We don’t want billionaires’ charity. We want them to pay their taxes

Owen Jones in The Guardian

Charity is a cold, grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.” It is a phrase commonly ascribed to Clement Attlee – the credit actually belongs to his biographer, Francis Beckett – but it elegantly sums up the case for progressive taxation. According to a report by the Swiss bank UBS, last year billionaires made more money than any other point in the history of human civilisation. Their wealth jumped by a fifth – a staggering $8.9tn – and 179 new billionaires joined an exclusive cabal of 2,158. Some have signed up to Giving Pledge, committing to leave half their wealth to charity. While the richest man on earth, Jeff Bezos – who has $146bn to his name – has not, he has committed £2bn to tackling homelessness and improving education.

Who can begrudge the generosity of the wealthy, you might say. Wherever you stand on the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny global elite, surely such charity should be applauded? But philanthropy is a dangerous substitution for progressive taxation. Consider Bono, a man who gained a reputation for ceaselessly campaigning for the world’s neediest. Except his band, U2, moved their tax affairs from Ireland to the Netherlandsin 2006 in order to avoid tax. Bono himself appeared in the Paradise Papers – a huge set of documents exposing offshore investments by the wealthy – after he invested in a company based in Malta that bought a Lithuanian firm. This behaviour is legal: Bono himself said of U2’s affairs it was “just some smart people we have … trying to be sensible about the way we’re taxed”.

And he’s right: rich people and major corporations have the means to legally avoid tax. It’s estimated that global losses from multinational corporations shifting their profits are about $500bn a year, while cash stashed in tax havens is worth at least 10% of the world’s economy. It is the world’s poorest who suffer the consequences. Philanthropy, then, is a means of making the uber rich look generous, while they save far more money through exploiting loopholes and using tax havens.

The trouble with charitable billionaires



There’s another issue, too. The decision on how philanthropic money is spent is made on the whims and personal interests of the wealthy, rather than what is best. In the US, for example, only 12% of philanthropic money went to human services: it was more likely be spent on arts and higher education. Those choosing where the money goes are often highly unrepresentative of the broader population, and thus more likely to be out of touch with their needs. In the US, 85% of charitable foundation board members are white, and just 7% are African Americans. Money raised by progressive taxation, on the other hand, is spent by democratically accountable governments that have to justify their priorities, which are far more likely to relate to social need.

What is striking is that even as the rich get richer, they are spending less on charity, while the poor give a higher percentage of their income to good causes. That the world’s eight richest people have as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity is a damning indictment of our entire social order. The answer to that is not self-serving philanthropy, which makes a wealthy elite determined to put vast fortunes out of reach of the authorities look good. We need global tax justice, not charitable scraps dictated by the fancies of the elite.

Justice as a king’s command

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn


REMEMBER Emperor Akbar in Mughal-i-Azam? Akbar ka insaf uska hukum hai. Akbar’s command is his justice. This was how the great Mughal ruler dismissed a poor woman’s petition to save her daughter from imminent and wilful execution in the movie. In the real world, Akbar may have never spoken Urdu just as he may have never been approached to spare the life of any Anarkali if she ever existed. The dialogue writer, Wajahat Mirza, died in Karachi in 1990 but not before unwittingly describing an essential feature of justice everywhere — that it is universally a subjective thing. It was the whim of ancient kings and it remains a whim packaged in ornate terminology today, be it as a feature of democracy or of the Third Reich.

Four judges decreed the hanging of Z.A. Bhutto under military dictatorship. Three opposed it. Bhutto lost the lottery. You may see the judges on both sides as scrupulous practitioners of law and you may see their choices as a personal predilection or both. Yakub Memon would have perhaps lived had a different judge had his way. One judge unseated Indira Gandhi from power, another endorsed her emergency rule. President Pratibha Patil opposed the death penalty on principle, to quote a different example, so she never rejected a mercy petition even if she did it by leaving the files unattended. Pranab Mukherjee, who succeeded her, clearly thought otherwise. He threw out all the mercy petitions he could, opening the path to the gallows for those on death row. Justice is thus both a lottery and the wilful command of a moody emperor with or without the judge’s wig.

