Johannesburg township of Alexandra, somewhere between 180,000 and 750,000 people live in an estimated 20,000 shacks. Through it runs South Africa’s most polluted river, the Jukskei, whose water has tested positive for cholera and has run black from sewage. Makoko is often called Lagos’s “floating slum” because a third of the shacks are built on stilts over a fetid lagoon. No one is sure how many people live there, but it could be up to 300,000. Dharavi, in Mumbai, is the word’s largest slum. Like Makoko and Alexandra, it nestles next to fabulously rich areas, but the million people estimated to live there are squashed into less than a square mile of land that was once a rubbish tip.
In such neighbourhoods, what can social distancing mean? Extended families often live in one- or two-room shacks. The houses may be scrubbed and well kept but many don’t have lavatories, electricity or running water. Communal latrines and water points are often shared by thousands. Diseases from diarrhoea to typhoid stalked such neighbourhoods well before coronavirus.
FacebookTwitterPinterest People in their shanties at Dharavi during the coronavirus lockdown in Mumbai. Photograph: Rajanish Kakade/AP
South Africa, Nigeria and India have all imposed lockdowns. Alexandra and Dharavi have both reported their first cases of coronavirus. But in these neighbourhoods, the idea of protecting oneself from coronavirus must seem as miraculous as clean water.
Last week, tens of thousands of Indian workers, suddenly deprived of the possibility of pay, and with most public transport having been shut down, decided to walk back to their home villages, often hundreds of miles away, in the greatest mass exodus since partition. Four out of five Indians work in the informal sector. Almost 140 million, more than a quarter of India’s working population, are migrants from elsewhere in the country. Yet their needs had barely figured in the thinking of policymakers, who seemed shocked by the actions of the workers.
India’s great exodus shows that “migration” is not, as we imagine in the west, merely external migration, but internal migration, too. Internal migrants, whether in India, Nigeria or South Africa, are often treated as poorly as external ones and often for the same reason – they are not seen as “one of us” and so denied basic rights and dignities. In one particularly shocking incident, hundreds of migrants returning to the town of Bareilly, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, were sprayed by officials with chemicals usually used to sanitise buses. They might as well have been vermin, not just metaphorically but physically, too.
All this should make us think harder about what we mean by “community”. In Britain, the pandemic has led to a flowering of social-mindedness and community solidarity. Where I live in south London, a mutual aid group has sprung up to help self-isolating older people. The food bank has gained a new throng of volunteers. Such welcome developments have been replicated in hundreds of places around the country.
FacebookTwitterPinterest South African National Defence Force soldiers enforce lockdown in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township on 28 March 2020. Photograph: Luca Sola/AFP via Getty Images
But the idea of a community is neither as straightforward nor as straightforwardly good as we might imagine. When Donald Trump reportedly offers billions of dollars to a German company to create a vaccine to be used exclusively for Americans, when Germany blocks the export of medical equipment to Italy, when Britain, unlike Portugal, refuses to extend to asylum seekers the right to access benefits and healthcare during the coronavirus crisis, each does so in the name of protecting a particular community or nation.
The rhetoric of community and nation can become a means not just to discount those deemed not to belong but also to obscure divisions within. In India, Narendra Modi’s BJP government constantly plays to nationalist themes, eulogising Mother India, or Bhārat Mata. But it’s a nationalism that excludes many groups, from Muslims to the poor. In Dharavi and Alexandra and Makoko, and many similar places, it will not simply be coronavirus but also the willingness of the rich, both in poor countries and in wealthier nations, to ignore gross inequalities that will kill.
In Britain in recent weeks, there has been a welcome, belated recognition of the importance of low-paid workers. Yet in the decade before that, their needs were sacrificed to the demands of austerity, under the mantra of “we’re all in it together”. We need to beware of the same happening after the pandemic, too, of the rhetoric of community and nation being deployed to protect the interests of privileged groups. We need to beware, too, that in a world that many insist will be more nationalist, and less global, we don’t simply ignore what exists in places such as Alexandra and Makoko and Dharavi.
“We’re all at risk from the virus,” observed Gove. That’s true. It is also true that societies, both nationally and globally, are structured in ways that ensure that some face far more risk than others – and not just from coronavirus.
We can see this in the way that the low paid both disproportionately have to continue to work and are more likely to be laid off; in the sacking of an Amazon worker for leading a protest against unsafe conditions; in the rich having access to coronavirus tests denied to even most NHS workers.
