The Murthys and the Maoists

HARISH KHARE in the hindu

  

Between the relentless demands of corporate leaders and the capacity of the underclass to match the state’s violence, India needs a vision for itself that is morally defensible.

In the first week of 2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh allowed himself to be persuaded to accept N.R. Narayana Murthy’s invitation to travel to Mumbai to preside over a function to give away the Infosys Social Science Prizes. The Prime Minister even agreed to attend a dinner that Mr. Murthy wanted to host in his honour after the function at the Taj Mahal Hotel. So far so good. A few days before the event, there was a massive behind-the-scenes dust up between the Prime Minister’s staff and Mr. Murthy. The rub was that Mr. Murthy thought that since he was paying for the dinner, he had a right to dictate not only the guest list but even the seating arrangement. However, there is something called protocol and the dignity of constitutional offices. If the Governor and the Chief Minister of Maharashtra were to be at the dinner, they had to necessarily be seated on either side of the Prime Minister, whereas the host thought he ought to be sitting next to Dr. Singh. Mr. Murthy, however, was not one to be so easily rebuffed. As soon as the first course was served, he sought to convert the evening into a grand intellectual conversation and proceeded to invite his son to open the bowling. And the young son wanted to know from the Prime Minister what the government proposed to do so that young men like him could come back to India.

All this is recalled because the young man is now back in India, as executive assistant to his father, who in turn has allowed himself to be persuaded to take charge of Infosys again. Nepotism, did you say? No; no sir. A private company is free to hire anyone. Fair enough, but not exactly.

Mr. Murthy is not just a private businessman, minding his own business. He has often sought to inject himself into the public domain, telling a thing or two to the political class about how to behave. He has been serenaded as an “iconic” entrepreneur. During the heyday of civil society triumphalism two years ago, there was even a suggestion that Mr. Murthy be made President of India. That was the time when India’s corporate leaders thought they had the ethical credentials to write open letters to the Prime Minister and preach virtues of good governance.

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Like other corporate leaders, the Murthys, father and son, represent an unrepentant ideological approach to the Indian state, its morals, manners and policies and purpose, but they are not the only ones to do so. The Maoists — who once again made their presence felt last month when they massacred the Congress top political leadership in Chhattisgarh — too have a list of ideological claims of their own on the Indian state. Both groups are relentless; both are unforgiving.

The May 25 attack was the boldest ideological challenge that the Maoists have posed to the country’s political leadership. Violence makes a demand on all stakeholders. It was no surprise, then, that as soon as news trickled in of the attack on the Congress convoy in Bastar, the party’s vice-president, Rahul Gandhi, should have taken off for Raipur. It was a commendable journey of political solidarity. It would be interesting to find out if the bloody massacre in Sukma has helped Mr. Gandhi re-set his ideological compass.

Let it be recalled that this is the same Mr. Gandhi who had allowed himself to be persuaded in August 2010 to travel to the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, where he told the adivasis that he was their “sipahi,” or soldier in Delhi. Only two days before that visit, the Central government had pointedly withdrawn environmental permission to the Vedanta Group to mine the area for bauxite. For good measure, the young Gandhi had proclaimed that development meant that “every voice, including that of the poor and adivasis, should be heard.” It would be nice to know if Mr. Gandhi has resolved his ideological equivocations in the aftermath of the Chhattisgarh violence.

For two decades the Indian political class has gone about believing that “development” and “growth” are innocuous and painless. The prevailing orthodoxy insists that the Indian state has one and only one business: to get out of the businessman’s way. There is an unwillingness to acknowledge the basic nature of power: irrespective of its political arrangement, every society plays host to a ceaseless struggle over who gains what at whose expense. Growth and development invariably produce dislocation and dispossession. Good politics in a democratic idiom can go a long way in ameliorating the alienation and anger.

PRO-POOR INITIATIVES

The UPA’s approach has been to let the corporate marauders run amok while salving its democratic conscience with a slew of pro-poor, aam aadmi-centric initiatives. In the process, for the past nine years, the country has periodically been treated to a mock controversy over whether Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council was usurping the government’s space and prerogatives, or, when this or that NAC member walks out in a huff, whether the government is not being sufficiently pro-poor. The UPA’s approach neither mollifies the corporate buccaneers nor satisfies the poor and the disadvantaged.

