The Peninsula Foundation

Category: Opinion/Commentary

  • Colonial exploitation included heritage theft, and that continues to this day

    Colonial exploitation included heritage theft, and that continues to this day

    Museums and private collectors in the West have prided themselves on the vast collections of heritage treasures, antiquities, and archaeological and epigraphic treasures from across the world. In truth, these are stolen treasures from the non-western world enabled by colonialism and imperialism. It is time the victim nations work towards global policies to ensure these treasures are returned to their original owners. This is truly a massive public policy challenge in global governance and for a fair, equitable, multi-polar world. Professor M A Kalam looks at the continuing theft of India’s heritage treasures.

     

     

     

    The whole idea of establishing a colony was to exploit the resources there and enrich the home coffers. And all colonials—irrespective of whether they were British, Danes, Dutch, Italians, Belgians, Portuguese, Spanish, or American—indulged in this exercise and over a period turned it into a fine art. As ill luck would have it, a host of countries in many parts of the world were less developed than these colonials, particularly in terms of technology, but were very rich and well-endowed in terms of resources of various kinds. Though they possessed natural wealth, they lacked adequate technology and hence were not in a position to resist the onslaught and machinations of different kinds of the technologically-advanced colonials. The resource-rich countries were, in the main, in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Highly developed naval vessels and a state-driven overpowering desire to explore resources in different regions of the world enabled the colonials to adopt different strategies for befriending and subsequently subjugating the peoples of the resource-rich areas.

    Genesis Of Exploitation

    Because of her tremendous naval power, Britain spread its net of exploration quite wide in South Asia and Africa. In India, the British came in as traders established the East India Company and then gradually started flexing their arms and took control of administration and became the rulers of the country. Though they allowed some pockets to be “ruled” by rajas, maharajas, nizams and nawabs, these provinces were not independent in the real sense of the term but were virtually servile to the British, if not their minions, in many ways. That is how the genesis of exploitation took shape in India. Subsequently, there were myriad ways in which colonial exploitation occurred—physical exploitation of the people including sexual abuse and exploitation of labour was one of the forms of that

    Other ways of exploitation were the draining of different kinds of agricultural and forest resources; these included: jute, cotton, sugar, tea, coffee and wheat. The goods developed in British factories were sold back in India for rich benefits. Also, commercial crops like tea, coffee, indigo, opium, cotton, jute, sugarcane and oilseed were introduced and these had impacted their profits tremendously but had different environmental implications in different regions of the country, as plantations always do, due the exercise of clear felling of the forests in almost all cases of extensive plantation activities.

    Repatriating The Kohinoor

    To top it all, regarding exploitation, was the brazen way in which India’s heritage wealth, antiquities and artefacts, were exported to their home bases, by the colonials, to unabashedly adorn their own museums and galleries. Many of these artefacts were stolen without any hesitation. Today it is being argued that one of the most famous diamonds in the world, the Kohinoor, was not necessarily snatched from the people of India but was offered on a platter to the British as part of the peace treaty of Lahore by the king of Punjab Maharaja Dalip Singh. Arm-twisting gets another name in diplomatic parlance—offer. And the British have the temerity to continue to adorn their crown with the Kohinoor though they refrained from its display on the head of the recently crowned queen, the wife of King Charles III during the latter’s coronation, in a rare diplomatic courtesy, apparently not to provoke the sensibility of the Indian delegation attending the coronation.

    As Rishi Sunak is more loyal than the queen, there is no chance of him taking the initiative in repatriating to India the Kohinoor or the innumerable other artefacts that were stolen/snatched from India and today adorn the British Museum and many other of their galleries.

    Last week the Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture headed by YSR Congress MP Vijay Sai Reddy, adopted the Report ‘Heritage Theft – The Illegal Trade in Indian Antiquities and the Challenges of Retrieving and Safeguarding Our Tangible Cultural Heritage’. The Committee conferred with the Culture Ministry officials who apparently think that while efforts were being made to bring back the stolen antiquities from different foreign locations, the case of Kohinoor diamond is “contentious since it was surrendered by Maharaja Dalip Singh as part of the 1849 peace treaty with the British”.

    Reversing Colonial Exploitation

    To recapitulate and also to highlight the way in which different forms of exploitation occurred, we can argue that in the first instance, it was human exploitation wherein there was sexual abuse, killings and decimation of populations. The second way was the exploitation of the agricultural and natural resources which can be conceived of as resources that were “consumables” and “non-durables”. The third was the exploitation of the heritage wealth that falls in the realm of non-consumables and durables.