As far as I am aware, there were no lawyers in Aurangzeb’s or Kautilya’s time though Shakespeare could not have conjured Portia without a nascent European tradition of black-robed advocates. The encounter between the petitioner and the magistrate in Chandragupta Maurya’s court would have been direct and swift, with no place for intermediaries, today’s LL.B degree holders.

In a different era, the lawyers can mutate into an ideo­­logically driven mob, for example to shower Mumtaz Qadri with rose petals while cheering him for killing a secular, liberal soul that Salmaan Taseer was. And there were the Indian counterparts who vici­­ously assaulted outspoken student leader Kan­h­a­iya Kumar as he was being escorted to the courtroom.


Judges often change their ideological preferences to comply with the doctrine of the state they serve.


In India, there is a new tradition, which I also noticed in Srinagar, to prevent lawyers from defending a petitioner. Hansal Mehta made Shahid, a powerful film depicting the true story of a Muslim lawyer in Mumbai who was killed by irate pseudo nationalists because he defended the weak and probably innocent Muslim men in law courts against accusations of terrorism.

Judges can be killed too, usually falling to those they have ruled against. Three US federal judges are on record as being murdered by those their judgements did not please. During the troubled period, the IRA killed three judges, including Lord Justice Sir Maurice Gibson in 1987. That’s a good reason that judges everywhere are accorded adequate personal security.

Indian judge B.H. Loya was hearing a fake encounter case when he died suddenly. The Bombay High Court is looking into allegations that he was murdered while the official records say that the 48-year-old judge succumbed to a heart attack. Loya’s family first feared that he might have been killed after turning down a bribe offer. They later said they no longer believed that to be so. There’s public outcry to investigate the death nevertheless, not least because the head of India’s ruling party stands named in the incident. Soon after Loya’s death in December 2014, his successor dropped the fake encounter case against BJP President Amit Shah.

The most telling comment on the cynical state of justice in India came perhaps from a man described as Babu Bajrangi, a self-confessed Hindutva zealot, who was caught in a sting operation carried out by journalist Ashish Khetan, now a member of the Aaam Aadmi Party. Bajrangi said on camera that he was denied bail on murder charges and that his leader would arrange the right judge to set him free. Cases have to be sometimes transferred to different states over fears that justice would not be delivered in a particular state in a particular court, a fear suggesting that judges are a subjective lot.

In the old days justice was delivered on behalf of the ubiquitous moneylender who had the thumb impression of the illiterate peasant on the book of accounts as evidence of money advanced. Indebted peasants are still committing suicide in India in droves, as they fear that the law overtly or covertly favours the creditor. The Portias are there to protect the poor and ignorant from wily Indian Shylocks but they are few and far between.

Judges often change their ideological preferences to comply with the doctrine of the state they serve. The head of the justice department in Nazi Germany was a former Bolshevik. With the rise of right-wing nationalism in India, a gradual ideological shift is perceptible in all institutions. The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s Dattopant Thengadi set up the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad (All India Advocates Council) in 1992, ironically the year the Babri Masjid was demolished in defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling. The lawyers’ body has produced several judges from its ranks. Justice Deepak Misra, the chief justice of India, seems to be an admirer of the RSS-backed advocates’ body as he was the chief guest at their annual function in Bengaluru two years ago.

Four most senior judges of the Supreme Court took an unprecedented step last week to address a news conference where they expressed the fear that Indian democracy was in peril. Emperor Akbar would not be amused.

On Cricket Selection at the lower levels: it's complicated

Michael Jeh in Cricinfo

In a recent piece in the Australian, the peerless Gideon Haigh described the life of a fringe first-class cricketer, Steve Cazzulino. The beauty of the story is that the most powerful words come from Cazzulino himself and not the wordsmith.