But to see most clearly how societies allow the virus to discriminate, look not at London or Rome or New York but at Delhi and Johannesburg and Lagos. Here, “social distancing” means something very different than it does to Europeans or Americans. It is less about the physical space between people than the social space between the rich and poor that means only the privileged can maintain any kind of social isolation.
In the Johannesburg township of Alexandra, somewhere between 180,000 and 750,000 people live in an estimated 20,000 shacks. Through it runs South Africa’s most polluted river, the Jukskei, whose water has tested positive for cholera and has run black from sewage. Makoko is often called Lagos’s “floating slum” because a third of the shacks are built on stilts over a fetid lagoon. No one is sure how many people live there, but it could be up to 300,000. Dharavi, in Mumbai, is the word’s largest slum. Like Makoko and Alexandra, it nestles next to fabulously rich areas, but the million people estimated to live there are squashed into less than a square mile of land that was once a rubbish tip.
In such neighbourhoods, what can social distancing mean? Extended families often live in one- or two-room shacks. The houses may be scrubbed and well kept but many don’t have lavatories, electricity or running water. Communal latrines and water points are often shared by thousands. Diseases from diarrhoea to typhoid stalked such neighbourhoods well before coronavirus.
FacebookTwitterPinterest People in their shanties at Dharavi during the coronavirus lockdown in Mumbai. Photograph: Rajanish Kakade/AP
South Africa, Nigeria and India have all imposed lockdowns. Alexandra and Dharavi have both reported their first cases of coronavirus. But in these neighbourhoods, the idea of protecting oneself from coronavirus must seem as miraculous as clean water.
Last week, tens of thousands of Indian workers, suddenly deprived of the possibility of pay, and with most public transport having been shut down, decided to walk back to their home villages, often hundreds of miles away, in the greatest mass exodus since partition. Four out of five Indians work in the informal sector. Almost 140 million, more than a quarter of India’s working population, are migrants from elsewhere in the country. Yet their needs had barely figured in the thinking of policymakers, who seemed shocked by the actions of the workers.
India’s great exodus shows that “migration” is not, as we imagine in the west, merely external migration, but internal migration, too. Internal migrants, whether in India, Nigeria or South Africa, are often treated as poorly as external ones and often for the same reason – they are not seen as “one of us” and so denied basic rights and dignities. In one particularly shocking incident, hundreds of migrants returning to the town of Bareilly, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, were sprayed by officials with chemicals usually used to sanitise buses. They might as well have been vermin, not just metaphorically but physically, too.
All this should make us think harder about what we mean by “community”. In Britain, the pandemic has led to a flowering of social-mindedness and community solidarity. Where I live in south London, a mutual aid group has sprung up to help self-isolating older people. The food bank has gained a new throng of volunteers. Such welcome developments have been replicated in hundreds of places around the country.
FacebookTwitterPinterest South African National Defence Force soldiers enforce lockdown in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township on 28 March 2020. Photograph: Luca Sola/AFP via Getty Images
But the idea of a community is neither as straightforward nor as straightforwardly good as we might imagine. When Donald Trump reportedly offers billions of dollars to a German company to create a vaccine to be used exclusively for Americans, when Germany blocks the export of medical equipment to Italy, when Britain, unlike Portugal, refuses to extend to asylum seekers the right to access benefits and healthcare during the coronavirus crisis, each does so in the name of protecting a particular community or nation.
The rhetoric of community and nation can become a means not just to discount those deemed not to belong but also to obscure divisions within. In India, Narendra Modi’s BJP government constantly plays to nationalist themes, eulogising Mother India, or Bhārat Mata. But it’s a nationalism that excludes many groups, from Muslims to the poor. In Dharavi and Alexandra and Makoko, and many similar places, it will not simply be coronavirus but also the willingness of the rich, both in poor countries and in wealthier nations, to ignore gross inequalities that will kill.
In Britain in recent weeks, there has been a welcome, belated recognition of the importance of low-paid workers. Yet in the decade before that, their needs were sacrificed to the demands of austerity, under the mantra of “we’re all in it together”. We need to beware of the same happening after the pandemic, too, of the rhetoric of community and nation being deployed to protect the interests of privileged groups. We need to beware, too, that in a world that many insist will be more nationalist, and less global, we don’t simply ignore what exists in places such as Alexandra and Makoko and Dharavi.
“We’re all at risk from the virus,” observed Gove. That’s true. It is also true that societies, both nationally and globally, are structured in ways that ensure that some face far more risk than others – and not just from coronavirus.