The corporates, however, have sized up the divided political leadership across the spectrum. They have finessed their tactics. If a government is slow to give them the policy breaks that they demand, the democratic space and its anarchic habits will be creatively used to unleash civil unrest on this or that pretext. There is always the age old anger against “corruption” to be tapped. And, as it were, one can always rely on an auditor or a judge to step in to divert attention away from corporate misdemeanours of the most serious kind.

PINCER MOVEMENT

No wonder, then, that the Indian state is caught in a pincer movement. From one side, the ideologues and practitioners of “growth” are unrelenting in their insistence that the country’s natural resources and citizens’ savings be made available to them for exploitation; and, from the other direction, the state is confronted by a vast underclass that is unwilling to see any reason to sacrifice its land and forests so that some others can enjoy the benefit of “progress.” Just as the corporates have served sufficient notice that they have no qualms in taking the state on and causing misery to its political functionaries, the underclass, too, is willing to match the state’s capacity for violence, bullet for bullet.

Both the Murthys and the Maoists are forcing the Indian state to take a stand. For too long, the Indian political leadership has refused to confront the Grand Conundrum: for whom does the state exist, whom does the state seek to reward and whom does it strive to protect against whom. The UPA leadership has neither the appetite for a brutal repression of the angry tribal, nor is it likely to be able to lure the Naxalites into a democratic engagement without a demonstrable capacity to stand up to corporate greed. A kind of alternative arrangement is already on the drawing board: the Gujarat model of no dissent, no trade unions, no civil society, no Medha Patkar, no tribal resistance, no protests.

The great sociologist, Edward Shils, once observed that every society needs grandiose visions and austere standards; the political and intellectual leadership is obliged to prod society to its own historical ideals — “elements which must be recurrently realized without even being definitively realizable, once and for all.” Perhaps we should be thankful that both the Murthys and the Maoists are inviting us to find a vision for India that is morally defensible.

IMF admits: we failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece

Athens officials react to report with glee, saying it confirms that the price extracted for country's bailout package was too high

• Larry Elliott, Phillip Inman and Helena Smith in Athens
• The Guardian, Wednesday 5 June 2013 23.05 BST

IMF chief Christine Lagarde. Greek media recently quoted her describing 2011 as a 'lost year', partly because of IMF mistakes. Photograph: Stephane Mahe/Reuters

The International Monetary Fund admitted it had failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece as the Washington-based organisation catalogued mistakes made during the bailout of the stricken eurozone country.

In an assessment of the rescue conducted jointly with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European commission, the IMF said it had been forced to override its normal rules for providing financial assistance in order to put money into Greece.

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Fund officials had severe doubts about whether Greece's debt would be sustainable even after the first bailout was provided in May 2010 and only agreed to the plan because of fears of contagion.

While it succeeded in keeping Greece in the eurozone, the report admitted the bailout included notable failures.

"Market confidence was not restored, the banking system lost 30% of its deposits and the economy encountered a much deeper than expected recession with exceptionally high unemployment."

In Athens, officials reacted with barely disguised glee to the report, saying it confirmed that the price exacted for the €110bn (£93bn) emergency package was too high for a country beset by massive debts, tax evasion and a large black economy."

Under the weight of such measures – applied across the board and hitting the poorest hardest – the economy, they said, was always bound to dive into an economic death spiral.

"For too long they [troika officials] refused to accept that the programme was simply off-target by hiding behind our failure to implement structural reforms," said one insider. "Now that reforms are being applied they've had to accept the bitter truth."

The IMF said: "The Fund approved an exceptionally large loan to Greece under an stand-by agreement in May 2010 despite having considerable misgivings about Greece's debt sustainability. The decision required the Fund to depart from its established rules on exceptional access. However, Greece came late to the Fund and the time available to negotiate the programme was short."

But having agreed that there were exceptional circumstances that warranted the biggest bailout in the Fund's history, officials were taken aback by the much bigger than expected slump in the Greek economy. The country is now in its fifth year of recession and the economy has contracted by 17%. The IMF thought it would contract by just 5.5%.

In the evaluation of the package provided in 2010, the IMF said: "Given the danger of contagion, the report judges the programme to have been a necessity, even though the Fund had misgivings about debt sustainability.