It is that time of year in Australian cricket when representative careers are made or broken, sometimes forever. For Cazzulino, a damn fine cricketer who played 13 first-class games, it sounds like he harbours lingering regrets that his career did not kick on. In some senses, when you get close enough to being selected for Australia, the equation becomes simple. If you're in the frame, it mostly boils down to runs and wickets, allowing for incumbency rights. Shaun Marsh v Joe Burns v Usman Khawaja v Cameron Bancroft. Jackson Bird v Peter Siddle v Joe Mennie.

Auditioning for the first-class stage, though, is not quite as straightforward as comparing apples with apples. For many talented youngsters, like Cazzulino when he was an elite junior, making it into the representative ranks and being selected in Under-17, U-19 and development squads can be make or break. If your card is not marked, if you're not identified in the talent ID pathway, if you're not looked at by the selectors, it is not as simple as just scoring big runs or taking wickets.

Unlike, say, athletics or swimming, where your chances are determined by the clock or the tape measure, cricket selectors have more of a juggling act to perform. And at that crucial juncture in a player's life, somewhere between 17 and 20 years of age, when they have to juggle choices like university, job prospects, or giving cricket a red-hot go, if they miss out on selection, it may be the last we see of that person.

That could have been Matthew Hayden's story. Overlooked at underage levels but burning with disappointment, he just piled on so many 1st Grade runs and then Shield runs that it became impossible not to pick him for the next level up. Not every cricketer can tell that story. For many (most?), trying to get noticed by the pathway selectors is often the fork-in-the-road moment. I witnessed the Hayden story first-hand (we were team-mates during that period) but I've also seen the kind of heartbreak, doubt and sadness that Cazzulino so courageously opens up about.

As the father of a young 13-year-old who has dreams of making more rep teams, I'm forever torn between encouraging him to chase that dream with a single-minded determination and being fearful that he might take my advice and still fall short. Have I set him up for an almost inevitable fail or fall? I keep telling him that it's all about putting numbers on the board, but I know my words are hollow - it's not as simple as that. It's also about team balance, opportunity, luck, umpiring decisions and selectorial vision (or blindness). Yes, when it comes to Sheffield Shield cricket and you're in a straight shootout, it might come down to the pure numbers, but to get to that stage, how much of it is in the lap of the gods - the selectors?

Spare a thought for Bird, possibly the first No. 11 batsman to be judged on his batting ability! One can only hope he gets another shot at redemption.

Selecting Test teams must be hard but picking underage rep teams must be a nightmare. Every parent and district coach thinks their child has a powerful case and can quote statistics to prove their point. Selectors on the other hand have to weigh up whether 25 runs opening the batting in 1st Grade is worth more than a century batting in the middle order in 3rd Grade. What allowances do you make for a kid who nicks off to a peach of an outswinger, or gets a poor lbw decision in contrast to someone else who gets dropped early and can murder mediocre bowling? How do you allow for someone who plays on green seamers, which is reflected in their numbers, as distinct from a spinner who never really gets the chance to bowl on a wearing pitch because most junior rep cricket doesn't go for long enough to bring that skill into play?

If you've got the luxury of time, years in some cases, you will eventually sort the wheat from the chaff. But when you have to balance that long-term view with a commitment to rewarding form and "runs on the board", how do you walk the tightrope? I know of recent cases where someone who has opened the batting in 1st Grade and faced first-class bowlers (men) for an hour has been overlooked for a 3rd grade batsman who peeled off 80 against boys his own age. The numbers tell one story but anyone who has eked out a tough 20 on a green pitch in Brisbane in the first session will tell you that you sometimes need to be in good form to nick one.

As a medium-fast bowler myself, when I was in form I almost preferred to bowl to better batsmen because there were more chances of them nicking the late outswinger. So often a marginally slower bowler will find that elusive edge because the batsman has that extra fraction of a second to catch up with the ball. When that same bowler gets selected to play at the next level up, a superior batsman will make him look ordinary. Which selector would have the guts and the vision to look past the numbers and pick the cricketer who is more likely to succeed higher up? When that does occasionally happen, they run the risk of getting pilloried for picking someone who hasn't performed well on paper. For every "gut-feeling" selection, there's an aggrieved cricketer (like Cazzulino) who wonders why the benchmark was not a tangible, measurable, justifiable number. As a parent with experience of all this now, I must force myself to look beyond the obvious when my kids miss out. I must confess that it is an easy statement to make in a hypothetical situation.

