Think there's no alternative? Latin America has a few

Not only have leaders from Ecuador to Venezuela delivered huge social gains – they keep winning elections too

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 19 February 2013 22.00 GMT

Given what's been delivered to the majority, it's hardly surprising Latin America's social ­democratic and socialist ­governments keep getting re-elected. Illustration: Belle Mellor

 

Ever since the crash of 2008 exposed the rotten core of a failed economic model, we've been told there are no viable alternatives. As Europe sinks deeper into austerity, governing parties of whatever stripe are routinely rejected by disillusioned voters – only to be replaced by others delivering more welfare cuts, privatisation and inequality.

So what should we make of a part of the world where governments have resolutely turned their back on that model, slashed poverty and inequality, taken back industries and resources from corporate control, massively expanded public services and democratic participation – and keep getting re-elected in fiercely contested elections?

That is what has been happening in Latin America for a decade. The latest political leader to underline the trend is the radical economist Rafael Correa, re-elected as president of Ecuador at the weekend with an increased 57% share of the vote, while Correa's party won an outright majority in parliament.

But Ecuador is now part of a well-established pattern. Last October the much reviled but hugely popular Hugo Chávez, who returned home on Monday after two months of cancer treatment in Cuba, was re-elected president of Venezuela with 55% of the vote after 14 years in power in a ballot far more fraud-proof than those in Britain or the US. That followed the re-election of Bolivia's Evo Morales, Latin America's first indigenous president, in 2009; the election of Lula's nominated successor Dilma Rousseff in Brazil in 2010; and of Cristina Fernandez in Argentina in 2011.

Despite their differences, it's not hard to see why. Latin America was the first to experience the disastrous impact of neoliberal dogma and the first to revolt against it. Correa was originally elected in the wake of an economic collapse so devastating that one in 10 left the country. Since then his "citizen's revolution" has cut poverty by nearly a third and extreme poverty by 45%. Unemployment has been slashed, while social security, free health and education have been rapidly expanded – including free higher education, now a constitutional right – while outsourcing has been outlawed.

And that has been achieved not only by using Ecuador's limited oil wealth to benefit the majority, but by making corporations and the well-off pay their taxes (receipts have almost tripled in six years), raising public investment to 15% of national income, extending public ownership, tough renegotiation of oil contracts and re-regulating the banking system to support development.

Many of the things, in fact, that conventional "free market" orthodoxy insists will lead to ruin, but have instead delivered rapid growth and social progress. Correa's government has also closed the US military base at Manta (he'd reconsider, he said, if the US "let us put a military base in Miami"), expanded gay, disability and indigenous rights and adopted some of the most radical environmental policies in the world. Those include the Yasuni initiative, under which Ecuador waives its right to exploit oil in a uniquely biodiverse part of the Amazon in return for international contributions to renewable energy projects.

But what is happening in Ecuador is only part of a progressive tide that has swept Latin America, as social democratic and radical socialist governments have attacked social and racial inequality, challenged US domination and begun to create genuine regional integration and independence for the first time in 500 years. And given what's already been delivered to the majority, it's hardly surprising they keep getting re-elected.

It says more about the western media (and their elite Latin American counterparts) than governments such as Ecuador's and Venezuela's that they are routinely portrayed as dictatorial. Part of that canard is about US hostility. In the case of Ecuador, it's also been fuelled by fury at Correa's decision to give asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who faces sexual assault allegations in Sweden, over the threat of onward extradition to the US. In reality, the real anti-democratic menace comes from the US's own allies, who launched abortive coups against both Chávez and Correa – and successful ones in Honduras in 2009 and Paraguay last year.

Of course, Latin America's left-leaning governments have no shortage of failings, from corruption to crime. In Ecuador and elsewhere, tensions between the demands of development, the environment and indigenous rights have sharpened. And none of these experiences yet offer any kind of ready-made social or economic alternative model.

There is also a question whether the momentum of continental change can be maintained now that Chávez, who spearheaded it, is expected to stand down in the next few weeks. His anointed successor, the former trade unionist Nicolás Maduro, is in a strong position to win new elections. But neither he nor the charismatic Correa is likely to be able to match Chávez's catalytic regional role.
Latin America's transformation is nevertheless deeply rooted and popular, while a discredited right has little to offer. For the rest of the world, it makes a nonsense of the idea that five years into the crisis nothing can be done but more of the same. True, these are economies and societies at a very different stage of development, and their experiences can't simply be replicated elsewhere. But they have certainly shown there are multiple alternatives to neoliberal masochism – which win elections, too.