Monday, 24 February 2020
Why well-to-do Indians are fleeing the country and economists aren’t returning
The economic refugees of old have been replaced by well-placed people leaving (or staying away from) India’s unattractive political economy writes TN NINAN in The Print
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, in his non-memoir, Backstage: The Story behind India’s High Growth Years, recounts how he and wife, Isher, decided to return to India from Washington 40 years ago, giving up attractive careers at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Montek joined government as an economic adviser in the finance ministry, and Isher joined a think tank. They would have had modest salaries and below-par government housing, but they felt they were contributing to India’s development process. Along the way, they became the capital’s power couple, so life had its compensations.
Other economists too came back around the same time, some earlier, and some later: Manmohan Singh, Bimal Jalan, Vijay Kelkar, Shankar Acharya, Rakesh Mohan, and so on. They returned after studying at the best universities and working in plum jobs at international organisations. They and others like them became the leading makers (or influencers) of economic policy for the next three or four decades, rising like Montek to high offices and enjoying good reputations, plus of course the bungalows of Lutyens’ Delhi and social cachets that would not be available to them elsewhere.
The question that was posed earlier this week at the release of Montek’s book was: Why aren’t people like them coming back today, bag and baggage, to set down roots here in India? The ones who came more recently were clutching the green cards that gave them an escape hatch through which to return to green pastures: Arvind Panagariya, Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian, and other perfectly honourable gentlemen like them.
One answer is that India has always had economic refugees, and they went where they could find jobs (in West Asia and Singapore), or a better education that would underwrite good careers. Many have done brilliantly, heading global tech giants and winning Nobel prizes. But there is a darker side to the story. Although India is no longer the desperately poor country of the 1980s and 1990s (having risen a few years ago to lower-middle income status), has ceased to be an economic prison like Cuba, and offers more career options with higher salaries, vastly superior cars and consumer goods, modern hospitals, and new liberal arts colleges, and the simple freedom to travel without signing “P” forms and getting eight dollars to take with you, it seems to have become a less attractive country in which to live and work.
Businessmen, including some with recognisable names and faces, are becoming “overseas citizens”. They are investing more in other markets where life is simpler. Wealthy professionals with internationally marketable skills and degrees are also taking their money with them (prompting the finance minister in her Budget to introduce a tax on such money transfers). They may be fleeing tax terrorism, prodded by more limited economic opportunities than they had imagined, or simply keeping one foot in India and another overseas because public discourse here has acquired a nasty edge and who knows what’s coming next. Or perhaps it is just the air quality in our cities which is a deterrent. Whatever the reason, the economic refugees of old have been replaced by well-placed people leaving (or staying away from) India’s unattractive political economy. Diplomats from under-populated countries like Australia and Canada report a sudden increase in the number of Indians seeking to emigrate.
The other question is, should our economists look back with satisfaction, or in anger? To be sure, there were high points like the reforms of 1991, the years of rapid growth a decade ago, and transformation in sectors like telecom. But we should not have waited till 1991 to launch the reforms. As Montek writes, Rajiv Gandhi was warned by the IMF chief in early 1988 that a crisis was building up, but he did nothing. The telecom revolution here was not special to India; other countries too engineered dramatic improvements in tele-density. Nor were India’s years of rapid growth unique; emerging markets as a whole grew at 7.9 per cent in 2004-08. Forget China, today India is being bettered in trade by Bangladesh and Vietnam. And the Thai baht is worth Rs 2.25; it was half that in 1991.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, in his non-memoir, Backstage: The Story behind India’s High Growth Years, recounts how he and wife, Isher, decided to return to India from Washington 40 years ago, giving up attractive careers at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Montek joined government as an economic adviser in the finance ministry, and Isher joined a think tank. They would have had modest salaries and below-par government housing, but they felt they were contributing to India’s development process. Along the way, they became the capital’s power couple, so life had its compensations.
Other economists too came back around the same time, some earlier, and some later: Manmohan Singh, Bimal Jalan, Vijay Kelkar, Shankar Acharya, Rakesh Mohan, and so on. They returned after studying at the best universities and working in plum jobs at international organisations. They and others like them became the leading makers (or influencers) of economic policy for the next three or four decades, rising like Montek to high offices and enjoying good reputations, plus of course the bungalows of Lutyens’ Delhi and social cachets that would not be available to them elsewhere.
The question that was posed earlier this week at the release of Montek’s book was: Why aren’t people like them coming back today, bag and baggage, to set down roots here in India? The ones who came more recently were clutching the green cards that gave them an escape hatch through which to return to green pastures: Arvind Panagariya, Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian, and other perfectly honourable gentlemen like them.