"There was, however, a tension between the need to support Greece and the concern that debt was not sustainable with high probability (a condition for exceptional access).

"In response, the exceptional access criterion was amended to lower the bar for debt sustainability in systemic cases. The baseline still showed debt to be sustainable, as is required for all Fund programmes."

In the event, the report added, the Fund was open to criticism for making economic projections that were too optimistic."

While the report says a deep recession was unavoidable, it is critical of senior officials in Brussels and European capitals who said Greece would fare better outside the euro. Concerns that Greece could be ejected from the euro and return to the drachma intensified an already febrile situation.

"Confidence was also badly affected by domestic social and political turmoil and talk of a Greek exit from the euro by European policymakers," it said.

Brussels also struggled to co-ordinate its policies with the ECB in Frankfurt, according to the report.

"The Fund made decisions in a structured fashion, while decision-making in the eurozone spanned heads of state and multiple agencies and was more fragmented."

The Greek media recently quoted IMF managing director Christine Lagarde describing 2011 as a "lost year" partly because of miscalculations by the EU and IMF.

The authoritative Kathimerini newspaper said the report identified a number of "mistakes" including the failure of creditors to agree to a restructuring of Greece's debt burden earlier – a failure that had had a disastrous effect on its macroeconomic assumptions.

"From what we understand the IMF singles out the EU for criticism in its handling of the problem more than anything else," said one well-placed official at the Greek finance ministry.

He added: "But acknowledgement of these mistakes will help us. It has already helped cut some slack and it will help us get what we really need which is a haircut on our debt next year."

In the digital economy, we'll soon all be working for free – and I refuse

The digital economy operates as a kind of sophisticated 
X Factor: someone will make it, but most won't – and the real loser is society

• 
• • Suzanne Moore
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 5 June 2013 20.00 BST

Mary Portas, whose company offered a week-long internship at a Westminster school auction. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex Features

Never mind checking your privilege. Flaunting those enviable privileges is where it's at. Go to any of our big cities and cash will be flowing through ponced-up restaurants nestled between Poundland and the nail bars. They even wave it in our faces.

Already at a private school that charges £7,000 a term? Then you must need a hand up the ladder. So let Mater and Pater bid as internships for Mary Portas or Fabergé are auctioned off. Not so much getting a foot in the door as crowbarring it in with money. Theirs is a world in which austerity remains an abstract idea.

Meanwhile, we have more than a million Neets in the country – young people not in work, education or training. They could do with a helping hand but they have somehow missed the boat. It hardly matters to them that the boat was the Titanic. Their older brothers and sisters have gone to college but are still in a world of part-time pub jobs. They don't have proper salaries and therefore no chance of mortgages. And, of course, in other European countries the situation is even worse.

At this point it is customary to blame the banksters. Or at least the politicians. But there is another group partly responsible for the parlous state in which we find ourselves: the digi-heads of Silicon Valley who told us everything could be kinda free. And easy. In some virtual paradise.

But it's not lovely being asked to work for free, whether you are 18 or 48. On the popular free app known as Facebook, the great music writer Barney Hoskyns put up a manifestothat struck home: he asked "freelance content providers" – be they actors, writers, musicians or photographers – to withdraw from unpaid labour. (I did that a while back – except, of course, for causes I believe in.)

But this is about more than that. It's about technology taking jobs, about what it can and can't provide. Hoskyns quotes Jaron Lanier's new book Who Owns The Future?, in which he argues: "Capitalism only works if there are enough successful people to be customers." Lanier, a computer scientist and a musician, is rightly called a visionary because he sees what is happening, when everything is live-streamed but no one knows the name of the person who made the music any more. Content is free.

Governments play up the idea that a digital future creates jobs rather than eats them up. Culturally, there is now a fantasy world of start-ups and blogs and YouTube TV where a very few people manage to make money but most work simply for "experience".

In an interview with Scott Timberg for Salon, Lanier gives a potent example: Kodak used to have "140,000 really good middle-class employees. Instagram has 13 employees, period." He describes a winner-takes-all world, with a tiny number of successful people and everyone else living on hope. "There is not a middle-class hump. It's an all-or-nothing society."