Afzal Guru - An execution most foul

T. R. Andhyarujina in The Hindu

  

In carrying out Afzal Guru’s death sentence, the government deliberately ignored the view of the Supreme Court and courts across the world that hanging a person after holding him in custody for years is inhuman 

The execution of Afzal Guru on February 9, 2013 was an inhumane act by the Government of India. Afzal Guru was hanged seven years after the Supreme Court’s pronouncement of the death sentence on him on August 4, 2005 and over six years after his clemency petition to the President of India on November 8, 2006. During this period, he and his family remained in agonising suspense over his fate every day — a situation that is condemned by all civilised countries and our Supreme Court. The rejection of his petition by the President after over six years on February 3, 2013, was kept secret and deliberately not communicated to his family, lest it became the subject of judicial consideration as has been done in other cases of delayed execution. Within a few days of the rejection of his mercy petition, the execution was carried out in secrecy on February 9, 2013 without informing his family, and his body was buried in equal secrecy in a grave inside Tihar Jail, New Delhi. 

Six years

A petition made to the President for pardon, reprieve or remission of punishment under Article 72 of the Constitution is a right of a convict and until the petition is rejected, the government cannot carry out the sentence. In disposing of the petition under Article 72, the President does not act at his discretion but on the aid and advice of the government. This was held by the Supreme Court in Kehar Singh’s case in 1989. The crucial question was whether the execution could be carried out after a prolonged delay of over six years from the day Afzal Guru made his petition to the President. 

The disposal of Afzal Guru’s petition became a political matter, with the BJP’s unseemly demand for his execution and its making it an issue in the ensuing elections. For its own political consideration, the government did not decide the petition made to the President. In fact, between 2006 and 2008, the then Home Minister deliberately instructed the Government of Delhi to delay responding to the Afzal Guru file sent to it. In 2008, Afzal Guru made a statement that revealed his mental distress. He said in an interview, “I really wish L.K. Advani becomes India’s next PM as he is the only one who can take a decision and hang me. At least my pain and daily suffering will ease then.” 

When terrorist Ajmal Kasab was executed on November 21, 2012, immediately following the Supreme Court’s verdict on him, the Opposition again renewed its demand for Afzal Guru’s execution. Steps were then taken by the government to prevent the opposition from exploiting the situation. Kasab’s execution carried out in secrecy became the model for the execution of Afzal Guru. On November 15, 2012, President Pranab Mukherjee sent Afzal Guru’s file back to the Home Ministry for a fresh consideration of the mercy petition. On January 23, 2013, the Home Ministry recommended its rejection and on February 3, 2013, the President formally rejected the petition. The President’s rejection was then implemented by the Home Minister on February 4, 2013 and five days later in the early morning on February 9, 2013, Afzal Guru was hanged. 

In executing Afzal Guru after a prolonged period in which he and his family suffered the agony of suspense, the government flouted a well-settled law laid down by the Supreme Court in several cases. In Edigma Anama vs. State of A.P. in 1974, Justice Krishna Iyer spoke of the “brooding horror of haunting the prisoner in the condemned cell for years.” Justice Chinnappa Reddy in T.V. Vatheeswaran vs. State of Tamil Nadu in 1983 said that a prolonged delay in the execution of a sentence of death had a dehumanising effect and this had the constitutional implication of depriving a person of his life in an unjust, unfair and unreasonable way so as to offend the Fundamental Right under Article 21 of the Constitution. He quoted the Privy Council’s observation in a case of inordinate delay in execution: “The anguish of alternating hope and despair, the agony of uncertainty and the consequences of such suffering on the mental, emotional and physical integrity and health of the individual has to be seen.”

 

Trauma of convict and family

In 1983, in Sher Singh vs. State of Punjab, the Court repeated the same observations, and in the larger Constitutional Bench in Triveniben vs. State of Gujarat in 1989 to settle the law, the Supreme Court again reiterated that a prolonged delay in execution would be unjust, unfair and unreasonable. The Court held that in the disposal of mercy petitions it has been universally recognised that the condemned person suffers a degree of mental torture even though there is no physical mistreatment. The Court held that if there was an inordinate delay in execution, the condemned prisoner would be entitled to move the Court to examine whether it was just and fair to allow the sentence of death to be executed. The disclosure of the rejection of the mercy petition was, therefore, mandatory. In the case of Jagdish vs. State of Madhya Pradesh in 2012, the Supreme Court highlighted not only the agony of the convict by inordinate delay of execution but also the agony and trauma of his close relatives.

In 1994, the Privy Council adopted the observations of the Indian Supreme Court and stated in a moving part of the judgment that “there is an instinctive revulsion against the prospect of hanging a man after he has been held under sentence of death for many years. What gives rise to this instinctive revulsion? The answer can only be our humanity; we regard it as an inhuman act to keep a man facing the agony of execution over a long extended period of time … To execute these men now after holding them in custody for so many years would be inhuman punishment.” The European Court on Human Rights in 1989 and the Canadian Supreme Court has also has taken a similar view. In executing Afzal Guru, the government deliberately ignored the views of our Supreme Court and other Courts in other jurisdictions.

Apart from the torment and agony suffered by the death row convict, it has been universally recognised that the agony is suffered also by his near and dear ones in the same manner by the delay. A leading textbook on death penalty states that “the trauma for families is specially evident when the date of the execution draws near. In recognition of this, it appears to be the common practice in most retentionist countries to allow relatives to visit the condemned person prior to execution, to inform them of the date of the execution, and to deliver them the body for burial.”

