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Why Inequality exists in Charities or Non Profits

 

Pinarayi Vijayan is Kerala’s ‘Modi in a mundu’

Jyoti Malhotra in The Print

In his home village of Pinarayi in north Kerala’s Kannur district, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan arrived one early April morning to inaugurate a Yoga-cum-Kalaripayattu camp at the local convention centre. He sat right through the exploits of enthusiastic children lining up to show off their skills and awarded long-haired Yoga and Kalari teachers spouting the values of the ancient, Hindu spiritual and martial arts disciplines, raising his hand occasionally to bless them all.

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If there wasn’t a huge red hoarding outside the centre, saying ‘Captain’ picturing Vijayan in his spotless white ‘mundu-veshti’ and red CPI(M) flags and bunting leading towards it, you would be forgiven for thinking that a transformation of the state’s iron-fisted Communist leader was in the offing.

But this is Kerala, dotted with hundreds of temples and churches and mosques and for the first time since 1977, won by a Communist party for the second time running. In the intervening years, the state has always alternated between the Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front.

This time around, the 75-year-old Pinarayi Vijayan has created history not just by keeping the state, with 99 seats — eight more seats than won by his bete noire in the party, former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan in 2011 — but by restricting the UDF to 41 seats.

For Kerala, the question of “who is Pinarayi Vijayan” is irrelevant. The state knows him as a strong CPI(M) leader who joined the party the year it split in 1964, became the state president of the Kerala Students Federation, was arrested and tortured during the Emergency, had a public spat with fellow Politburo member V.S. Achuthanandan in 2007 over the latter’s demolition drive against illegal resorts in the Munnar hills — for which both were suspended — and remains unapologetic about the fact that he won’t let much come in the way of building the party organisation.

With this victory, he has proved his worth not just to the party, but also to the national opposition. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s roots in the party are seen to be linked to Bengal, because of his acknowledged proximity to former chief minister Jyoti Basu, although he is also seen as a VS (Achuthanandan) protégé — it was VS who had helped deliver Yechury to the top job at the party congress in 2015.

But the Left has been totally wiped out in Bengal, down to zero from 76 seats in the last election, and it lost Tripura back in 2018. Today, in only one corner of India, it is because of Pinarayi Vijayan that the hammer-and-sickle is still flying.

‘Mundu udutha Modi’

Vijayan’s political strength is magnified by the fact that he has prevented the BJP from winning even one seat — in the outgoing Assembly, the BJP had the Nemom constituency on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in its kitty.

And yet, for someone as seemingly hardline as Vijayan, he has for years been dogged by a pro-corporate image. In 1997, when he was electricity minister, Vijayan converted an MoU with the Canadian firm SNC Lavalin into a fixed price deal for supply of equipment and services to renovate projects for Rs 239.81 crore.

The 2007 spat with VS took place because Vijayan wanted the resorts to stay.

In February 2020, his government signed an MoU with a US-based company, EMCC Global Consortium LCC, for an upgrade and promotion of deep sea fishing in Kerala, provoking Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala to say the LDF government was “cheating the fishers”. Also last year, he allowed the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Board Fund to issue masala bonds at the London Stock Exchange so funds could be raised from the market to fund welfare activities in the state.

Interestingly, Vijayan is widely known across the state as “mundu udutha Modi” or “Modi in a mundu (similar to dhoti or lungi)”, because of the manner in which he has, systematically, finished off his rivals.

There was VS, of course, who wanted to be chief minister in 2016, but even Yechury realised that it was better to give the state to Vijayan than to the warm and fuzzy “Fidel Castro of Kerala”. There is the former industries minister E.P. Jayarajan, a former Vijayan confidant from Kannur who has retired from politics because he was denied a ticket in this election. Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, fellow Politburo member and rival, stepped down because of cases against his son Bineesh. And outgoing finance minister Thomas Isaac, who reinvented KIIFB, was not allowed to contest because of the two-term rule.

In an interview that early April morning, after he was done with the Yoga and Kalari event in Pinarayi village, I asked the chief minister why he was called the Narendra Modi of Kerala. He laughed softly, and said: “I do not know what kind of person Narendra Modi is. The people of Kerala know what kind of person I am for many years. I don’t have to emulate Narendra Modi. I have my own style and methods. Modi might have his own style.”

Certainly, unlike Modi, Pinarayi Vijayan doesn’t pretend to have a vaulting national ambition. Moreover, unlike the former leaders of the former Soviet Union, he understands that it is important to first protect the home turf, and then think of expanding Communism abroad.

‘Communism with Malayali characteristics’

In the interview, he believed it was important for the Opposition to come together to take on the BJP and Modi, and insisted there was no contradiction in the Left fighting against Congress in Kerala and alongside the Congress in West Bengal.

“There is a unique situation in West Bengal. We took a stand keeping in mind this unique situation. This does not mean the Congress has been absolved of its sins,“ he said.