One answer is that India has always had economic refugees, and they went where they could find jobs (in West Asia and Singapore), or a better education that would underwrite good careers. Many have done brilliantly, heading global tech giants and winning Nobel prizes. But there is a darker side to the story. Although India is no longer the desperately poor country of the 1980s and 1990s (having risen a few years ago to lower-middle income status), has ceased to be an economic prison like Cuba, and offers more career options with higher salaries, vastly superior cars and consumer goods, modern hospitals, and new liberal arts colleges, and the simple freedom to travel without signing “P” forms and getting eight dollars to take with you, it seems to have become a less attractive country in which to live and work.
Businessmen, including some with recognisable names and faces, are becoming “overseas citizens”. They are investing more in other markets where life is simpler. Wealthy professionals with internationally marketable skills and degrees are also taking their money with them (prompting the finance minister in her Budget to introduce a tax on such money transfers). They may be fleeing tax terrorism, prodded by more limited economic opportunities than they had imagined, or simply keeping one foot in India and another overseas because public discourse here has acquired a nasty edge and who knows what’s coming next. Or perhaps it is just the air quality in our cities which is a deterrent. Whatever the reason, the economic refugees of old have been replaced by well-placed people leaving (or staying away from) India’s unattractive political economy. Diplomats from under-populated countries like Australia and Canada report a sudden increase in the number of Indians seeking to emigrate.
The other question is, should our economists look back with satisfaction, or in anger? To be sure, there were high points like the reforms of 1991, the years of rapid growth a decade ago, and transformation in sectors like telecom. But we should not have waited till 1991 to launch the reforms. As Montek writes, Rajiv Gandhi was warned by the IMF chief in early 1988 that a crisis was building up, but he did nothing. The telecom revolution here was not special to India; other countries too engineered dramatic improvements in tele-density. Nor were India’s years of rapid growth unique; emerging markets as a whole grew at 7.9 per cent in 2004-08. Forget China, today India is being bettered in trade by Bangladesh and Vietnam. And the Thai baht is worth Rs 2.25; it was half that in 1991.
Monday, 6 January 2020
Tuesday, 30 July 2019
Is Migration Inevitable?
By Girish Menon
In Mumbai, it appears that the taxis and autorickshaws are predominantly driven by migrants from Uttar Pradesh. In Kerala, as captured in the film Njan Prakashan, most of the physical labour is provided by migrants from the Bengal region. In the UK the nursing profession is dominated by migrants from Kerala and I don’t have to mention the Gulf where it is rumoured that one can get by with speaking Malayalam. These anecdotes do not adequately capture the migration of people all over the world.
This has led to resentment among the sons of the soil living in their ancestral lands. One of them speaking about Polish migrants felt ‘The Pole should get up every morning in Krakow, take a flight to the UK, pick fruit from the farms, collect the high wage and take a late flight back to Krakow’.
This shows that some sons of the soil admit that migrants fill a void in their labour markets and are a necessary evil to be tolerated.
On the other hand: the Brexit vote, the clampdown on the Mexican border, the identification of aliens in Assam show that political authorities are responding to their protests against uncontrolled migration.
So, why does this problem arise? Why do migrants leave their familiar surroundings to go to unfamiliar places and insist on working in increasingly hostile circumstances?
For starters, it could be that despite all the hardships faced in an alien land the migrant feels that his lot is still better than by continuing in his homeland. The film Peepli Live captures the distress in Indian agriculture, where despite all the government initiatives the protagonist finds himself leaving the village to work on a dangerous construction site in a big city. It is natural to assume that such a migrant would end up living in an illegal slum in that city.
Along with this group of desperate migrants there is also a group of economic migrants, this writer included, who seem to arbitrage the global shortage of skilled labour.
In the film Thackeray, Bal Thackeray the founder of the Shiv Sena alleged that South Indians, especially Malayalees, monopolised jobs in Mumbai and with their ‘clannish mentality’ would block opportunities for the sons of the soil. This sentiment has been echoed by similar politicians all over the world.
There is definitely some merit in their arguments too.
In the UK around 2004 Tony Blair allowed free labour market access to newly joined East European citizens. At the time there were no protests; the ruling Labour Party had ‘abolished boom and bust’ and the labour market was booming with wage hikes. The migrants were doing jobs that Britons did not want to do.
The feeling of anger only began following the 2008 financial crisis. The EU imposed strict austerity on the Euro member countries creating high levels of unemployment in their member states. The UK’s high minimum wage then acted as a magnet for migrants from the EU.