    So, today, when we explore measures that could be thought of in terms of “getting back” things and reversing the impact that colonial exploitation had on India, we can think of some strategies: in the case of the first two, that is human exploitation and the draining of consumables, there can only be reparations if the Britishers’ conscience pricks them enough; or at least unqualified apologies. But in the case of the third, that is the loss of heritage wealth, there can, and should indeed be repatriation of the stolen antiquities.

    A host of “art dealers” in different parts of the country are smuggling out artefacts and antiquities from India, particularly from ancient temples, and at times from museums, on a large scale. Only a fraction of this comes to light.

    Now, talking about the loss of heritage wealth, we also have to bring into the picture the fact that it is happening, quite rampantly, even today though the colonials left the shores years back on India becoming independent. A host of “art dealers” (read thieves) in different parts of the country are smuggling out artefacts and antiquities from India, particularly from ancient temples, and at times from museums, on a large scale. Only a fraction of this comes to light when these items are exhibited in galleries and museums in different parts of the world; often times these are hidden in private collections. India is trying to regain some of this heritage wealth but there seem to be obstacles, at times quite unsurmountable, of the diplomatic and other kinds. Let us hope the Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture succeeds in its exertions.

     

    A version of this article was published earlier in moneycontrol.com

    Feature Image Credit: Kohinoor Diamond in Queen’s Crown, now safely kept in the Tower of London. smithsonianmag.com 

    Picture of Idols: The three 15th century ‘panchaloga’ idols of Shri Rama, Sita, and Laxman were stolen in 1978 from a Vijaynagara era temple (15th Century) in Anandamangalam village in Tamilnadu, India. These were identified and finally restored to India by the UK government in 2020. www.bbc.com

     

  • Towards a Conversation Across Civilisations

    Towards a Conversation Across Civilisations

    Alongside the BRICS, the construction of regional trade and development projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that are not controlled by the Western states or Western-dominated institutions – including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (2001) the Belt and Road Initiative (2013), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (2011), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (2022) – heralds the emergence of a new international economic order.

     

    It has become increasingly difficult to engage in reasonable discussions about the state of the world amid rising international tensions. The present environment of global instability and conflict has emerged over the course of the past fifteen years driven by, on the one hand, the growing weakness of the principal North Atlantic states, led by the United States – which we call the West – and, on the other, the increasing assertion of large developing countries, exemplified by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). This group of states, along with several others, have built the material conditions for their own development agendas, including for the next generation of technology, a sector that had previously been the monopoly of Western states and firms through the World Trade Organisation’s intellectual property rights regime. Alongside the BRICS, the construction of regional trade and development projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that are not controlled by the Western states or Western-dominated institutions – including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (2001) the Belt and Road Initiative (2013), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (2011), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (2022) – heralds the emergence of a new international economic order.

    Since the world financial crisis of 2007–08, the United States and its North Atlantic allies have become acutely aware that their hegemonic status in the world has deteriorated. This decline is the consequence of three key forms of overreach: first, military overreach through both enormous military expenditure and warfare; second, financial overreach caused by the rampant waste of social wealth into the unproductive financial sector along with the widespread imposition of sanctions, dollar hegemony, and control of international financial mechanisms (such as SWIFT); and, third, economic overreach, due to the investment and tax strike of a minuscule section of the world’s population, who are solely fixated on filling their already immense private coffers. This overreach has led to the fragility of the Western states, which are less able to exercise their authority around the world. In reaction to their own weakness and the new developments in the Global South, the United States has led its allies in launching a comprehensive pressure campaign against what it considers to be its ‘near peer rivals’, namely China and Russia. This hostile foreign policy, which includes a trade war, unilateral sanctions, aggressive diplomacy, and military operations, is now commonly known as the New Cold War.

    In Western societies today, any effort to promote a balanced and reasonable conversation about China and Russia, or indeed about the leading states in the developing world, is relentlessly attacked by state, corporate, and media institutions as disinformation, propaganda, and foreign interference.