In Afzal Guru’s case, his family members were not informed of his imminent execution and were unable to meet him one last time before his execution. The government’s claim that it informed them by a speed post letter dispatched on February 8, 2013 is meaningless. The letter was delivered to the family in Kashmir two days after his execution!

In March-April 2012, the Supreme Court heard petitions by two death convicts — Devender Pal Singh Bhullar and Narender Nath Das — on the validity of carrying out executions after mercy petitions were delayed for eight to 11 years. The Court considered the cases of other death row convicts also whose executions were prolonged and directed the Government of India to give details and files relating to the convicts. The government then gave the details of the death row convicts whose mercy petitions were pending with the President of India.

 

Legality of prolonged delay

One of the pending cases was that of Afzal Guru. The Court appointed me as amicus curiae to consider the larger question of the execution of convicts after inordinate delay. In the course of my submissions, I referred in particular to the facts of the Afzal Guru case. The hearing concluded on April 19, 2012, and judgment was reserved in the case. The government was fully aware that the legality of prolonged delay in the execution of convicts was pending consideration by the Supreme Court. It was incumbent upon the government to await the authoritative pronouncement of the Supreme Court on the pending petitions but the government carried out the execution of Afzal Guru on 9 February, 2013.

Overall, Afzal Guru’s execution will remain the most callous death sentence carried out by the government of India.

 

(The writer is a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court and former Solicitor General of India)

The educational charities that do PR for the rightwing ultra-rich

Billionaires control the political conversation by staying hidden and paying others to promote their brutal agendas

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 18 February 2013 20.30 GMT

David Koch, of Koch Industries, pictured here in his role as chairman of Americans for Prosperity at the Defending the American Dream Summit in November 2011. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

 

Conspiracies against the public don't get much uglier than this. As the Guardian revealed last week, two secretive organisations working for US billionaires have spent $118m to ensure that no action is taken to prevent manmade climate change. While inflicting untold suffering on the world's people, their funders have used these opaque structures to ensure that their identities are never exposed.
The two organisations – the Donors' Trust and the Donors' Capital Fund – were set up as political funding channels for people handing over $1m or more. They have financed 102 organisations which either dismiss climate science or downplay the need to take action. The large number of recipients creates the impression of many independent voices challenging climate science. These groups, working through the media, mobilising gullible voters and lobbying politicians, helped to derail Obama's cap and trade bill and the climate talks at Copenhagen. Now they're seeking to prevent the US president from trying again.

This covers only part of the funding. In total, between 2002 and 2010 the two identity-laundering groups paid $311m to 480 organisations, most of which take positions of interest to the ultra-rich and the corporations they run: less tax, less regulation, a smaller public sector. Around a quarter of the money received by the rightwing opinion swarm comes from the two foundations. If this funding were not effective, it wouldn't exist: the ultra-rich didn't get that way by throwing their money around randomly. The organisations they support are those that advance their interests.

A small number of the funders have been exposed by researchers trawling through tax records. They include the billionaire Koch brothers (paying into the two groups through their Knowledge and Progress Fund) and the DeVos family (the billionaire owners of Amway). More significantly, we now know a little more about the recipients. Many describe themselves as free-market or conservative thinktanks.

Among them are the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Hudson Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Mont Pelerin Society and Discovery Institute. All pose as learned societies, earnestly trying to determine the best interests of the public. The exposure of this funding reinforces the claim by David Frum, formerly a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, that such groups "increasingly function as public relations agencies".

One name in particular jumped out at me: American Friends of the IEA. The Institute of Economic Affairs is a British group that, like all the others, calls itself a free-market thinktank. Scarcely a day goes by when its staff aren't interviewed in the broadcast media, promoting the dreary old billionaires' agenda: less tax for the rich, less help for the poor, less spending by the state, less regulation for business. In the first 13 days of February, its people were on the BBC 10 times.

Never have I heard its claim to be an independent thinktank challenged by the BBC. When, in 2007, I called the institute a business lobby group, its then director-general responded, in a letter to the Guardian, that "we are independent of all business interests". Oh yes?

The database published by the Canadian site desmogblog.com shows that American Friends of the IEA has (up to 2010) received $215,000 from the two secretive funds. When I spoke to the IEA's fundraising manager, she confirmed that the sole purpose of American Friends is to channel money to the organisation in London. She agreed that the IEA has never disclosed the Donors' Trust money it has received. She denied that the institute is a sockpuppet organisation: purporting to be independent while working for some very powerful US interests.

Would the BBC allow someone from Bell Pottinger to discuss an issue of concern to its sponsors without revealing the sponsors' identity? No. So what's the difference? What distinguishes an acknowledged public relations company taking money channelled by a corporation or a billionaire from a so-called thinktank, funded by the same source to promote the same agenda?