Certainly, multi-religious Kerala’s uniqueness stems from the fact that it was the first democratic state in the world to elect a Communist government in 1957. Cut to 2021, when Pinarayi Vijayan makes history by beating anti-incumbency and bringing a Communist government to power for the second time in a row.

Asked why Kerala continued to choose Communist governments when the Soviet Union broke itself up in 1991, Vijayan told ThePrint that the CPM was able to “correctly analyse and speak out within the party” about what was happening in the Soviet Union…we were able to carefully preserve the CPM. We were able to take the stand that Marxism-Leninism was right. Fact is, in Kerala, the CPM & Communist parties were strong before and continue to be strong.”

In Vijayan’s mind, Marxism-Leninism is about both Marx and market, just another way into the hearts of people. That’s why Yoga camps as well as the London Stock Exchange are par for the course.

As Pinarayi Vijayan takes the reins of Kerala again, this is a description he would be comfortable with.

-----Here's another view

Here's Why Pinarayi Vijayan Can't Be Called a 'Modi in a Mundu'


P Raman in The Wire

The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front is set to retain power in Kerala, with the trends projecting it as leading or having won at least 94 of the 140 assembly seats.

The LDF victory will curb a four decade-old trend of the state electing communist and Congress-headed governments alternatively.

Two years ago, soon after the Left Front suffered a stunning defeat in the 2019 parliamentary elections, prominent Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi carried a series of edit page articles.

The commentators were in a celebratory mood. One of them gleefully concluded that religion and spiritualism – Sabarimala – had finally triumphed over materialism and Marxism. The commentators concluded that Marxism is archaic, and communists neither change nor learn from past mistakes. Thus, they said, the Left rout in its last sanctuary – they got just one out of 20 Lok Sabha seats – heralded the extinction of communism in Indian peninsula.

I was born and brought up in a communist village in old Malabar. I am familiar with the lifestyles and practices of early communists. To say they have not changed is sheer moonshine. Most early communist workers were scions of landlord families. They left their comforts and moved from village to village, spreading Marxian ideals. They lived on cheap tea without milk and dal vada, like a romanticised proletariat.

Abnegation and monkish life were part of the communist culture. Perhaps it was derived from the Gandhian ethos. Members took the party’s permission even on personal matters like marriage. In early 1960s, I remember Indrajit Gupta, then a young trade unionist, arriving at Calcutta’s 33, Alimuddin Street in a Fiat car with a red flag on it. It was a cultural shock – a trade union worker travelling in a car. It was explained that Gupta found it difficult to reach half dozen trade union functions by travelling in trams. So some richer trade unionists pooled funds and bought an old, creaking Fiat.

Six decades later, I found half a dozen private cars parked at a CPI(M) area committee office in remote Kerala. Even middle level CPI(M) leaders move in their own cars. They have none of the qualms that their 20th century comrades felt.

How can you say the communists never change? Before 1952, the parliamentary route was ‘revisionism’ for communists. The ‘national bourgeoisie’ debate continued for another two decades. For decades, editorial writers attributed the communist success to foreign money. Today’s communists are shorn of all such baggage.

So how has the Left managed to romp back with such a huge majority?

The most simplistic explanation is that the communists have also become another regional party under a charismatic autocrat. Thus, Pinarayi is called a ‘mundututta Modi’ or ‘Modi in a mundu’.

This strongman cult, like Modi’s, has clicked with the people.

Pinarayi Vijayan, who was the general secretary of the Kerala CPI(M) for 17 years, is the party’s senior most leader – barring, of course, the 97-year-old retired veteran V.S. Achuthanandan. Vijayan has a domineering say in the party organisation and the government he heads. But is this enough to call him a ‘Modi in a mundu?’

Is it true that Kerala communists, in their desperate bid to remain, have relevant opted for an authoritarian model?

The first parameter to gauge the degree of authoritarianism in a political party is the level of its internal democracy. In India, CPI(M) and CPI are the only political parties that hold regular elections as per their constitution. For over a decade, all members of the Kerala state committee (as also other elective posts) were chosen by secret ballots at the state party conference. The results with details such as the number of votes each contestant got were released soon after the counting. All this under sharp media glare and endless interpretations.

As per the BJP constitution, its national executive must meet once in every quarter and national council every year. Under the pre-Modi BJP, the two bodies did meet at regular intervals. How many times did the NE and NC met during the seven years under Modi? Elected autocrats – a term used by the Sweden-based V-Dem to describe the Modi regime – never tolerate a lively, functional party organisation.

The other parameter to measure authoritarianism is free internal debates.

For an authoritarian populist, the party must function as his or her appendage. What about the ‘Modi in a mundu?’ In the past two years, AKG Bhawan (the Kerala CPI(M) headquarters) made at least half a dozen interventions. It formally asked the government to reverse many of its decisions. Sections of the media interpreted such interventions as grassroots rumblings. Will any BJP committee – NE, NC or parliamentary party – dare to make such critical remarks about Modi or his actions?