    In addition to these tangible measures, information warfare is a key element of the New Cold War. In Western societies today, any effort to promote a balanced and reasonable conversation about China and Russia, or indeed about the leading states in the developing world, is relentlessly attacked by state, corporate, and media institutions as disinformation, propaganda, and foreign interference. Even established facts, let alone alternative perspectives, are treated as matters of dispute. Consequently, it has become virtually impossible to engage in constructive discussions about the changing world order, the new trade and development regimes, or the urgent matters which require global cooperation such as climate change, poverty, and inequality, without being dismissed. In this context, dialogue between intellectuals in countries such as China with their counterparts in the West has broken down. Similarly, dialogue between intellectuals in countries of the Global South and China has also been hampered by the New Cold War, which has strained the already weak communication channels within the developing world. As a result, the conceptual landscape, terms of reference, and key debates that are taking place within China are almost entirely unknown outside of the country, which makes the holding of rational cross-country discussions very difficult.

    The New Cold War has led to an enormous spike in Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism in the Western states, frequently egged on by political leaders. The rise in Sinophobia has deepened the lack of genuine engagement by Western intellectuals with contemporary Chinese perspectives, discussions, and debates; and due to the immense power of Western information flows around the world, these dismissive attitudes have also grown in many developing countries. Although there are increasing numbers of international students in China, these students tend to study technical subjects and generally do not focus on or participate in the broader political discussions within and about China.

    This diversity of thought is not reflected in external understandings or representations of China – even in the scholarly literature – which instead largely reproduces the postures of the New Cold War.

    In the current global climate of conflict and division, it is essential to develop lines of communication and encourage exchange between China, the West, and the developing world. The range of political thinking and discourse within China is immense, stretching from a variety of Marxist approaches to the ardent advocacy of neoliberalism, from deep historical examinations of Chinese civilisation to the deep wells of patriotic thought that have grown in the recent period. Far from static, these intellectual trends have evolved over time and interact with each other. A rich variety of Marxist thinking, from Maoism to creative Marxism, has emerged in China; although these trends all focus on socialist theories, history, and experiments, each trend has developed a distinct school of thought with its own internal discourse as well as debates with other traditions. Meanwhile, the landscape of patriotic thinking is far more eclectic, with some tendencies overlapping with Marxist trends, which is understandable given the connections between Marxism and national liberation; whereas others are closer to offering culturalist explanations for China’s developmental advances. This diversity of thought is not reflected in external understandings or representations of China – even in the scholarly literature – which instead largely reproduces the postures of the New Cold War.

     

    This article was published earlier in thetricontinental.org

  • Consumption as a Substitute Religion – A Critique of Capitalism

    Consumption as a Substitute Religion – A Critique of Capitalism

    Consumption is becoming the new substitute religion. This is certainly progress for former poor countries, but in the long run it dissolves the cohesion of society and is only apparently covered up by aggressive enemy declarations. The newly industrialised nations should take the dissolution of social cohesion in the West as a warning example.

    With the triumph of neo-liberalism, all forms of identity worldwide are becoming fluid, uncertain or even dissolved. It is true that it was right to leave behind the binary oppositions of Western modernity to “non-modern” societies, which were associated with static, entrenched forms of identity. But the orientation towards models of consumption does not lead to a real pluralisation, but reproduces ever new rigid identities and thinking in tribal opposites: “us against the others”, whoever the others are. The Chinese dream, New Russia, make America great again, the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and the USA, the division of Israeli society and the temporary triumph of the extreme religious right there are all reactions to the dissolution of identities through the transformation of citizens into consumers. Consumption is becoming the new substitute religion. This is certainly progress for former poor countries, but in the long run, it dissolves the cohesion of society and is only apparently covered up by aggressive enemy declarations. The newly industrialised nations should take the dissolution of social cohesion in the West as a warning example.

    If about 6 people have as much property as 3.6 billion “others or in the near future 1% of the world’s population as much as the “remaining” 99%, then this is an absolutely obscene inequality, which we only accept becauseö the ideology of consumption, capitalism and neo-liberalism has become the new world religion. As Walter Benjamin already pointed out, it serves the same basic need as the monotheistic religions. “Then said the Lord unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have spoken unto you from heaven. Ye shall set nothing by my side: silver gods and gold gods ye shall not have.” (Exodus 20:22). “And when the people saw that Moses came not down from the mount so long, they gathered themselves about Aaron, and said unto him, Arise, make us a god to go before us: for we know not what is befallen this man Moses. (…) And Aaron took the gold out of their hand and poured it into a clay mould, and made it a cast calf. Then they said: This is thy God, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” (Ex 32:1) We today may think ourselves exalted at the idea of worshipping a golden figure. But in reality, aren’t we merely replacing it with Wall Street or the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, or even globalisation, which is supposed to lead us to the promised land, i.e. prosperity and wealth? It is true that we do not entrust our wives’ and daughters’ earrings to the stock exchange, but often all our savings, individual fates as well as those of entire countries are determined by the price of coffee, bananas and other commodities. Gunter Henn, the architect of the VW Autostadt, one of the new temples, underlined the claim for the creation of meaning by companies: “Who else offers orientation, where does that leave us with our childlike religiosity? The churches are dead, the state is withdrawing, and the ideologues have lost their power. What remains are the companies.”