Cazzulino's tale, brought to life so eloquently by Haigh, is going to be compulsory reading for my sons. Having gone through that same process myself 25 years ago, daring to dream but knowing in my heart that I wasn't good enough to crack it full-time, I yearned to reach out and claim every word of the piece as my own. In my case, I was never quite good enough but I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to Oxford, which satisfied some of that hunger while opening another door. If my sons have inherited anything from me, I hope it won't be my talent but rather the ability to have dreams that can be pursued in a non-mutually exclusive way. As Cazzulino opines when asked if it was difficult to be a rounded person at cricket: "Absolutely. I think you either need to be incredibly smart or incredibly thick-skinned." Or in the case of Bird, you just need to score more runs at No. 11.

A Time For National Reflection

The secretive and stealthy hanging of Ajmal Kasab is a moment in our nation’s history when we need to pause and ponder, and reflect on the values that we, as a nation, should uphold, particularly relating to crime and punishment, justice and equity

PEOPLES UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES (PUCL)

The secretive and stealthy hanging of Ajmal Kasab in Pune’s Yerwada Prison on  21^stNovember, 2012, brings to an end the legal process involved in trying Kasab for the brutal assault by trained terrorists from across the border on Mumbai, the commercial capital of India which left 166 persons dead.

The Mumbai carnage of November 2008, more popularly abbreviated to a single term `26/11,’ constitutes one of the most heinous and deliberate attempts in recent years to cause mass mayhem and terror in India. Kasab was the only member of the terrorist team sent from Pakistan apprehended alive; he was caught on film diabolically using his modern automatic weapon in a cold blooded fashion, killing numerous people. The hanging, and the trial and legal proceedings which preceded it,  admittedly  complied with existing laws which permit death penalty, and cannot be faulted as such.  While it may be argued, as many do  that the hanging will help in an `emotional closure’ to the families of victims of 26/11, there are others who point out that other key issues still remain to be addressed.  Families of victims in specific, as also other concerned citizens, have pointed out that Kasab was only a foot soldier and not the mastermind, who still remain at large.

We cannot also lose sight of the fact the  reality that the backdrop of the 26/11 incidents is also the festering and unresolved internal conflict inside Kashmir, which provides an easy emotive tool for demagogues to indoctrinate and turn youth to become cold blooded `jihadi’ killers. To them, the execution will not be a deterrence.

The extensive legal process  ending with the hanging of Kasab is pointed out as a triumph of the of `rule of law process’ in India. In the same breath this is also contrasted to the lack of such situation in neighbouring Pakistan.  This discourse is however very worrisome; it borders on `triumphalism’ on the one hand, and on the other, it amounts to an attempt to `avenge’ or seek `vengeance’, and `eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth’ mentality, which worldview has been rejected as dangerous amongst a majority of 110 countries worldwide which have prohibited death penalty in their countries.

Such triumphalist discourse is also worrying for it hides behind emotive terminology very harsh truths of failure and miscarriage of justice in other incidents of mass killings that have occurred in India. The `cry for justice’ still remains a silent pouring of helpless anger in the hearts and souls of thousands of families of victims  in incidents like planned and cold blooded slaughter of over 3000 Sikhs during the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, the massacre of hundreds of Muslims in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992-93 (which ironically occurred in Mumbai also), the 2002 post-Godhra anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat which saw over 2,000 Muslims killed and thousands more rendered homeless and more recently in Kokrajhar in Assam. A stark reality is the cynical manipulation and subversion of police investigation by ruling political parties and the executive  to help masterminds and perpetrators escape the clutches of the law.