We can shrug and say it's just another industrial revolution, a move from formal to informal work, the whole "portfolio" number. But where is the social contract, then, if it "doesn't tide you over when you're sick and it doesn't let you raise kids and it doesn't let you grow old"?

The implosion of the middle class produces instability. We cannot all be freelancers for ever. Freelance work, like interning, is fine if you have the funds to manage without a regular income. That is, if you are already wealthy. But the digital economy operates as a kind of sophisticated X Factor. Someone will make it, sure. For more than 15 seconds even, maybe. But most won't. This is why Lanier says the internet may destroy the middle classes, the people who can't outspend the elite. And without that middle group, we cannot maintain a democracy.

He sees musicians and artists and journalists as canaries in the mineshaft of this new economy. Who will pay them? "Is this the precedent we want to follow for our doctors and lawyers and nurses and everybody else? Because, eventually, technology will get to everybody."

Education and healthcare farmed out to the bright-eyed tech nerds? It's already happening. We are already missing the human touch in our hospitals and schools. Gove'snew iPad-levels still cut out the creative subjects from the core – and just when we need the innovations they bring the most. Growth – the holy grail, with nearly half of all European youth unemployed – is impeded when technology eats into job security and therefore has repercussions for pensions and benefits. Those without salaried work cannot hope to support an older generation.

The creative industries, first music and now journalism, saw these changes coming too late. My children have been brought up in a world where they have to compete with those who will work for free. It is only a matter of time until we will all be asked to do the same. And I refuse.

For what is being eroded is not only actual wages but also the very idea that work must be paid for. Huge profits are being made from these so-called opportunities for our youth. But they are, in fact, the exploitation of insecurity. This is not about being anti-technology. It is about being pro-human. Technology is here and it's often great. But we must find a sustainable way of using it so that the stuff we do or make is paid for in living and not virtual wages.

No Place to Hide

Editorial in The Hindu

The tag line for India’s much-acclaimed transparency law could well be: good for others, not for me. The Supreme Court loftily decreed the right to information to be a part of the fundamental right to free expression. It nonetheless resisted the application of the Right to Information Act, 2005, to itself, and went in appeal to a lower court against a decision in this regard by the Central Information Commission. The apex court has since relented somewhat and placed the assets of its judges in the public domain. It might be a harder battle to bring political parties to account judging by early reactions to Monday’s CIC order deeming them to be public authorities under the RTI Act. Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, for one, was clear that the law could not be allowed to “run riot,” whatever that means. In the past, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has weighed in on the side of privacy in the RTI debate, arguing that the law in practice had become too intrusive. Significantly, the Association for Democratic Reforms which petitioned the CIC on bringing political parties under the RTI Act, has made the opposite case: that lack of scrutiny had led to parties being able to accumulate unexplained wealth running into hundreds of crores of rupees.

The ADR argued that political parties must be treated as public authorities because they receive substantial government support in the form of free air time on Doordarshan and All India Radio during elections, discounted rents for party offices and large income-tax exemptions. The organisation calculated that government subsidies for the two largest parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, alone amounted to Rs. 255 crore. Despite the official largesse, political parties insisted that they were not public authorities and managed not to reveal the source for a large part of their incomes by showing them as small voluntary donations exempt from disclosure. The CIC accepted the petitioner’s contention, and went on to note that the “nature of duties performed by political parties points towards their public character.” There is a double irony here. The BJP, which has threatened to make repatriation of black money an election issue, refused to entertain ADR’s RTI application seeking details of its wealth and assets. The UPA birthed the RTI Act with much fanfare and the legislation holds pride of place in its list of achievements. Yet, thanks to the RTI being harnessed for unearthing scams, the government has found itself debunking a law that is its own creation. With the CIC’s ruling, the political class is bound to unite against a law that has been hugely empowering for the common person.

Corporate power has turned Britain into a corrupt state

Westminster lobbying is the least of it. Revolving-door colonisation of public life is a corrosive threat to democracy

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 4 June 2013 22.20 BST

'Hector Sants, head of the Financial Services Authority in charge of regulating banks until last year, who joined Barclays six months later. But he's only one of a stream of regulators who have made similar moves.' Photograph: Micha Theiner/City AM / Rex Features

If you're under attack, create a diversion. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have been floundering as the spectre of Westminster sleaze has returned to haunt them. Four years after the MPs' expenses scandal engulfed British politics, yet another alleged scam has been exposed. First a Tory MP and then a clutch of greedy peers were caught on camera apparently agreeing to take cash from journalists posing as representatives of foreign companies. "Make that £12,000 a month," grinned Jack Cunningham, Tony Blair's former "enforcer".