Sample these:

The CPI(M) secretariat on February 20, 2021, attended by Pinarayi Vijayan, directed the latter to initiate minister-level discussions with agitating job-seekers. It said the opposition should not be allowed to take political advantage of the agitation. And Vijayan promptly did.

The CPI(M) state secretariat, after its meeting, observed that the continuing controversy over the gold smuggling has affected the party’s image and that it is a major setback to the party. It asked the chief minister to take corrective measures.

The CPI(M) secretariat on May 25, 2019, asserted that the government’s Sabarimala policy had badly affected the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections. It asked the government for a relook. Vijayan obliged.

Following pressure from within the CPI(M), Vijayan (on November 4, 2019) said that the government did not support the police’s move to invoke the UAPA against workers for Maoist links.

A closer look will reveal that AKG Bhawan acted as an alert watchdog and monitor rather than the CMO’s appendage. Will hard-headed ‘elected autocrats’ like Narendra Modi tolerate such interventions?

Pinarayi came closest to the personality cult trap when his image makers began projecting him as ‘Captain Pinarayi’ – for his leadership in tackling the floods and the Nipah outbreak. This came in for sharp criticism within the party and soon the CPI(M) leadership cried a halt to it – first, senior leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and then Prakash Karat.

“Pinarayi is our ‘comrade’, not ‘captain’,” Balakrishnan said. Soon Vijayan himself washed his hands off the ‘captain’ epithet, in what was yet another example of the the CPI(M)’s embedded corrective mechanism working.

Momentum - successful grassroots organising!

Rachel Shabi in The Guardian

Not so long ago, in the slur-filled era before this year’s election, Momentum, the grassroots group of supporters for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, were routinely dismissed as armchair activists, cultish Trots, delusional young naïfs, or some combination of the three. Now, media coverage of the group carries headlines such as “How Momentum changed British politics for ever” and “How Momentum HQ perfected social media outreach”.

The 24,000-member group didn’t deserve those dismissive pre-election labels, but it has certainly earned the more recently positive ones. Credited with mobilising the youth vote, Momentum’s snappy social media campaigns gleaned millions of shares. The group also sent scores of campaigners – some of them first-time canvassers – into the country’s most marginal constituencies, helping to drive up support for Labour, house by house and street by street.

Using an online map of marginal seats as well as WhatsApp and phone banks to enlist and direct activists, the group transformed Labour’s canvassing game, helping to turn seats such as Canterbury, Sheffield Hallam, Derby North and Croydon Central into Labour wins. MPs who may once have criticised the group are now more enthusiastic, while Momentum organisers say that, since members and constituency campaigners worked so closely in the past six weeks, relations are more cordial. Those who were divided over past splits in the Labour party got to know each other – and found that they got along.

Now, Momentum wants to build on the – oh, let’s just go with it – momentum to militate against any complacency over Labour’s dramatic increase in voter share, now at 40%, or disillusion that the party nonetheless lost the election. Since the general election, the Labour party has gained 35,000 new members, while 1,500 have joined Momentum. With greater numbers, capacity and credibility, the task now is ensuring more activists join in and are election-ready – because who knows how soon we’re going to have to do it all again.

But elections aren’t the only focus. For a start, Momentum wants to move away from the idea that political campaigning only takes place when votes are needed. It plans to engage in community action, whether that’s voter registration campaigns or support for local causes, so that the group and, by extension, the Labour party, is organically active at grassroots level. Not to re-open old wounds – and definitely not now the Labour party is united in support for its leader – but this terrain might have been broached sooner, were it not for Momentum instead having to rally in support of Corbyn during last year’s leadership challenge.

In any case, such endeavours, however embryonic, have already begun. Last year, local Momentum groups started to collect and volunteer for food banks. Now, national organisers are looking at the possibility of running these independently, although the idea isn’t to provide tinned beans bearing party slogans so much as to support local communities in tackling hardships also addressed by Labour’s political offer. At a time when so many have been terribly affected by the recession and Conservative austerity cuts, there are multiple social issues where Momentum could get involved.

The focus seems to be on harnessing the political engagement unleashed by Corbyn’s leadership and fostering unity among Labour’s different voter groups. This pursuit of collectivism, in the face of decades of rampant individualism, was always one of the more radical aspects of Corbyn’s leadership. It was in evidence throughout his campaign speeches, where he often spoke of society’s many cohorts as one community, binding together groups – young and old, black and white, nurses as well as builders and office workers – that are more often encouraged to compete against each other in the current economy.

Momentum draws inspiration and cross-pollinates ideas with the leftwing Syriza party in Greece and Podemos in Spain, both of which were fed by practical, grassroots organising to counter the effects of crippling austerity cuts. In Greece, for instance, the social movements that ran health clinics, food banks and legal aid centres were the blood supply for the Syriza party now leading a coalition government. In the UK, Momentum is also looking at growing the information-sharing debates developed by the World Transformed, which launched parallel to the Labour party conference in Liverpool last year and hosts political events.