In the surcharged emotional atmosphere in the wake of Kasab’s hanging,  even raising questions about the usefulness of hanging Kasab is considered to be `traitorous’, unpatriotic and anti-national.  We in the PUCL nevertheless feel that this is a moment in our nation’s history when we need to pause and ponder, and reflect on the values that we, as a nation, should uphold, particularly relating to crime and punishment, justice and equity. We need to be conscious of the fact that a nation consumed by outrage and filled with a sense of retribution easily confuses “punishment and revenge, justice and vendetta”. We, as a nation, need to begin a dispassionate public debate on the death penalty without judgmental, indignant, righteous or moralist overtones.

PUCL has always taken a principled stand against the death sentence as being anti-thetical to the land of ahimsa and non-violence, as constituting an arbitrary, capricious and unreliable punishment and that at the end of the day, the type of sentence that will be awarded depends very much on many factors, apart from the case itself. PUCL and Amnesty International have published a major  study of the entire body of judgments of the Supreme Court of India on death penalty between 1950-2008 which unambiguously shows that there is so much arbitrariness in the application of `rarest of rare’ doctrine in death penalty cases that in the ultimate analysis, death sentence constitutes a `lethal lottery’.

It may not be out of context to highlight that just two days before Kasab was hanged, on 19^thNovember, 2012, the Supreme Court of India pointed out to the fact that in practice, the application of `rarest of rare cases’ doctrine to award death penalty was seriously arbitrary warranting a rethink of the death penalty in India.

It is also well recognised now that there can never ever be a guarantee against legal mistakes and improper application of legal principles while awarding death sentences. Very importantly, the Supreme Court of India in the case of `Santosh Kr. Bariar v. State of Maharashtra’, (2009) has explicitly stated that 6 previous judgments of the Supreme Court between 1996 to 2009 in which death sentences were confirmed on 13 people, were found to be `per incuriam’ meaning thereby, were rendered in ignorance of law. The Supreme court held that the reasoning for confirming death sentences in theses cases conflicted with the 5 judge constitutional bench decision in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980), which upheld the constitutionality of the death sentence in India and laid down the guidelines to be followed before awarding death sentence by any court in India.

It should be pointed out that of the 13 convicts awarded death sentence based on this per incuriam reasoning, 2 persons, Ravji @ Ramchandra was hanged on 4.5.1996 and Surja Ram in 5.4.1997. The fate of the others is pending decision on their mercy petitions. In the meantime a group of 7 – 8 former High Court judges have written to the President of India pointing out to the legal infirmity in the award of death sentences to these convicts and seeking rectification of judicial mistake by commuting their death sentences to life imprisonment. A very troubling question remains: how do we render justice to men who were hanged based on a wrong application of the law?

It is for such reasons, amongst others, that PUCL has long argued that it is extremely unsafe and uncivilised to retain death penalty in our statutes.

It will be useful to refer to the stand on death penalty taken by 3 of India’s foremost leaders of the independence struggle.

Mahatma Gandhi said,

“I do regard death sentence as contrary to ahimsa. Only he takes it who gives it. All punishment is repugnant to ahimsa. Under a State governed according to the principles of ahimsa, therefore, a murderer would be sent to a penitentiary and there be given a chance of reforming himself. All crime is a form of disease and should be treated as such”.

Speaking before the Constituent Assembly of India on 3^rd June, 1949, the architect of India’s constitution, Dr. Ambedkar, pointed out,

“… I would much rather support the abolition of death sentence itself. That I think is the proper course to follow, so that it will end this controversy. After all this country by and large believes in the principles of non-violence, It has been its ancient tradition, and although people may not be following in actual practice, they certainly adhere to the principle of non-violence as a moral mandate which they ought to observe as dar as they possibly can and I think that having regard to this fact, the proper thing for this county to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether”.

Jayaprakash Narayan wrote more poignantly that,

“To my mind, it is ultimately a question for the respect for life and human approach to those who commit grievous hurt to others. Death sentence is no remedy for such crimes. A more humane and constructive remedy is to remove the culprit concerned from the normal milieu and treat him as a mental case … They may be kept in prison houses till they die a natural death. This may cast a heavier economic burden on society than hanging. But I have no doubt that a humane treatment even of a murderer will enhance man’s dignity and make society more humane”. (emphasis ours).