Cameron and Clegg had promised to deal with parliamentary influence-peddling, and done nothing about it. So on Monday they came up with a plan: to crack down on trade unions. Wrapped in a panic bill to set up a register of lobbyists are to be powers to police union membership lists and cut union spending in election campaigns. The first will make what is already the almost impossible task of holding a legally watertight strike ballot still harder. The second is a direct attack on Labour funding.

The contemptuous class cynicism of the coalition leaders' response takes some beating. Not only are unions the most accountable and only democratic part of the political funding system; but by including anti-union clauses in the new bill, Cameron and Clegg want to ensure Labour's opposition – all the better to change the subject and wrongfoot the opposition in the process.

Even Conservative MPs were embarrassed at the crude chicanery of it. Just as absurd is the fact that the register would have done nothing to prevent the latest lobbying scams – except help the puffed-up parliamentarians avoid getting stung in the first place. And the new law would apply only to lobbying firms, while directly employed corporate lobbyists would be exempt. Add to that the failure to bring elections to the House of Lords, and there will certainly be more jobs-for-life cronies cashing in with corporate clients in the years to come.

The truth is that parliamentary sleaze merchants are small fry in the corporate lobbying game. Before he became prime minister, Cameron predicted that secret corporate lobbying was "the next big scandal waiting to happen", adding: "We all know how it works." As a former lobbyist himself, he certainly did – and still does.

Cameron's own election adviser, the Australian Lynton Crosby, is a lobbyist – for tobacco, alcohol, oil and gas companies. Which is why the prime minister came under attack for dropping curbs on cigarette packaging and alcohol pricing. His party treasurer Peter Cruddas resigned after offering access to Cameron for a £250,000 party donation. His defence secretary, Liam Fox, resigned over his relationship with the lobbyist Adam Werritty.

But lobbying doesn't begin to cover the extent of corporate influence. More than ever the Tory party is in thrall to the City, with over half its income from bankers and hedge fund and private equity financiers. Peers who have made six-figure donations have been rewarded with government jobs.

But the real corruption that has eaten into the heart of British public life is the tightening corporate grip on government and public institutions – not just by lobbyists, but by the politicians, civil servants, bankers and corporate advisers who increasingly swap jobs, favours and insider information, and inevitably come to see their interests as mutual and interchangeable. The doors are no longer just revolving but spinning, and the people charged with protecting the public interest are bought and sold with barely a fig leaf of regulation.

Take David Hartnett, head of tax at HM Revenue & Customs until last year and the man whose "sweetheart deals" allowed Starbucks and Vodafone to avoid paying billions in tax. He now works for the giant City accountancy firm Deloitte, which works for Vodafone. The two-way traffic between the big four auditing firms and government is legendary: staff are sent on secondments to HMRC and the political parties and then return to devise new loopholes for corporate clients.

Then there's Hector Sants, head of the Financial Services Authority in charge of regulating banks until last year, who joined Barclays six months later. But he's only one of a stream of regulators who have made similar moves. The same goes for the 3,500 military officers and defence ministry officials who have taken up jobs in arms companies in the past 16 years – as it does for top civil servants and intelligence officials. The cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, is the living embodiment of the revolving door, having moved effortlessly from the Treasury to Blair's office to the investment bank Morgan Stanley and back to work for Cameron.

That's before you get to the politicians. City directorships in opposition used to be a Tory preserve. But after New Labour embraced corporate power it became a cross-party affair. Blair is in a class of his own, of course, raking in £20m a year from banks and autocratic governments; but he is followed closely by dozens of New Labour ministers who moved out of government into lucrative corporate jobs, often for firms hustling for contracts from their former departments.

It defies rationality to believe that the prospect of far better paid jobs in the private sector doesn't influence the decisions of ministers and officials – or isn't used by corporations to shape policy. Who can seriously doubt that politicians were encouraged to champion light touch regulation before the crash by the lure and lobbying of the banks, as well as by an overweening ideology?