The IEA is registered with the Charity Commission as an educational charity. The same goes for Nigel Lawson's climate misinformation campaign (the Global Warming Policy Foundation) and a host of other dubious "thinktanks". I've said it before and I'll say it again: it is outrageous that the Charity Commission allows organisations that engage in political lobbying and refuse to reveal their major funders to claim charitable status.

This is the new political frontier. Corporations and their owners have learned not to show their hands. They tend to avoid the media, aware that they will damage their brands by being seen to promote the brutal agenda that furthers their interests. So they have learned from the tobacco companies: stay hidden and pay others to do it for you.

They need a network of independent-looking organisations that can produce plausible arguments in defence of their positions. Once the arguments have been developed, projecting them is easy. Most of the media is owned by billionaires, who are happy to promote the work of people funded by the same class. One of the few outlets they don't own – the BBC – has been disgracefully incurious about the identity of those to whom it gives a platform.

By these means the ultra-rich come to dominate the political conversation, without declaring themselves. Those they employ are clever and well-trained, with money their opponents can only dream of. They are skilled at rechannelling public anger that might otherwise be directed at their funders: the people who tanked the economy, who use the living planet as their dustbin, who won't pay taxes and demand that the poor must pay for the mistakes of the rich. Anger, thanks to the work of these hired hands, is instead aimed at the victims or opponents of the billionaires: people on benefits, trade unions, Greenpeace, the American Civil Liberties Union.

The answer, as ever, is transparency. As the so-called thinktanks come to play an ever more important role in politics, we need to know who they are working for. Any group – whether the IEA or Friends of the Earth – that attempts to influence public life should declare all donations greater than £1,000. 

 We've had a glimpse of who's paying. Now we need to see the rest of the story.

Cameron's immigration hierarchy: Rich Indians good, eastern Europeans bad

David Cameron's welcome mat to 'hardworking' Indians contrasts with attitudes towards the new EU entrants

• 
• • Alana Lentin
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 February 2013 16.00 GMT

David Cameron speaks at a business seminar in Mumbai on February 18. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images

 

In The End of Tolerance, Arun Kundnani argues that the ability to integrate in today's Britain is based less on how you look and more on whether or not you are deemed culturally compatible. This may seem like progress but the sliding scale along which humanity is now organised is not unlike the racial hierarchies of old; it's just less colour-coded. So, an English-educated Indian professional may be more acceptable than a white, jobless Bulgarian or Romanian. This is exactly on point as we witness David Cameron's rush to India, a country whose economic rise he described as "one of the great phenomena of the century".

Cameron and his entourage of CEOs and vice-chancellors will undoubtedly speed past the slums rapidly being cleared for the shiny new malls being built on every spare inch of India's major cities. The majority of Indians – arguably worse off since the advent of neoliberalism in the "largest democracy" – are not who Cameron has in mind when he talks about unleashing "India's potential".
Back in the UK, the imminent arrival of Bulgarians and Romanians with new EU rights is being painted as a make or break electoral issue. They are the victims of a "xeno-racism" that holds impoverished strangers, including whites, in its sight. In contrast, Indian students with the cash to pay premium fees to study at British universities will, according to Cameron, have the red carpet rolled out and will not, he has claimed, be subject to limits on how long they can stay and work. How such "positive discrimination" will be justified in light of the Tories' commitment to a cap on immigration in the tens of thousands per year remains to be seen.

Cultural stereotypes abound. Indians – not Pakistanis mind – are deemed hardworking and resourceful with infinite admiration for the UK and its traditions. Colonialism is rewritten as a "special relationship". Indians (Hindus) assimilate into the British way of life, speak English, and are religious moderates. They are not a drain, rather an opportunity for investment in an ailing British economy.

Romanians and Bulgarians, on the other hand, are today's "wretched of the earth", described by Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun as variably corrupt, as rapists and as pickpockets. The Tories will lose the Eastleigh byelection, he warns, unless the government puts its foot down and refuses to grant full EU rights to Romanian and Bulgarian citizens before they descend on the UK.

The comparison of Cameron's rhetoric on India and Britain's newest EU partners reveals how, on the surface at least, racism is so often influenced by economics. The successful are pitted against the scroungers, no matter the extent to which either stereotype holds water. Immigration with a capital "I" – as a headline rather than a life experience – has always needed heroes and villains, those who gave versus those who took, those who built versus those who destroyed. Racism works to attach these apparently natural attributes to whole groups of people and that is why it is never detachable from the immigration "debate". This is the message that Cameron is sending: we will tolerate those who can benefit us, but not those who fail to make us prosper.

Indians are no more universally assimilable than south-eastern Europeans are detrimental to the UK. Indeed, the opposite was once deemed to be the case when skin colour, rather than cultural compatibility, influenced migration policy more explicitly and arrivals from the east were dissidents, not purported social security hunters. Only when we decouple immigration from race will the arbitrariness of the ranking of populations according to profitability become apparent and racial generalisations – positive or negative – be shown up for the poverty of the ideas that lie beneath them.