PUCL calls upon all Indians to use the present situation as a moment of national reflection, a period of serious dialogue and discussion on the values and ethics which we as a nation of Buddha and Ashoka, who epitomised humane governance, dharma and ahimsa, should accept and follow. The best tribute we can pay to the 166 persons who lost their lives due to the 26/11 Mumbai carnage is to rebuild the nation in a way that equity and justice, dharma and ahimsa prevails; in which there is no soil for discrimination and prejudice, and in which all Indians irrespective of caste, community, creed, gender or any other diversity, can live peacefully and with dignity.

We firmly believe that mercy and compassion are key values of a humane society, which are also recognised in the Indian Constitution. We also hold that abolishing death penalty is not a sign of weakness. Rather it is a stand which arises from a sense of moral authority. It is when law in tempered with mercy that true justice is done. Bereft of mercy our society would be impoverished and inhuman; mercy is quintessentially a human quality, not found elsewhere in the natural world. Excluding a fellow human being from the entitlement to mercy will make our society more blood thirsty, unforgiving and violent. We owe a duty to leave a better and less vengeful world for our children by curbing our instinct for retribution. That way we become a more humane and compassionate society. Recalling Rabindranath Tagore’s vision in the `Gitanjali’, let us re-make India into a `haven of peace’ in which future generations of Indians will rejoice and flourish.

Sd/-

Prof. Prabhakar Sinha, National President, PUCL
Dr. V. Suresh, National General Secretary (Elect), PUCL

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Also read The hangman's justice

The hangman’s justice

 

For many years now, The Hindu has opposed the death penalty on principle — often in the face of intense public disapproval. We oppose it for ordinary killers and mass murderers, communal pogromists as well as terrorists like Muhammad Ajmal Amir Kasab. Ever since that traumatic night we now denote by the veiled abbreviation 26/11, Kasab has justifiably been the face of evil for millions of Indians. He took part in a monstrous plot against the people of India and Mumbai, killed innocent people with abandon, and showed no remorse for his actions. It is no surprise, therefore, that his execution Wednesday morning has been greeted with approval across the country. No loss of human life, however despicable the individual might have been, ought to be a reason for celebration. Instead, this should be a time of national reflection: reflection about crime, about punishment and about that cherished bedrock of our republic, justice. For several reasons, the hanging of Kasab is at most a crude approximation of this quality, more closely resembling an act of vengeance. Kasab was neither the architect of 26/11 nor its strategic mastermind; the men who indoctrinated and controlled him remain safe in Pakistan, where most will likely never see the inside of a courtroom. The haste to hang Kasab makes even less sense when others guilty of hideous terrorist crimes have secured deferment of their sentences because political lobbies acted on their behalf — among them, the assassins of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Chief Minister Beant Singh of Punjab. It is also a sobering fact that criminals responsible for claiming more Indian lives than Kasab did — among them, the perpetrators of countless communal riots — live as free men. Not one of these things excuse or mitigate Kasab’s crime. But they do make it imperative to ask: is the hangman’s justice the only kind we can conceive of? 

The arguments against the death penalty are well known. There are pragmatic ones — in this case, that Kasab could have provided valuable testimony in future trials of yet-to-be-arrested 26/11 perpetrators. There are moral and technical ones; even in the United States, with its highly-functional criminal justice system, new forensic techniques have shown dozens of innocent men were executed, though this argument does not apply to Kasab whose guilt is proven well beyond even unreasonable doubt. The most compelling argument, however, is this: the application of the death penalty is, as the Supreme Court itself acknowledged earlier this week, increasingly arbitrary. Capital punishment has become, as the medieval philosopher Maimonides many centuries ago warned it would, a matter of “the judge’s caprice”. It is also simply not true that capital punishment is integral to fighting terrorists. The absence of the death penalty in, say, France and the United Kingdom has not made these two nations softer in their ability to combat terror than the U.S. The grief of 26/11 was personal for many in this newspaper; like others, members of staff grieve for lost friends. Yet, the horror of 26/11 ought not stop us from dispassionately debating the need for the death penalty.