Privatisation has extended the web of lubricated relationships, as a mushrooming £80bn business uses jobs and cash to foist a policy that is less accountable, lowers standards and is routinely more expensive on the public realm. When 142 peers linked to companies involved in private healthcare were able to vote on last year's health bill that opened the way to sweeping outsourcing – and the City consultancy McKinsey helped draw it up – it's not hard to see why.

Britain is now an increasingly corrupt country at its highest levels – not in the sense of directly bribing officials, of course, and it's almost entirely legal. But our public life and democracy is now profoundly compromised by its colonisation. Corporate and financial power have merged into the state.

That vice can be broken, but it demands radical change: closure of the revolving doors; a ban on ministers and civil servants working for regulated private companies; a halt to the corrosive tide of privatisation; and a downward squeeze on boardroom pay to reduce the corporate allure. It's going to need a democratic backlash.

Don’t think you have to shout loudest to find happiness in life

TERENCE BLACKER in The Independent

 

Monday 3 June 2013

The role models here are ruthless figures like Sir Alan Sugar or the sneering bosses on Dragon's Den. There is, boys and girls, another way - one that shuns the limelight

In pursuit of the great god Growth, the Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, has been urging a new spirit of thrust and entrepreneurial hunger upon girls and young women.

Following the publication of a report by the Women’s Business Council, which estimated that if a million more women become entrepreneurs, the nation’s productivity would increase by 10 per cent in 17 years, the Government is to take action. An advice pack for girls is to be sent to all primary schools.

“A vital part of future career success is the aspirations that girls have early in their lives,” Ms Miller has said, and that sounds sensible enough. Who, after all, would not want members of the next generation to live up to their potential?

If only it were not for the niggling suspicion that the Government has a particular and limited view of what constitutes aspiration. Career success is increasingly perceived in the way it is presented on television – as a matter of power, money and visibility. The aspirational models for schoolchildren are ruthless, kickass bosses like Alan Sugar or Mary Portas or the panel of smug, sneering bullies on Dragons’ Den.

There is, girls and boys, another way. Politicians and other public figures may find it hard to believe, but the greatest achievements are not necessarily those reflected by fame, visibility and power over the lives of others. Some people, women and men, not only derive more satisfaction working away from the limelight but often accomplish more than those who are centre stage.

I’ve been reminded recently of how much can be achieved by a subtle, indirect, collaborative kind of power when reading a newly published memoir, Fiz: and some Theatre Giants, by Eleanor Fazan, a director and choreographer who is something of a legendary figure in the theatre but is relatively – and contentedly – unknown in the wider world. Now in her eighties, “Fiz”, as she is known, has had an extraordinary career working at a high level with an impressive, varied list of brilliantly talented, often difficult men, from the music-hall star George Robey to Herbert von Karajan and including, among others, Lindsay Anderson, Alan Bennett, John Schlesinger , Barry Humphries and Laurence Olivier.

It was Fiz who, in 1961, directed Beyond the Fringe, turning a 55-minute student revue at the Edinburgh Fringe into a full-length show which triumphed in the West End and Broadway. I first met her when I was writing the biography of Willie Donaldson, who produced Beyond the Fringe, and discovered that she had written unpublished essays, now included in Fiz, about working with Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore, and a portrait of Willie himself.

What was striking about her insights into these complicated men was that they were utterly individual, and often at odds with the accepted view, but always perceptive and interesting.

The extraordinary career described in Eleanor Fazan’s book – a fascinating theatrical memoir in its own right, incidentally – has relevance to Maria Miller’s campaign to raise the aspirations of girls at primary school. Without headlines or shows of aggression and ego, Fiz has clearly contributed more to theatre, dance, opera and cinema than many of the show-boating stars who are now household names. “I have always been drawn towards those who needed to kick up, those who just couldn’t toe the party line,” she writes, and that strength and bloody-mindedness has served her as well as the stars with whom she has worked.

Not everyone finds professional fulfilment being a boss, and pretending that they do, or even that their role is less important than those who get the attention and publicity is misleading and unkind. There is certainly a case for getting primary school-children to aim high when thinking of their futures, but presenting success solely in terms of winning with sharp elbows and competitiveness, as if everyone should aim to be like the deluded, over-ambitious idiots on The Apprentice, is unhelpful.