The intention is to convert social media clicks and shares into practical action: the demand for Momentum’s election campaign training and turnout on the doorstop has shown that there is a desire to get involved, given the means, confidence and skills to do so. It’s also pretty much what grassroots democracy looks like – a movement that chimes with and feeds into a viable political party. And it’s this combination – a left wing effective both at parliamentary and community level that could help turn the Labour party into an unstoppable political force and propel it into power.

The curse of the ‘strong leader’

Tabish Khair in The Hindu




A strong leadership may be fine, but only if the leaders do not end up turning their political parties into ghosts



One feels for Rahul Gandhi. He has to cope with not one but two ‘strong leaders’: Narendra Modi and his own grandmother, Indira Gandhi.

Rahul Gandhi is haunted by the ghost of a once worker-cadre-based party, the Congress, which ‘strong leader’ Mrs. Gandhi transformed into a family-run, one-boss organisation. Rahul Gandhi’s failure in Uttar Pradesh, Assam, etc. has little to do with his own abilities or inabilities; it has to do with a common feeling among Indians that the Congress needs to be led by a charismatic leader whose surname is not and has never been ‘Gandhi’ or ‘Nehru’.

Indians are not unique in this: given the nexus of politicians and finance capital and the transformation of politics into a kind of initiated profession, where connections matter far too much, the ordinary voter is suspicious of leaders whose prominence seems to be a family- or peer group-inheritance. So suspicious that the voter can even prefer a person with no solution over a better and more deserving candidate, as we witnessed in the U.S. last year, simply because the former is seen as not being an insider.

When Congress lost coherence

Even the ill-gotten millions of an ‘outsider’ candidate no longer disqualify him, as long as his opponent is seen as part of the political establishment. Riches, the voter (mistakenly) believes, can come to him too, but political inheritance — of the sort associated with Hillary Clinton and Rahul Gandhi — cannot. And in this latter supposition the voter is not mistaken. This gets worse, as is the case with the Congress now, thanks to a process initiated by Mrs. Gandhi, when the party seems hardly to exist apart from its top leadership.

No doubt, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru did fight to shape the Congress, but they encouraged much difference too. This showed in the wide variety of pan-national leaders the Congress threw up in that period: Sarojini Naidu, Vallabhbhai Patel, Abul Kalam Azad, Rajendra Prasad, Lal Bahadur Shastri, etc.

It is with the ‘strong leader’ personality cult that Mrs. Gandhi encouraged in the 1970s that the Congress began to lose both its internal coherence and a repertoire of equivalent national-level leaders. At the level of party structure, this led to the gradual evaporation of committed Congress workers at district and village levels and their replacement with careerists and strategists rushing off to party headquarters at the drop of a Gandhi cap. Today, the Congress is far less a worker-cadre-based party than the BJP. This ghostly Congress party — reduced to a family name that most voters are tired of hearing — is Rahul Gandhi’s bane. Despite this, it is not the Congress today but the BJP that seems to be following Mrs. Gandhi’s doubtful legacy: the curse of the ‘strong leader’ which reduces a political party to a ghostly affair in later years.

Conservatives united

I have never dismissed the BJP as a genuine party within a democratic India, as I have considered it a party with various tendencies — not that dissimilar from the Congress of yore — united by a few core commonalities. What passes for the BJP is a collocation of conservatives of various kinds, pro-market ideologists, nationalists, cultural revivalists, religious chauvinists, and reactionaries. All of them are united by a general belief in an India structured along ‘Hindu’ rather than secular lines, even though their understanding of ‘Hindu’ is not identical. Again, as the Congress was before the 1970s, the BJP is essentially a grass-roots party united by a cadre which includes, and is dominated (for better or for worse), by cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The BJP allows more upward mobility for its workers than the Congress today.

This, then, is the BJP as it has been until now. While lacking the azadi-inspired breadth of the Gandhi-Nehruvian Congress, it has nevertheless thrown up major leaders of national visibility such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, many of whom, like Narendra Modi himself, rose from the ranks.

All this might be changing in the BJP today, as it slowly becomes a personality-based ‘strong leader’ party. It is not a coincidence that the only Congress leader that supporters of Mr. Modi sometimes praise is Mrs. Gandhi: ‘Modi’s India’ may not be that far apart from ‘Indira is India.’

There is a pattern — reminiscent of the Congress in the 1970s — of concentrating party power in the top echelons and appointing ministers and Chief Ministers (most recently in Uttar Pradesh) who seem incapable of gaining a national stature. Strong leaders may be fine, but only if they do not end up turning their parties into ghosts.

I'm a junior doctor in the NHS, and I'm terrified for this winter

Aislinn Macklin-Doherty in The Guardian


Widespread concerns that the NHS will face the “toughest winter ever” are not exaggerated or unfounded – just look at the terrible news today from Worcestershire. We really should be worried for ourselves and our relatives. As a junior doctor and a researcher looking after cancer patients in the NHS, I am terrified by the prospect of what the next few months will bring. But we must not forget this is entirely preventable.