Narendra Modi - The man who would rule India

 Ramachandra Guha in The Hindu

 

  

Like Indira Gandhi once did, Narendra Modi seeks to make his party,his government, his administration and his country into an extension of his personality.

A journalist who recently interviewed Narendra Modi reported their conversation as follows: “Gujarat, he told me, merely has a seafront. It has no raw materials — no iron ore for steel, no coal for power and no diamond mines. Yet it has made huge strides in these fields. Imagine, he added, if we had the natural resources of an Assam, a Jharkhand and a West Bengal: I would have changed the face of India.”(see The Telegraph, January 18, 2013). 

Tall claims

This conversation (and that claim) underlines much of what Narendra Modi has sought to do these past five years — remake himself as a man who gets things done, a man who gets the economy moving. With Mr. Modi in power in New Delhi, says or suggests Mr. Modi, India will be placed smoothly on the 8 per cent to 10 per cent growth trajectory, bureaucrats will clear files overnight, there will be no administrative and political corruption, poverty levels will sink rapidly towards zero and — lest we forget — trains and aeroplanes shall run on time. These claims are taken at face value by his admirers, who include sundry CEOs, owner-capitalists, western ambassadors and —lest we forget — columnists in the pink papers, the white papers, and (above all) cyber-space.

Mr. Modi’s detractors — who too are very numerous, and very vocal — seek to puncture these claims in two different ways. The unreconstructed Nehruvians and Congress apologists (not always the same thing) say he will forever be marked by the pogrom against Muslims in 2002, which was enabled and orchestrated by the State government. Even if his personal culpability remains unproven, the fact that as the head of the administration he bears ultimate responsibility for the pogrom, and the further fact that he has shown no remorse whatsoever, marks Mr. Modi out as unfit to lead the country.

The secularist case against Mr. Modi always had one flaw — namely, that what happened in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded in all fundamental respects by what happened in Delhi in 1984. Successive Congress governments have done nothing to bring justice to the survivors, while retaining in powerful positions (as Cabinet Ministers even) Congress MPs manifestly involved in those riots.

With every passing year, the charge that Mr. Modi is communal has lost some intensity — because with every passing year it is one more year that the Sikhs of Delhi and other North Indian cities have been denied justice. (They have now waited 28 years, the Muslims of Gujarat a mere 11.) More recently, the burden of the criticism against Mr. Modi has shifted — on to his own terrain of economic development. It has been shown that the development model of Gujarat is uneven, with some districts (in the south, especially) doing very well, but the dryer parts of the State (inland Saurashtra for example) languishing. Environmental degradation is rising, and educational standards are falling, with malnutrition among children abnormally high for a State at this level of GDP per capita.

As a sociologist who treats the aggregate data of economists with scepticism, I myself do not believe that Gujarat is the best developed State in the country. Shortly after Mr. Modi was sworn in for his third full term, I travelled through Saurashtra, whose polluted and arid lands spoke of a hard grind for survival. In the towns, water, sewage, road and transport facilities were in a pathetic state; in the countryside, the scarcity of natural resources was apparent, as pastoralists walked miles and miles in search of stubble for their goats. Both hard numbers and on-the-ground soundings suggest that in terms of social and economic development, Gujarat is better than average, but not among the best. In a lifetime of travel through the States of the Union, my sense is that Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and (despite the corruption) Tamil Nadu are the three States which provide a dignified living to a decent percentage of their population.

To be sure, Mr. Modi is not solely responsible for the unbalanced development. Previous Chief Ministers did not do enough to nurture good schools and hospitals, or enough to prevent the Patels of southern Gujarat from monopolising public resources. Besides, Mr. Modi does have some clear, identifiable achievements — among them a largely corruption-free government, an active search for new investment into Gujarat, some impressive infrastructural projects, and a brave attempt to do away with power subsidies for rich farmers.

Both the secularist case and the welfarist case against Mr. Modi have some merit — as well as some drawbacks. In my view, the real reason that Narendra Modi is unfit to be Prime Minister of India is that he is instinctively and aggressively authoritarian. Consider that line quoted in my first paragraph: “I would have changed the face of India.” Not ‘we,’ but ‘I’. In Mr. Modi’s Gujarat, there are no collaborators, no co-workers. He has a chappan inch chaati — a 56-inch chest — as he loudly boasts, and therefore all other men (if not women) in Gujarat must bow down to his power and his authority.

Mr. Modi’s desire to dominate is manifest in his manner of speaking. Social scientists don’t tend to analyse auditory affect, but you have only to listen to the Gujarat Chief Minister for 15 minutes to know that this is a man who will push aside anyone who comes in his way. The intent of his voice is to force his audience into following him on account of fearing him.