Girls and boys could learn a more nuanced lesson in career fulfilment: that it is not necessarily those with the loudest voices and on the biggest salaries who achieve most, both for themselves and for the big world beyond.

The shooting of Ibragim Todashev: is the lawlessness of Obama's drone policy coming home?

Once a state gets used to abusing the rights of foreigners in distant lands, it's almost inevitable it will import the habit

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 3 June 2013 20.50 BST

‘Under the Obama doctrine, innocent until proved guilty has mutated to innocent until proved dead.' Illustration by Daniel Pudles

Did the FBI execute Ibragim Todashev? He appears to have been shot seven times while being interviewed at home in Orlando, Florida, about his connection to one of the Boston bombing suspects. Among the shots was the assassin's hallmark: a bullet to the back of the head. What kind of an interview was it?

An irregular one. There was no lawyer present. It was not recorded. By the time Todashev was shot, he had apparently been interrogated by three agents for five hours. And then? Who knows? First, we were told, he lunged at them with a knife. How he acquired it, five hours into a police interview, was not explained. How he posed such a threat while recovering from a knee operation also remains perplexing.

At first he drew the knife while being interviewed. Then he acquired it during a break from the interview. Then it ceased to be a knife and became a sword, then a pipe, then a metal pole, then a broomstick, then a table, then a chair. In one account all the agents were in the room at the time of the attack; in another, all but one had mysteriously departed, leaving the remaining officer to face his assailant alone.

If – and it remains a big if – this was an extrajudicial execution, it was one of hundreds commissioned by US agencies since Barack Obama first took office. The difference in this case is that it took place on American soil. Elsewhere, suspects are bumped off without even the right to the lawyerless interview Ibragim Todashev was given.

In his speech two days after Todashev was killed, President Obama maintained that "our commitment to constitutional principles has weathered every war". But he failed to explain which constitutional principles permit him to authorise the killing of people in nations with which the US is not at war. When his attorney general, Eric Holder, tried to do so last year, he got himself into a terrible mess, ending with the extraordinary claim that "'due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same … the constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process". So what is due process if it doesn't involve the courts? Whatever the president says it is?

Er, yes. In the same speech Obama admitted for the first time that four American citizens have been killed by US drone strikes in other countries. In the next sentence, he said: "I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any US citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process." This suggests he believes that the legal rights of those four people had been respected before they were killed.

Given that they might not even have known that they were accused of the alleged crimes for which they were executed, that they had no opportunities to contest the charges, let alone be granted judge or jury, this suggests that the former law professor's interpretation of constitutional rights is somewhat elastic. If Obama and his nameless advisers say someone is a terrorist, he stands convicted and can be put to death.

Left hanging in his speech is the implication that non-US citizens may be killed without even the pretence of due process. The many hundreds killed by drone strikes (who, civilian or combatant, retrospectively become terrorists by virtue of having been killed in a US anti-terrorism operation) are afforded no rights even in principle.

As the process of decision-making remains secret, as the US government refuses even to acknowledge – let alone to document or investigate – the killing by its drones of people who patently had nothing to do with terrorism or any other known crime, miscarriages of justice are not just a risk emerging from the deployment of the president's kill list. They are an inevitable outcome. Under the Obama doctrine, innocent until proved guilty has mutated to innocent until proved dead.

The president made his rejection of habeas corpus and his assumption of a godlike capacity for judgment explicit later in the speech, while discussing another matter. How, he wondered, should the US deal with detainees in Guantánamo Bay "who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks, but who cannot be prosecuted – for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is inadmissible in a court of law"? If the evidence has been compromised or is inadmissible, how can he know that they have participated? He can suspect, he can allege, but he cannot know until his suspicion has been tested in a court of law.

Global powers have an antisocial habit of bringing their work back home. The British government imported some of the methods it used against its colonial subjects to suppress domestic protests and strikes. Once an administrative class becomes accustomed to treating foreigners as if they have no rights, and once the domestic population broadly accepts their justifications, it is almost inevitable that the habit migrates from one arena into another. If hundreds of people living abroad can be executed by American agents on no more than suspicion, should we be surprised if residents of the United States began to be treated the same way?