Three patients die at Worcestershire hospital amid NHS winter crisis


Our current crisis is down to the almost clockwork-like series of reshuffling, rebranding and top-down disorganisation of the services by government. It’s led to an inexorable decline in the quality of care.

I have also become aware of an insidious “takeover” by the private sector. It is both literal – in the provision of services – and ideological, with an overwhelming prevalence of business-speak being absorbed into our collective psyche. But the British public (and even many staff) remain largely unaware that this is happening.

Where the consultant physician or surgeon was once general, they now increasingly play second fiddle to chief executives and clinical business unit managers. Junior doctors such as myself (many of whom have spent 10-15 years practising medicine and have completed PhDs) must also fall in line to comply with business models and corporate strategy put forward by those with no clinical training or experience with patients.

It is this type of decision-making (based on little evidence) and seemingly unaccountable policymaking that means patient care is suffering. Blame cannot be laid at the feet of a population of demanding and ageing patients, nor the “health tourists” who are too often scapegoated.

The epitome of such changes is known as the “sustainability and transformation plans”. These will bring about some of the biggest shifts in how NHS frontline service are funded and run in recent history, and yet, worryingly, most of my own colleagues have not even heard of them. Even fewer feel able to influence them.

Sustainability and transformation plans will see almost a third of regions having an A&E closed or downgraded, and nearly half will see numbers of inpatient bed reductions. This is all part of the overarching five-year plan to drive through £22bn in efficiency savings in the NHS. But with overwhelming cuts in social services and community care and with GPs under immense pressure, people are forced to go to A&E because they quite simply do not have any other options.

I have been on the phone with patients with cancer who need to come into hospital with life-threatening conditions such as sepsis, and I have been forced to tell them, “We have no beds here you need to go to another local A&E.” Responses such as, “Please doctor don’t make me go there – last time there were people backed up down the corridors,” break my heart.

According to the Kings Fund, our NHS leaders are choosing to spend less year-on-year on healthcare (as a proportion of GDP) than at any other time in NHS history and yet we are the fifth richest economy in the world. Simultaneously private sector involvement increases and astronomical interest rates from private finance initiatives must be paid, with hospitals such as St Bartholomew’s in London having to pay up to £2m per week in interest alone. No wonder nearly all hospitals are now in dire straits.

This is all the result of intentional policies being made at the top with minimal consultation of those on the frontline. With such policies accumulating over the years we are now seeing the crisis come to a climax. The UK has fewer beds per person and fewer doctors per person than most countries in Europe. Fewer ambulances are now able to reach the highest-category emergencies, which means people having asthma attacks, heart attacks and traffic accidents are being left to wait longer in situations where minutes really matter.

The sustainability and transformation plans for my local area in south-west London show that they plan to cut 44% of inpatient bed stays over the next four years . This is dangerous. It is likely that St Helier hospital in Sutton, which takes many emergencies in the area, will close and patients will then not only have access to critically reduced services, they will then have to travel longer to hospital, having waited longer for the ambulance to get to them.

This will be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I cannot stand by while patients’ lives are put at unnecessary risk this winter. And neither should you.

Sexual favours at work: A menace nobody talks about

Tanuj Khosla in the Times of India

The topic of sexual harassment at work has again come to fore in recent times thanks to Tarun Tejpal. Flick to any news channel, you are likely to come across a panel discussion on the same (only displaced by one on elections). Reams have been written on the subject and how the guilty gets away more often than not while the victim lives with trauma and stigma for years to come not to mention damage to her career.

However there is another workplace menace that never gets the same print space or even mind space for that matter – use of sexual favours to rise up the career ladder.

Before I proceed any further, let me clarify that this topic has nothing do with the incident at Tehelka. I am as disgusted by Tejpal as everybody else and I hope that he pays for his deeds.

With that ‘disclaimer’ out of the way, let us come back to this phenomenon that happens often but is seldom discussed.

Pick any industry, media, banking, education etc., all of them have their version of ‘casting couch’.

Unfortunately there are no laws against this as the relationship is ‘consensual’. No one talks about the trauma and frustration faced by deserving employees whose career growth is unfairly stalled because they chose to keep their pants on. They suffer dual humiliation from the boss and his ‘pet’ and are saddled with HR mumbo jumbo in the name of explanation for denial of promotion/opportunities. I am sure that most readers would know at least one person who has suffered this fate.

What compounds this problem is that the existence of these clandestine relationships can’t be proved and organizations are only too happy to look to other way as long as results are being delivered. Employees treated badly have little recourse and it is not uncommon for them to lose their drive and motivation.

However this weapon of ‘sleep your way to the top’ is not only used by women alone. There is no dearth of young men willing to be ‘toy boys’ in the hands of their female bosses. Even providing ‘spouses’ to bosses is something that is not completely unheard of, as sick as that is. 

The first move towards initiation can be made by either party. In some cases, a senior manager with a ‘roving eye’ is all the invitation an aspiring junior needs. Conversely in many organizations, top bosses choose management trainees to serve on their team based on how the level of flirtations and accidental ‘free-shows’ they received during the orientation program. In cases of lateral movement or inter-department transfers, necessary ‘feedback’ is taken from fellow partners in crime.