The proclamation of his physical masculinity is not the sole example of Mr. Modi’s authoritarianism. Like all political bullies he despises free speech and artistic creativity — thus he has banned books and films he thinks Gujaratis should not read or watch (characteristically, without reading or viewing these books and films himself). He has harassed independent-minded writers, intellectuals and artists (leading to the veritable destruction of India’s greatest school of art, in Vadodara). His refusal to the spontaneous offer of a skull cap during his so-called ‘Sadbhavana Yatra,’ while read as an example of his congenital communalism, could also be seen as illustrating his congenital arrogance.

The most revealing public display of Mr. Modi’s character, however, may have been a yoga camp he once held for the IAS officers of his State. They all lined up in front of him — DMs, DCs, Secretaries, Under-Secretaries, of various sizes, shapes, ages, and genders — and followed the exercise routine he had laid down for them. Utthak-baithak, utthak-baithak, 10 or perhaps 20 times, before a diverting Surya Namaskar was thrown in by the Master.

I do not know whether that yoga camp was held again (it was supposed to be an annual show), and do not know either how Mr. Modi appears to these IAS officers when they confront him one-on-one. But that the event was held, and that the Chief Minister’s office sought proudly to broadcast it to the world, tells us rather more than we would rather wish to know about this man who wishes to rule India.

To be sure, Mr. Modi is not the only authoritarian around in Indian politics. Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalithaa, and Mayawati (when she is Chief Minister) also run their States in a somewhat overbearing manner. Naveen Patnaik and Nitish Kumar are intolerant of criticism too. However, the authoritarianism of these other State leaders is erratic and capricious, not focused or dogmatic. This, and the further fact that Mr. Modi has made his national ambitions far more explicit, makes them lesser devils when it comes to the future of our country.

 

Resemblance to Indira Gandhi

Neither Mr. Modi’s admirers nor his critics may like this, but the truth is that of all Indian politicians past and present, the person Gujarat Chief Minister most resembles is Indira Gandhi of the period 1971-77. Like Mrs. Gandhi once did, Mr. Modi seeks to make his party, his government, his administration and his country an extension of his personality. The political practice of both demonstrates the psychological truth that inside every political authoritarian lies a desperately paranoid human being. Mr. Modi talks, in a frenetic and fearful way, of ‘Rome Raj’ and ‘Mian Musharraf’ (lately modified to ‘Mian Ahmed Patel’); Mrs Gandhi spoke in likewise shrill tones of the ‘foreign hand’ and of ‘my enemies.’

There is something of Indira Gandhi in Narendra Modi, and perhaps just a touch of Sanjay Gandhi too — as in the brash, bullying, hyper-masculine style, the suspicion (and occasional targeting) of Muslims. Either way, Mr. Modi is conspicuously unfitted to be the reconciling, accommodating, plural, democratic Prime Minister that India needs and deserves. He loves power far too much. On the other hand, his presumed rival, Rahul Gandhi, shirks responsibility entirely (as in his reluctance, even now, to assume a ministerial position). Indian democracy must, and shall in time, see off both.

On Narendra Modi - All The Perfumes Of Arabia.....

To those who talk of development of Gujarat under Modi I ask this question: Should the malnourished children of Gujarat eat the roads, electricity and factories which Modi has created?

MARKANDEY KATJU 

Narendra Modi is being projected by a large section of Indians as the modern Moses, the messiah who will lead the beleaguered and despondent Indian people into a land of milk and honey, the man who is best suited to be the next Indian Prime Minister. And it is not just the BJP and RSS who are saying this in the Kumbh Mela. A large section of the Indian so called 'educated' class, including a section of our 'educated' youth, who have been carried away by Modi’s propaganda are saying this.

I was flying from Delhi to Bhopal recently. Sitting beside me was a Gujarati businessman. I asked him his opinion of Modi. He was all praise for him. I interjected and asked him about the killings of over 2000 Muslims in 2002 in Gujarat. He replied that Muslims were always creating problems in Gujarat, but after 2002 they have been put in their place and there is peace since 2002 in Gujarat. I told him it was the peace of the graveyard, and peace can never last long unless it was coupled with justice. At this remark he took offence and changed his seat on the plane.

The truth today is that Muslims in Gujarat are terrorized and afraid that if they speak out against the horrors of 2002 they may be attacked and victimized. In the whole of India Muslims (who are over 200 million of the people of India) are solidly against Modi (though there are a handful of Muslims who for some reason disagree).

It is claimed by Modi supporters that what happened in Gujarat was only a 'spontaneous' reaction (pratikriya) of Hindus to the killings of 59 Hindus in a train in Godhra. I do not buy this story. Firstly, there is still a mystery as to what exactly happened in Godhra, and who was responsible for the killings. Secondly, the particular persons who were responsible for the Godhra killings should certainly be identified and given harsh punishment, but how does this justify the attack on the entire Muslim community in Gujarat. Muslims are only 9% of the total population of Gujarat, the rest being mostly Hindus. In 2002 Muslims were massacred, their homes burnt, and other horrible crimes committed on them.