At the same time, in 2010 David Cameron’s UK government was ideologically committed to austerity and ‘balancing the budget’. They introduced severe funding cuts for schools, healthcare and welfare benefits. Thus, if you were an unemployed Briton living in Stevenage you suddenly discovered that the unemployment benefits were cut forcing you to look for a job while UK employers preferred foreigners for their higher productivity. This Stevenager’s family members also had to compete with Spaniards for reduced school places and Poles for access to the highly restricted health service.
Thus the revulsion to the foreigner may not have arisen without the deliberate and untimely austerity imposed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government.
So, is migration inevitable? Yes and no.
From a theoretical perspective, only having free movement of capital but not permitting free movement of labour goes against free market logic and globalisation. This is also a violation of Ricardo, because labour rich countries are being prevented from benefiting from their comparative advantage. So, if there is free movement of capital, goods and services then, unlike Boris Johnson’s argument, it is incumbent on labour rich countries to demand free movement of labour.
Nonetheless, there will always be some economic migrants who will arbitrage the wage differentials in the world. Also, there will be others who are fleeing political persecution in their respective countries.
However, some of the migration can be controlled. There could be a universal basic income available to all the inhabitants of a common market. This basic income could be determined on the basis of the minimum income required to live in the most prosperous province in a common market. Such an income will enable the prospective migrant to live a luxurious life in his depressed province and act as a deterrent to migration.
In the UK, some Conservative party members who colluded in imposing austerity and who lauded the growth of food banks have convinced Stevenagers that their economic woes are solely due to foreigners. This fear was fortified enough to win the Brexit referendum. Now the question remains if the EU elite will accept their demands for a free movement of goods and services and end the free movement of labour.
Since the interest of the EU elite are not the same as its peripheral members I will not be surprised if they collude with Johnson’s cohorts. Will this lead to peripheral members of the EU asking for an exit as well? I will not be surprised.
Thursday, 10 September 2015
The refugee crisis - Payback time?
F S Aijazuddin in The Dawn
IMMIGRATION can be a messy business. It leaves stains.
It is a subtle challenge to the notion that the world is a global village. The recent exodus by refugees fleeing insecure poverty in southern Europe to the stable affluence of its north puts this misconception to the test. Without warning, a human horde has swept across the continent of Europe. This phalanx of disturbed humanity has floated across seas, swum through rivers, trudged over mountains, permeated through city streets, and barged blithely through border check-posts in search of a German Paradise.
Countries in their way like Hungary have been subjected to pressures they have not had time to anticipate. Consequently, their resources are being strained, their public services overburdened, and their patience stretched. Nations that had cocooned themselves comfortably within the European Union are now questioning the very fundamentals of the EU, in particular its egalitarian commitment to free movement across invisible borders.
The combustible unrest in Syria alone does not explain this sudden surge. There have been other wars in the region — in Lebanon, for example, which its harried citizens quit in Mercedes overladen with monogrammed suitcases. Or Iraq, from which its nationals — bombarded and harried by the US-led coalition forces — fled to neighbouring countries. This latest influx of migrants though is different. It is determined. It is coordinated. And it seems to have foreknowledge which countries should be targeted, and where their vulnerabilities lie.
Such information does not come off the internet, nor can it be bought in the grey market. How and where did these displaced persons obtain this crash course in gate-crashing?
Euro-cynics contend that this could be a covert attempt by inimical powers to destabilise the complacency of European societies, using desperate civilian families in lieu of trained military forces. Euro-optimists are convinced that this flood will recede, as tsunamis do. Whenever it does, it will leave behind a detritus of disorder and discontent for host governments to manage.
No political bleach has yet been invented that can remove these lasting stains. They will remain. Recall: West Germany reunified with East Germany in 1990, but a united Germany has yet to absorb its Turkish guests. France quit its Muslim colony Algeria in 1962, yet it still has difficulties with non-designer headscarves. The United Kingdom has done more than most to accommodate West Indians, East Africans, South Asians, and now Russian oligarchs. But even Great Britain has geographical limitations.
Shakespeare described his island home as a “precious stone set in the silver sea,/ Which serves it in the office of a wall/ Or as a moat defensive to a house,/ Against the envy of less happier lands”. Shakespeare had not foreseen the Chunnel. Envious refugees at Calais peer into it, attracted like moths by the light at the British end — alluring, irresistible, and maddeningly within reach.
The vast Atlantic Ocean once separated the continents of Europe and America, but even that expanse of seawater could not prevent tenacious migrants navigating across it, landing on its eastern shores, and then cloning New England, New York, New Prague, New Vienna, New Orleans.
“Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore...” beckons the Statue of Liberty. Shoals of immigration have now forced the United States to reconsider this open invitation. In 1847, it tried to reverse the flow. It created Liberia in West Africa for its African and Caribbean freed slaves. Not all of them wanted to return. None agreed with Liberia’s national motto: “The love of liberty brought us here”.
Today’s Americans are hyphenated with every nationality in the world. This ethnic diversity contributes to its superpower strength; yet, in that mix lies its weakness, its Kryptonite. By 2050, the US population will exceed 430 million. Whites will reduce from 67pc (2005) to 47pc (2050). Blacks will remain static at 13pc of the total. Asians will creep up from 5pc to a projected 9pc (blame it on Muslim fundamentalists). Hispanics, however, will increase dramatically from 14pc in 2005 to almost 30pc by 2050, to become United States’ largest ethnic community.
That explains why President Obama felt the need to restore ties with Cuba. It was not an act of belated condescension by a superpower to a villain with a Spanish accent. It was a farsighted admission by the US of its geographic, ethnic, linguistic affinity with Hispanic countries in South America.
Future historians will interpret the unfurling of the US flag in Havana as a defining moment in its history, when the US — not in war, not in retaliation, not out of folie de grandeur, but voluntarily — shifted its worldview from a West-East axis to a North-South one, from military interventions to neighbourly cooperation.
IMMIGRATION can be a messy business. It leaves stains.
It is a subtle challenge to the notion that the world is a global village. The recent exodus by refugees fleeing insecure poverty in southern Europe to the stable affluence of its north puts this misconception to the test. Without warning, a human horde has swept across the continent of Europe. This phalanx of disturbed humanity has floated across seas, swum through rivers, trudged over mountains, permeated through city streets, and barged blithely through border check-posts in search of a German Paradise.
Countries in their way like Hungary have been subjected to pressures they have not had time to anticipate. Consequently, their resources are being strained, their public services overburdened, and their patience stretched. Nations that had cocooned themselves comfortably within the European Union are now questioning the very fundamentals of the EU, in particular its egalitarian commitment to free movement across invisible borders.
The combustible unrest in Syria alone does not explain this sudden surge. There have been other wars in the region — in Lebanon, for example, which its harried citizens quit in Mercedes overladen with monogrammed suitcases. Or Iraq, from which its nationals — bombarded and harried by the US-led coalition forces — fled to neighbouring countries. This latest influx of migrants though is different. It is determined. It is coordinated. And it seems to have foreknowledge which countries should be targeted, and where their vulnerabilities lie.
Such information does not come off the internet, nor can it be bought in the grey market. How and where did these displaced persons obtain this crash course in gate-crashing?
Euro-cynics contend that this could be a covert attempt by inimical powers to destabilise the complacency of European societies, using desperate civilian families in lieu of trained military forces. Euro-optimists are convinced that this flood will recede, as tsunamis do. Whenever it does, it will leave behind a detritus of disorder and discontent for host governments to manage.
No political bleach has yet been invented that can remove these lasting stains. They will remain. Recall: West Germany reunified with East Germany in 1990, but a united Germany has yet to absorb its Turkish guests. France quit its Muslim colony Algeria in 1962, yet it still has difficulties with non-designer headscarves. The United Kingdom has done more than most to accommodate West Indians, East Africans, South Asians, and now Russian oligarchs. But even Great Britain has geographical limitations.
Shakespeare described his island home as a “precious stone set in the silver sea,/ Which serves it in the office of a wall/ Or as a moat defensive to a house,/ Against the envy of less happier lands”. Shakespeare had not foreseen the Chunnel. Envious refugees at Calais peer into it, attracted like moths by the light at the British end — alluring, irresistible, and maddeningly within reach.
The vast Atlantic Ocean once separated the continents of Europe and America, but even that expanse of seawater could not prevent tenacious migrants navigating across it, landing on its eastern shores, and then cloning New England, New York, New Prague, New Vienna, New Orleans.
“Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore...” beckons the Statue of Liberty. Shoals of immigration have now forced the United States to reconsider this open invitation. In 1847, it tried to reverse the flow. It created Liberia in West Africa for its African and Caribbean freed slaves. Not all of them wanted to return. None agreed with Liberia’s national motto: “The love of liberty brought us here”.
Today’s Americans are hyphenated with every nationality in the world. This ethnic diversity contributes to its superpower strength; yet, in that mix lies its weakness, its Kryptonite. By 2050, the US population will exceed 430 million. Whites will reduce from 67pc (2005) to 47pc (2050). Blacks will remain static at 13pc of the total. Asians will creep up from 5pc to a projected 9pc (blame it on Muslim fundamentalists). Hispanics, however, will increase dramatically from 14pc in 2005 to almost 30pc by 2050, to become United States’ largest ethnic community.