    This story of the Golden Calf, which was put in the place of God at the very moment when he had revealed his will to the people of Israel in the Ten Commandments, illustrates a fundamental problem of religion, of the religious. For religion is obviously based on a two-way relationship. On the one hand, there is a need for a god or gods to reveal themselves, to show themselves, and on the other hand, there is an ineradicable need, an insatiable human desire for the divine, for the religious. This deep-seated longing can have many different reasons. In the sociology of religion and philosophy, it is described in such a way that religion, the religious, has fundamental functions for individual people as well as human societies, for example, the endurance of the fear of one’s own death, the embedding in communities that outlast death, the giving of meaning to life, the transcending of one’s own boundaries in an ordered whole, the construction of something sacred, untouchable.  The problem that arises from this, however, is that this insatiable longing can obviously also refer to something other than the revealing God, precisely to a golden calf, but also to the God of reason, to one’s own nation or race, to the world-historical mission of the proletariat, or even to science and technology. Science and technology may relegate the religious to the very back seats – often with the sole effect of putting themselves in its place. Carl Schmitt, one of the most important as well as most controversial theorists of political theory, emphasised, for example, that at the beginning of the 20th-century religious belief in God was replaced by religious belief in technology and the omnipotence of man. With regard to National Socialism, this has been proven in many cases, as there was a deliberate and purposeful instrumentalisation of religious practices for party congresses and mass marches – incidentally an essential aspect of why this inhuman ideology could nevertheless be so successful.  “Führer, our daily bread give us today.”

    ‘As Walter Benjamin already noted, capitalism is a pure cult religion that has neither a dogma nor a theology’

    But let’s move on to the gods of the market, consumerism and cult marketing when brand companies and belonging to this community take on cultic, religious proportions. And let’s put it bluntly: This cult marketing appeals to religious feelings much more simply and directly than a reflected faith ever can, religious feelings that at best come to the fore in community experiences at church conventions. Their religious character is also not always overt, since there is an essential difference between consumption, cult marketing and the Christian understanding of religion. Substitute religions are usually polytheistic, but Christianity is monotheistic. For followers of monotheistic religions, polytheistic ones often do not appear as a religion at all, but as something that one shrugs off or is amazed at, but considers oneself to be superior to this preform of religion. Such a view fails to recognise that these polytheistic forms of religion nevertheless serve religious feelings, without which their success is difficult to explain. Moreover, as Walter Benjamin already noted, capitalism is a pure cult religion that has neither a dogma nor a theology – unless one also wants to understand the currently dominant neoclassicism as a substitute religion. A cult religion, in any case, is directly practically oriented, just like the archetypes of pagan religiosity, which practises its rite without God’s word, without revelation. Pagan is to be defined in such a way that the cult takes precedence over the doctrine, which only appears implicitly. Capitalism is a form of neo-paganism, Benjamin concludes.

    Just as religion tries to help life succeed by conveying a meaningful way of living, so advertising tries to do by suggesting to customers that they can only live fulfilled lives or belong to the in-group by buying, owning and using a certain product. It is striking that in many cases advertising no longer presents the real advantages of a product, but values such as friendship. Advertising instrumentalises religious motifs to turn people into customers and customers into brand believers. In doing so, it builds on the religious basis still dormant in the hidden human being, tries to appeal to this sacral subconscious and therefore creates new forms of cult marketing, through which modern man is supposed to find cosy, warm places for his longings. In the spiritual desert of modernity, marketing strategies fill the vacant position of religion with advertising in general and the positions previously held by God and the sacred with products in particular and everything connected with the use of such a product: instead of religious practice, consumption; instead of gods, idols of consumption; instead of churches, temples of consumption; instead of religious faith communities, those of consumption. In this context, belonging to the ingroup is considered constitutive in the choice of brand and ex-communication is threatened in an equally consistent manner if the wrong brand is chosen. The myth created around a brand gives its products a spiritual added value that is supposed to set them apart from the mass of competing products of the same quality.