To call the killings of Muslims in 2002 as a spontaneous reaction reminds one of Kristallnacht (see online) in Germany in November 1938, when the entire Jewish community in Germany was attacked, many killed, their synagogues burnt, shops vandalized, etc after a German diplomat in Paris was shot by a Jewish youth whose family had been persecuted by the Nazis. It was claimed by the Nazi Government that this was only a 'spontaneous' reaction, but in fact it was planned and executed by the Nazi authorities using fanatic mobs.

I have said in my article 'What is India?' (see on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in as well as on the video on the website kgfindia.com) that India is broadly a country of immigrants (like North America) and consequently it is a land of tremendous diversity. Hence the only policy which can hold it together and take it on the path of progress is secularism and equal respect and treatment to all communities and sects. This was the policy of the great Emperor Akbar, which was followed by our Founding Fathers (Pandit Nehru and his colleagues) who gave us a secular Constitution. Unless we follow this policy our country cannot survive for one day, because it has so much diversity, so many religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups, etc.

India therefore does not belong to Hindus alone, it belongs equally to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Jains etc. Also, it is not that only Hindus can live in India as first rate citizens while others have to live as second or third rate citizens. All are first rate citizens here. The killings of thousands of Muslims and other atrocities on them in Gujarat in 2002 can never be forgotten or forgiven. All the perfumes in Arabia cannot wash away the stain on Modi in this connection.

It is said by his supporters that Modi had no hand in the killings of Muslims in 2002, and it is also said that he has not been found guilty by any Court of Law. I do not want to comment on our judiciary, but I certainly do not buy the story that Modi had no hand in the events of 2002. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time, and the horrible events happened on a large scale in Gujarat Can it be believed that he had no hand in the events of 2002? At least I find it impossible to believe it.

Let me give just one example. Ehsan Jafri was a respected, elderly former Member of the Indian Parliament living in the Chamanpura locality of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. His house was in the Gulbarga Housing Society, where mostly Muslims lived. According to the recorded version of his elderly wife Zakia, on 28.2.2002 a mob of fanatics blew up the security wall of the housing society using gas cylinders, they dragged Ehsan Jafri out of his house, stripped him, chopped off his limbs with swords, etc and burnt him alive. Many other Muslim were also killed and their houses burnt. Chamanpura is barely a kilometer from the police station, and less than 2 kilometres from the Ahmedabad Police Commissioner's office. Is it conceivable that the Chief Minister did not know what was going on? Zakia Jafri since then has been running from pillar to post to get justice for her husband who was so brutally murdered. Her criminal case against Modi was thrown out by the district Court (since the Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court found no evidence against Modi and filed a final report), and it is only now (after a gap of over 10 years since the incident) that the Supreme Court set aside the order of the trial Court and directed that her protest petition be considered.

I am not going into this matter any further since it is still sub judice.

Modi has claimed that he has developed Gujarat. It is therefore necessary to consider what is the meaning of 'development'. To my mind development can have only one meaning, and that is raising the standard of living of the masses. Giving concessions to big industrial houses, and offering them cheap land and cheap electricity can hardly be called development if it does not raise the standard of living of the masses.

Today, 48% Guajarati children are malnourished, which is a higher rate of malnourishment than the national average. In Gujarat there is high infant mortality rate, high women's maternity death rate, and 57% poverty rate in tribal areas, and among Scheduled Castes/Backward Castes. As stated by Ramachandra Guha in his article in The Hindu today, (8.2.2013) in Gujarat environmental degradation is rising, educational standards are falling, and malnutrition among children abnormally high. More than a third of adult men in Gujarat have a body mass index of less than 18.5 – the 7th worst in the country. A UNDP report in 2010 has placed Gujarat after 8 other Indian states in multiple dimensions of development e.g. health, education, income levels, etc. (see Hindustan Times, 16.12.2012 P.13) 

Mr. Guha further states in his article: “As a sociologist who treats the aggregate data of economists with scepticism, I myself do not believe that Gujarat is the best developed State in the country. Shortly after Modi was sworn in for his third term, I travelled through Saurashtra, whose polluted and arid lands spoke of a hard grind for survival. In the towns, water, sewage, road and transport facilities were in a pathetic state; in the countryside, the scarcity of natural resources was apparent, as pastoralists walked miles and miles in search of stubble for their goats. In terms of social and economic development, Gujarat is better than average, but not among the best. Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Tamilnadu are the three states which provide a dignified life to a decent percentage of their population”.

Business leaders no doubt claim that Modi has created a business friendly environment in Gujarat, but are businessmen the only people in India?

To those who talk of development of Gujarat under Modi I ask this question: Should the malnourished children of Gujarat eat the roads, electricity and factories which Modi has created?

I appeal to Indian people to consider all this if they are really concerned about the nation’s future, otherwise they may make the same mistake which Germans made in 1933.

The Left should learn about plain speaking from George Galloway

OWEN JONES in The Independent

Sunday 17 February 2013

The Right is better at communicating because it uses stories so much

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No politician is as demonised or as despised by the political and media establishment as George Galloway.