That explains why President Obama felt the need to restore ties with Cuba. It was not an act of belated condescension by a superpower to a villain with a Spanish accent. It was a farsighted admission by the US of its geographic, ethnic, linguistic affinity with Hispanic countries in South America.
Future historians will interpret the unfurling of the US flag in Havana as a defining moment in its history, when the US — not in war, not in retaliation, not out of folie de grandeur, but voluntarily — shifted its worldview from a West-East axis to a North-South one, from military interventions to neighbourly cooperation.
Monday, 13 April 2015
Hospital patients to be asked about UK residence status
BBC News
Patients could be made to show their passports when they use hospital care in England under new rules introduced by the Department of Health.
Those accessing new treatment will be asked questions about their residence status in the UK.
Patients may need to submit passports and immigration documents when this is in doubt, the department said.
Hospitals will also be able to charge short-term visitors from outside Europe 150% of the cost of treatment.
The department said the new rules came into force on 6 April for overseas visitors and migrants who use NHS hospital care in England.
Primary care and A&E care will remain free.
There will also be financial sanctions for trusts which fail to identify and bill patients who should be charged, it said.
The plans are part of a crackdown on so-called "health tourism".
Andrew Bridgen, the Tory MP for North West Leicestershire in the last Parliament,told the Daily Mail: "This is not the International Health Service, it's the National Health Service.
"Non-UK nationals seeking medical attention should pay for their treatment.
"The NHS is funded by UK taxpayers for UK citizens and if any of us went to any of these countries we'd certainly be paying if we needed to be treated."
Most foreign migrants and overseas visitors can currently get free NHS care immediately or soon after arrival in the UK but they are expected to repay the cost of most procedures afterwards.
The charges are based on the standard tariff for a range of procedures, ranging from about £1,860 for cataract surgery to about £8,570 for a hip replacement.
Non-UK citizens who are lawfully entitled to reside in the UK and usually live in the country will be entitled to free NHS care as they are now.
Patients could be made to show their passports when they use hospital care in England under new rules introduced by the Department of Health.
Those accessing new treatment will be asked questions about their residence status in the UK.
Patients may need to submit passports and immigration documents when this is in doubt, the department said.
Hospitals will also be able to charge short-term visitors from outside Europe 150% of the cost of treatment.
-----Also read
UK TOURISTS BEWARE – Cambridge Hospital Staff Demand Instant Money from Sick and Ailing Indian Tourist
-------
The department said the new rules came into force on 6 April for overseas visitors and migrants who use NHS hospital care in England.
Primary care and A&E care will remain free.
There will also be financial sanctions for trusts which fail to identify and bill patients who should be charged, it said.
The plans are part of a crackdown on so-called "health tourism".
Andrew Bridgen, the Tory MP for North West Leicestershire in the last Parliament,told the Daily Mail: "This is not the International Health Service, it's the National Health Service.
"Non-UK nationals seeking medical attention should pay for their treatment.
"The NHS is funded by UK taxpayers for UK citizens and if any of us went to any of these countries we'd certainly be paying if we needed to be treated."
Most foreign migrants and overseas visitors can currently get free NHS care immediately or soon after arrival in the UK but they are expected to repay the cost of most procedures afterwards.
The charges are based on the standard tariff for a range of procedures, ranging from about £1,860 for cataract surgery to about £8,570 for a hip replacement.
Non-UK citizens who are lawfully entitled to reside in the UK and usually live in the country will be entitled to free NHS care as they are now.
Monday, 24 November 2014
Mumbai - On the verge of an implosion
Bachi Karkaria in The Guardian
It used to be India’s urban showpiece. Today, its sceptre and crown have fallen down and, in a phase of cynical destruction masquerading as “development”, Mumbai has become a metaphor for urban blight.
Consider these statistics. Rubbish could be its Mount Vesuvius. Some 7,000 metric tonnes of refuse is spewed out each day. Dumping grounds are choked, yet there is no government-mandated separation or recycling.
Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day and the fledgling metro and monorail are unlikely to make a perceptible difference in the near future.
There are 700,000 cars on the road and the authorities indirectly encourage private vehicle ownership by adding flyovers and expressways, instead of building or speeding up mass rapid transit systems. Private vehicle numbers have grown by 57% in the past eight years, compared with a 23% increase in public buses.