In conclusion, corporate world is far from fair and many idealistic individuals get a rude reality check once they enter it. While I don’t have any statistics to back my claim, I am certain that the menace of using sexual favours for career advancement is as if not more rampant as sexual harassment at workplace. Unfortunately for many, it doesn’t get the attention that it deserves.

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Pritish Nandy in the Times of India

The tosh men speak when accused of sexual misconduct always makes for funny reading. The reason is simple: Most men think it’s their birthright to sexually prey on women. They are brought up to believe that’s what all men, if they are real men, do. It has been said in a million ways, in books, songs, popular movies and yes, repeatedly in advertising, the most persuasive foreplay of our times, that when a woman says No, what she actually means is Yes.  

Not only men say this. Women do too. That there’s no woman ever unwilling for sex; all they need is a little persuasion. Perhaps Mae West was just being her usual witty self. But men, I suspect, have largely taken the advice to heart. Different men ofcourse look at persuasion differently. So while someone may clobber a woman on the head with a baseball bat and drag her to his bedroom, another will drop a 4 carat solitaire in a champagne flute. It’s just a difference of technique, not intent.

There’s no real difference between the guy who sneaks flunitrazepam into his date’s Bloody Mary when she goes for a quick loo break and the one who clumsily gropes an unwilling woman in an empty lift in the hope it may lead to something more exciting. It rarely does. A grope remains a grope. A groper, just a groper. He never quite graduates beyond that. But the most tragic figure of all is the pigtailed Romeo in the corner office flaunting his authority all day long and then, when the sun drops, tries to lunge at his juniors. That’s not seduction. It’s crass power play.

If our flamboyant editor has done what he is accused of, his crime would list in the last and most despicable category. But my intent here is not to tar him. There are enough people around to do it. My concern is that at some stage an actual trial must begin. It must assess the evidence coherently and come to a just conclusion. Currently we are putting the cart before the horse. While the truth may look obvious, facts have a curious habit of flipping themselves. So till the case is heard and justice dispensed with, it may be a good idea to stop playing a lynching mob. 

Discussing and dissecting every salacious detail of the alleged crime also rarely helps the victim. She has been brave enough to come out and seek justice. Probity now demands she gets it quickly. Without the BJP or the Congress trying to muscle in.  

As for Tejpal, he has shot himself in the foot. His journalistic career, always overhung with too many unanswered questions about his ethics, is as good as over. So is his life, as he has known it till now. Charges of rape, even when unproved, are not easy to live with. They are neither forgiven nor forgotten easily and even in jail, such convicts are often welcomed with a sound thrashing and flick knives.

Much of this, I believe, could have been averted if Tejpal had simply apologized to the victim and offered himself for trial. His flamboyant letter, where he claimed to be lacerated by guilt and offered to recuse himself from office for six months was so offensive in its tone that it enraged even those who were ready to give him some room for doubt. The florid language and cheeky tenor of the letter set everyone off. Purple prose from a rape accused is the last thing one expects. But no, he didn’t stop at that. He kept bombarding the hapless victim with more such messages. Without the slightest hint of remorse.

Tejpal may think he’s Christian Gray. That’s what he tries to sound like as he seeks recourse to every ridiculous subterfuge to hide the simple truth from himself, that the girl just did not want him. His messages, laced with arsenic and delivered with the flamboyance of a local pizza boy denied his tip, killed the possibility of any sympathy that may have come his way. Slighted stalkers are known to do stupid things. But nothing can be stupider than his attempts at correspondence. They were not just inapt. They are inept.

The 88-year-old Narayan Dutt Tiwari, caught in an equally embarrassing situation, that too in the Raj Bhavan, got away by simply lowering his head and keeping his silence. No explanations. No purple prose. No stupid heroics. The man may not know when to zip his dhoti. But he sure knew when to zip his mouth. Tejpal could have taken a lesson from him.

Egypt, Brazil, Turkey: without politics, protest is at the mercy of the elites

From Egypt to Brazil, street action is driving change, but organisation is essential if it's not to be hijacked or disarmed

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 2 July 2013 22.30 BST

A barricade on the Rue Royale in Paris during the 1848 revolution. 'The European revolutions of 1848, which were led by middle class reformers and offered the promise of a democratic spring, had as good as collapsed within a year.' Photograph: Roger-Viollet / Rex Features

Two years after the Arab uprisings fuelled a wave of protests and occupations across the world, mass demonstrations have returned to their crucible in Egypt. Just as millions braved brutal repression in 2011 to topple the western-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak, millions have now taken to the streets of Egyptian cities to demand the ousting of the country's first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

As in 2011, the opposition is a middle-class-dominated alliance of left and right. But this time the Islamists are on the other side while supporters of the Mubarak regime are in the thick of it. The police, who beat and killed protesters two years ago, this week stood aside as demonstrators torched Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood offices. And the army, which backed the dictatorship until the last moment before forming a junta in 2011, has now thrown its weight behind the opposition.