No politician is as demonised or as despised by the political and media establishment as George Galloway. It is only partly because he is afflicted with the disease of charismatic British left-wing political figures, which is to provide ample self-destructive material to feed his many enemies. He was mocked for a largely disastrous appearance on Celebrity Big Brother. He has made unacceptable comments about rape – “not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion” – that repulsed virtually everybody. He has made apparently sympathetic remarks about brutal dictators (although, unlike some of his detractors, he hasn’t sold them arms, funded them or even been paid by them).

A few weeks ago, he stood in Parliament to demand David Cameron explain why Britain was apparently intervening to save Mali from Islamist thugs, when it was supporting very similar groups in Syria. “Wherever there is a brutal Arab dictator in the world,” the Prime Minister spat back, “he will have the support of [Galloway].” All sides of the House roared their approval: and so the political elite closed ranks against a man sent by the people of Bradford to express their disgust with the Westminster club.

Surprising, then, to see the response he attracted on last week’s Question Time. Yes, when he first appeared on the nation’s TV screens, a debate raged on Twitter about whether he looked more like Dr No or Ming the Merciless. And yet he was met with repeated, resounding applause from the audience. The answer is clear. Labour’s representative on the panel, Mary Creagh, spoke the language of the political elite – technocratic, stripped of passion, with too much jargon and management speak, with phrases like “direction of travel”. But Galloway offered direct, clear answers; he spoke eloquently, and with language that resonated with non-politicos; he had enthusiasm, conviction and – to borrow a Tony Benn phrase – said what he meant and meant what he said.

A lesson for Labour, then. Even a figure with a long-haul flight’s worth of baggage can be cheered if they use populist language that connects with people and their experiences. But as New Labour remorselessly helped to professionalise politics, it bred a generation of “on-message” politicians with focus group-approved lines. Verbless sentences – “new challenges, new ideas”; macho cliches – “taking the tough decisions”; platitudes like “fairness”. A new breed of political Kreminologists were assembled to decipher insufferably dull speeches and articles by politicians.

In truth, the Right is better at communicating because it uses stories so much; the Left often rely on cold facts and statistics. But people connect better with stories. The classic right-wing story of our time is to compare the national deficit to a household budget. Any serious economist will tell you this is gibberish – which house has a money printing press, and will mum get sacked if young Dan stops spending his pocket money? – but it resonates with people. “Of course – if I’m in debt, why would I borrow even more money to get out of it?” voters think, even as the Government is forced to do exactly that because of the failures of austerity. The same goes with relentless examples of scroungers in mansions full of feral children and plasma TVs. A tiny unrepresentative minority are portrayed as the tip of an iceberg, scrubbing away the reality of unemployed and disabled people; but because it taps into a very small element of truth, it resonates.

Not that I’m saying the Left should indulge in casual dishonesty or inaccurate generalisations. But policies can seem pretty abstract until they relate to human beings. Take the poisoned welfare debate: the scrounger caricature needs to be smashed with stories of low-paid workers struggling to make ends meet; unemployed people desperately looking for work; disabled people having their state support removed – all of whom are having their benefits slashed.

“Facts and figures, when used, should create a moral point in a memorable way,” explains US political linguist George Lakoff. His point is that “framing” is key: that is having, an over-arching narrative, or story. When you start using the language of your opponent, you have lost. This is exactly what several senior Labour politicians have a habit of doing. The “debate” on the welfare state is a classic example. Management-consultants-turned-politicians like Liam Byrne accept political goalposts set by the Right, de facto accepting the “scrounger” or “skiver” caricatures, leaving them playing on territory where the Tories will always win.

New Labour ideologues always feared policies that sounded too left-wing, but the truth is most voters do not think in terms of “left” and “right”, they think in terms of issues that have to be addressed, with policies that are coherent, convincing and make sense with their own experiences. The Right have a habit of using moderate language to sell radical ideas; the Left would do well to learn from them. It needs to drop clinical terms: use the price of bread or vegetables or surging energy prices rather than “inflation”, for example. The Right often use hooks in the news – like the horrific cases of Karen Matthewsor Baby P – to make a wider point, as though they reveal an otherwise ignored truth about “the other Britain”. The Left certainly should not go to such crass or tasteless lengths, but the principle remains.

The Right have turned having outriders into an artform. Take the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a big business-funded hard-right lobby group posturing  as the voice of people who pay taxes. They float radical right-wing ideas impossible for a mainstream Conservative politician to propose. In doing so, they shift the goalposts of debate to the Right. “I wouldn’t go quite as far as that, however...” a Tory MP can say, making a previously radical idea seem moderate.

The appetite for left-wing populism is greater than it has been for a generation. Much of the Establishment – from banks to the media – have been discredited by scandal. Free-market capitalism is a wreck. But the Left is a long way from learning how to put its case. Gorgeous George is one of the most charismatic politicians of our time, but also one of the most divisive, and still manages to win over the audience. You don’t have to like him; but, if you want to change the world, you do have to learn from him.