Toxic nitric oxide and nitrogen oxide levels stand at 252 microgrammes per cubic metre (mcg/m3) more than three times the safe limit of 80 mcg/m3. Protests against sound pollution fall on deaf ears.
There’s less than 0.03 acres of open space per 1,000 people. The global norm is four; London has a profligate 12.
There are 12.7 million people jammed into the 480 sq km that comprise today’s Greater Mumbai, that’s 20,680 people per sq km. We are the world’s eighth most-populated city – and dying to prove it.
As a consequence, every sixth Mumbaikar lives in a slum. The premium on land was exacerbated by the Rent Control Act of 1947, which wasn’t amended till 1999. Too little, too late. Real estate prices are unreal. It’s cheaper to buy a flat in Manhattan than in Malabar Hill, and you can be sure that shoddy materials will shortchange you in Mumbai.
Considering that housing is the city’s biggest shortfall, it’s ironic that unbridled construction is indisputably its biggest problem. Many villains have been blamed for Mumbai’s descent into urban hell, from mafia dons to impoverished migrants, but for the past three decades the main culprit is the “politician-builder nexus”.
In 2005, the entire city was held hostage for three days. On 26 July, suburban Mumbai was lashed by 668 mm of rain in just 12 hours. Unwarned commuters and children in school buses were left high, but not dry, as roads and railway tracks disappeared. Slums and BMWs went under the deluge without discernment for their economic standing. It may have been the country’s financial capital, but in the photographs that followed, swaggering Mumbai didn’t look much different from a monsoon-marooned Bihar village.
For this humbling disaster, the finger pointed at that same culprit: the developer and his facilitator, the politician. There was nowhere for the rainwater to go. For decades the concrete army had been allowed to commandeer all open spaces, and illegal encroachments had done the rest. Public parks, verdant hills, salt-pans, school compounds, private garden plots, beaches, mangroves – nothing was spared.
The built environment in Mumbai had increased fourfold since 1925 – and at its fastest rate over the past 30 years – all at the cost of green cover and wetlands.
The 2005 deluge brought to light the little-known fact that Mumbai had a river. The Mithi had been reduced to little more than a turgid drain, bubbling with the putrefactions of one of Asia’s largest slums, Dharavi. Why blame its desperate inhabitants when the authorities had built an airport runway and much of the swanky new business district of the Bandra Kurla complex over it?
The traumatising flood was a flash-point. Citizens rose against all the civic atrocities heaped upon them. Why must they suffer such acute and chronic brutalising when Mumbai was the biggest contributor to the national economy? It accounts for 33% of income-tax, 20% of central excise collections, 6.16% of GDP (the largest single contribution in India), 25% of industrial output, 40% of foreign trade and 70% of capital transactions.
Activists demanded it should be administered separately under a chief executive-like head, instead of politicians who siphoned off its wealth to their rural constituencies. The municipal commissioner should be answerable to the elected corporate leaders not, illogically, to the state chief minister. But all this sound and fury receded with the flood waters, and it was soon business as usual.
The unequal war between profiteering and civic wisdom was in unabashed evidence some 20 years before this great flood. An eagerly anticipated shot in the arm turned into a wound that still festers. The cotton mills, on which Mumbai’s original fame and fortunes were built, had been killed off by the prolonged strike of 1982 (and chronic neglect by their owners).
After nearly a decade of legal wrangling, especially over the laid-off workers’ dues, it was decided to redevelop the defunct land – an eye-popping 600 acres in prime south and central Bombay. Recreational spaces, public housing and private enterprise were each to get a one-third share of the total area.
But in 1991, the relevant Development Control rule 58 was unilaterally changed by the chief minister, making only “open” land in the mills eligible for the division. This left the lion’s share to the owners, their builder accomplices and, naturally, the obliging politicians. The city got a mere fifth of its desperately needed windfall.
Instead of the imaginative, integrated development plan drawn up by Charles Correa, the renowned Mumbai-based architect, the former mill-hub of Lalbaug-Parel is a soulless cram of skyscrapers, mall-to-mall carpeting and snarled traffic clashing with the tenements housing the dispossessed worker families.
The opportunity for Mumbai’s redemption was obscenely squandered. The greedy, selfish “development” has worsened, instead of alleviating, its two biggest headaches: housing and traffic.
Now, a new phoenix is projected to rise from the 800 acres of decrepit dockland along the city’s eastern shoreline, again in the prime south. Will the city finally get its life-saving leisure space and affordable housing? Or will it be one more land-grab hastening its death by “development”?
Mumbai waits with more cynicism than hope.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)