Whether its ultimatum to the president turns into a full-blown coup or a managed change of government, the army – lavishly funded and trained by the US government and in control of extensive commercial interests – is back in the saddle. And many self-proclaimed revolutionaries who previously denounced Morsi for kowtowing to the military are now cheering it on. On past experience, they'll come to regret it.

The protesters have no shortage of grievances against Morsi's year-old government, of course: from the dire state of the economy, constitutional Islamisation and institutional power grabs to its failure to break with Mubarak's neoliberal policies and appeasement of US and Israeli power.

But the reality is, however incompetent Morsi's administration, many key levers of power – from the judiciary and police to the military and media – are effectively still in the hands of the old regime elites. They openly regard the Muslim Brotherhood as illegitimate interlopers, whose leaders should be returned to prison as soon as possible.

Yet these are the people now in alliance with opposition forces who genuinely want to see Egypt's revolution brought at least to a democratic conclusion. If Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are forced from office, it's hard to see such people breaking with neoliberal orthodoxy or asserting national independence, as most Egyptians want. Instead, the likelihood is that the Islamists, also with mass support, will resist being denied their democratic mandate, plunging Egypt into deeper conflict.

Egypt's latest eruption has immediately followed mass protests in Turkey and Brazil (as well as smaller upheavals in Bulgaria and Indonesia). None has mirrored the all-out struggle for power in Egypt, even if some demonstrators in Turkey called for the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to go. But there are significant echoes that highlight both the power and weakness of such flash demonstrations of popular anger.

In the case of Turkey, what began as a protest against the redevelopment of Istanbul's Gezi Park mushroomed into mass demonstrations against Erdoğan, 's increasingly assertive Islamist administration, bringing together Turkish and Kurdish nationalists, liberals and leftists, socialists and free-marketeers. The breadth was a strength, but the disparate nature of the protesters' demands is likely to weaken its political impact.

In Brazil, mass demonstrations against bus and train fare increases turned into wider protests about poor public services and the exorbitant cost of next year's World Cup. As in Turkey and Egypt, middle-class and politically footloose youth were at the forefront, and political parties were discouraged from taking part, while rightwing groups and media tried to steer the agenda from inequality to tax cuts and corruption.

Brazil's centre-left government has lifted millions out of poverty, and the protests have been driven by rising expectations. But unlike elsewhere in Latin America, the Lula government never broke with neoliberal orthodoxy or attacked the interests of the rich elite. His successor, Dilma Rousseff – who responded to the protests by pledging huge investments in transport, health and education and a referendum on political reform – now has the chance to change that.

Despite their differences, all three movements have striking common features. They combine widely divergent political groups and contradictory demands, along with the depoliticised, and lack a coherent organisational base. That can be an advantage for single-issue campaigns, but can lead to short-lived shallowness if the aims are more ambitious – which has arguably been the fate of the Occupy movement.

All of them have, of course, been heavily influenced and shaped by social media and the spontaneous networks they foster. But there are plenty of historical precedents for such people power protests – and important lessons about why they are often derailed or lead to very different outcomes from those their protagonists hoped for.

The most obvious are the European revolutions of 1848, which were also led by middle-class reformers and offered the promise of a democratic spring, but had as good as collapsed within a year. The tumultuous Paris upheaval of May 1968 was followed by the electoral victory of the French right. Those who marched for democratic socialism in east Berlin in 1989 ended up with mass privatisation and unemployment. The western-sponsored colour revolutions of the last decade used protesters as a stage army for the transfer of power to favoured oligarchs and elites. The indignados movement against austerity in Spain was powerless to prevent the return of the right and a plunge into even deeper austerity.

In the era of neoliberalism, when the ruling elite has hollowed out democracy and ensured that whoever you vote for you get the same, politically inchoate protest movements are bound to flourish. They have crucial strengths: they can change moods, ditch policies and topple governments. But without socially rooted organisation and clear political agendas, they can flare and fizzle, or be vulnerable to hijacking or diversion by more entrenched and powerful forces.

That also goes for revolutions – and is what appears to be happening in Egypt. Many activists regard traditional political parties and movements as redundant in the internet age. But that's an argument for new forms of political and social organisation. Without it, the elites will keep control – however spectacular the protests.

We know that to understand politics and the peddling of influence we must follow the money. So it’s remarkable that the question of who funds the thinktanks has so seldom been asked.

Think Of A Tank

George Monbiot

 

Nadine Dorries won’t answer it. Lord Lawson won’t answer it. Michael Gove won’t answer it. But it’s a simple question, and if they don’t know it’s because they don’t want to. Where does the money come from? All are connected to groups whose purpose is to change the direction of public life. None will reveal who funds them.

When she attempted to restrict abortion counselling, Nadine Dorries MP was supported by a group called Right to Know. When other MPs asked her who funds it, she claimed she didn’t know(1,2). Lord Lawson is chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which casts doubt on climate science. It demands “openness and transparency” from scientists(3). Yet he refuses to say who pays, on the grounds that the donors “do not wish to be publicly engaged in controversy.”(4) Michael Gove was chairman of Policy Exchange, an influential conservative thinktank. When I asked who funded Policy Exchange when he ran it, his office told me “he doesn’t have that information and he won’t be able to help you.”(5)

We know that to understand politics and the peddling of influence we must follow the money. So it’s remarkable that the question of who funds the thinktanks has so seldom been asked.

There are dozens of groups in the UK which call themselves free market or conservative thinktanks, but they have a remarkably consistent agenda. They tend to oppose the laws which protect us from banks and corporations; to demand the privatisation of state assets; to argue that the rich should pay less tax; and to pour scorn on global warming. What the thinktanks call free market economics looks more like a programme for corporate power.

Some of them have a turnover of several million pounds a year, but in most cases that’s about all we know. In the US, groups claiming to be free market thinktanks have been exposed as sophisticated corporate lobbying outfits, acting in concert to promote the views of the people who fund them. In previous columns, I’ve shown how such groups, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, built and directed the Tea Party movement(6,7).

The Kochs and the oil company Exxon have also funded a swarm of thinktanks which, by coincidence, all spontaneously decided that manmade climate change is a myth(8,9). A study in the journal Environmental Politics found that such groups, funded by economic elites and working through the media, have been “central to the reversal of US support for environmental protection, both domestically and internationally.”(10)

Jeff Judson, who has worked for 26 years as a corporate lobbyist in the US, has explained why thinktanks are more effective than other public relations agencies. They are, he says, “the source of many of the ideas and facts that appear in countless editorials, news articles, and syndicated columns.”(11) They have “considerable influence and close personal relationships with elected officials”. They “support and encourage one another, echo and amplify their messages, and can pull together … coalitions on the most important public policy issues.” Crucially, they are “virtually immune to retribution … the identity of donors to think tanks is protected from involuntary disclosure.”(12)

The harder you stare at them, the more they look like lobby groups working for big business without disclosing their interests. Yet throughout the media they are treated as independent sources of expertise. The BBC is particularly culpable. Even when the corporate funding of its contributors has been exposed by human rights or environmental groups, it still allows them to masquerade as unbiased commentators, without disclosing their interests.

For the sake of democracy, we should know who funds the organisations which call themselves thinktanks. To this end I contacted 15 groups. Eleven of them could be described as free market or conservative; four as progressive. I asked them all a simple question: “Could you give me the names of your major donors and the amount they contributed in the last financial year?”. I gave their answers a score out of five for transparency and accountability.

Three of the groups I contacted – Right to Know, the International Policy Network and Nurses for Reform – did not answer my calls or emails. Six others refused to give me any useful information. They are the Institute of Economic Affairs, Policy Exchange, the Adam Smith Institute, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Christian Medical Fellowship. They produced similar excuses, mostly concerning the need to protect the privacy of their donors. My view is that if you pay for influence, you should be accountable for it. Nul points.

Civitas did fractionally better, scoring 1. Its website names a small number of the donors to its schools(13), but it would not reveal the amount they had given or the identity of anyone else. The only rightwing thinktank that did well was Reform, which sent me a list of its biggest corporate donors: Lloyds (£50k), Novo Nordisk (£48k), Sky (£42k), General Electric (£41k) and Danone (£40k). Reform lists its other corporate sponsors in its annual review(14), and earns 4 points. If they can do it, why can’t the others?

The progressives were more accountable. Among them, Demos did least well. It sent me a list of its sponsors, but refused to reveal how much they gave. It scores 2.5. The Institute for Public Policy Research listed its donors and, after some stumbling, was able to identify the biggest of them: the European Union (a grant of E800,000) and the Esmee Fairburn Foundation(£86k). It scores 3.5. The New Economics Foundation sent me a list of all its donors and the amount each gave over the past year, earning 4 points. The biggest funders are the Network for Social Change (£173k), the department of health (£124k) and the Aim Foundation (£100k). Compass had already published a full list in its annual report(15). The biggest source by far is the Communication Workers’ Union, which gave it £78k in 2009. Compass gets 5 out of 5.

The picture we see, with the striking exception of Reform, is of secrecy among the rightwing groups, creating a powerful impression that they have something to hide. Shockingly, this absence of accountability – and the influence-peddling it doubtless obscures – does not affect their charitable status.

The funding of these groups should not be a matter of voluntary disclosure. As someone remarked in February 2010, “secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics … it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.”(16) Who was this leftwing firebrand? One David Cameron.

I charge that the groups which call themselves free market thinktanks are nothing of the kind. They are public relations agencies, secretly lobbying for the corporations and multi-millionaires who finance them. If they wish to refute this claim, they should disclose their funding. Until then, whenever you hear the term free market thinktank, think of a tank, crushing democracy, driven by big business.

www.monbiot.com