    Consumerism was aggressively propagated as an alternative and implicitly as a substitute for religion vis-à-vis traditional religions by the media theorist Norbert Bolz in his Consumerist Manifesto. For him, consumerism is the immune system of world society against the virus of fanatical religions. Consumerism promises neither the goal nor the end of history, but “only the ever-new”.  Independent of the implicit and recurring criticism of monotheism, the question arises as to the price that must be paid for the production of the ever-new.

    Not only are quite normal products being elevated far beyond their utility value to cult brands, to a substitute for religion. In the new marketing, the customer is not only king, as it used to be called, but god-like. In largely saturated markets, it is mainly about creating ever-new desires. Customers are told that, compared to whatever they may already have, there are still many, many more possibilities, infinitely new possibilities. This amusement park has not yet been visited, that trip has not yet been taken, this hair shampoo could be cheaper or even better than that one, you can shop better in Frankfurt than in Kassel or vice versa or somewhere else. In the meantime, you can also fly to London in one day to go shopping, “how have you not yet been to Paris to go shopping?”

    The decisive factor is not whether one actually uses this or that offer, but that there are always even better, even fancier POTENTIAL possibilities that one has not yet realised…. “Anything goes” used to be a slogan of resistance against repressive social structures – today it is the symbol for the market of limitless possibilities. Due to this limitlessness of possibilities of consumption, a constant depressive feeling arises in MANY people that they have not yet exhausted any consumption possibilities – and if one were to devote one’s whole life to consumption, there would still be something that would have to be done without.

    This pressure of seemingly limitless possibilities to live like “God in France” is exacerbated for those whose financial possibilities are limited, such as in the case of unemployment, because here the tension between the real limited and the potentially infinite consumption possibilities is particularly great.

    From this tension follows a clinical picture that characterises modern capitalism, our market society, and depression as an awareness of what is potentially possible and what is actually possible. Depression threatens the individual who only resembles himself, just as sin pursues the soul turned towards God or guilt pursues the human being torn apart in conflict. It arises both when the awareness of potential possibilities far exceeds that of the real ones and in those cases where the consumer is called upon to constantly reinvent himself.

    This last problem can be illustrated by a cigarette advertisement that virtually signals the reversal of traditional advertising promises because it boldly states that this particular brand of cigarettes does not taste good to everyone – and that is portrayed as a good thing, according to the slogan. At the same time, of course, this advertising is aimed at the largest possible group of buyers, the more the better. This gives rise to the deliberate paradox that one is all the more an absolutely unique individual if one consumes exactly what everyone is buying.

    The individual here is not something self-evident, born or given by nature, but a laboriously constructed social role. As an individual, man makes himself the cult centre of a religion of uniqueness. That’s why Buddhism is often in vogue today – as a doctrine of self-redemption without a saviour god. And for those who find that too spiritual, self-excitement and self-challenge remain. You take drugs, get high on the body’s own endorphins – or best of all: on the drug “I”. But it would be a misunderstanding to believe that the cult of the ego is a step towards liberating the individual from the shackles of society. In the cult of the ego, the human being is less a sovereign individual than an unhappy prosthetic god. He surrounds himself with auxiliary constructions from the world of fashions, drugs and distractions.

    The emancipation of the sixties and seventies has often freed us from the dramas of guilt and obedience, but it has brought us new dramas of responsibility and action in an uncertain and conflicting world.

    In this invention of a seemingly unique individuality through the consumption of branded products, individuals are overburdened without limits – the customer is no longer king, but god-like in marketing strategies – we fulfil their most secret wishes, everything they desire, there are no limits to their desires. But people remain humans, they are not gods and often break down at this imposition of being equal only to themselves. Only God, who in the Old Testament logically demands that there should be no gods beside Him, is equal only to Himself. The emancipation of the sixties and seventies has often freed us from the dramas of guilt and obedience, but it has brought us new dramas of responsibility and action in an uncertain and conflicting world. Thus, through human self-empowerment and the marketing strategy of the individual responsible only to himself, depressive exhaustion accompanies neurotic anxiety not only on an individual level but could be also witnessed in Western societies as a whole. The alternative to rigid forms of identity and political systems is not consumerism, which only leads to new forms of such ideologies. What is needed is a floating balance of the individual and the community.

  • The Rivers Linking Scheme: Will it Work or End up a Disaster?

    The Rivers Linking Scheme: Will it Work or End up a Disaster?

    I keep hearing that Modiji is going to unveil the often-spoken and then shelved Rivers Link Up Scheme as his grand vision to enrich the farmers and unite India. In a country where almost two-thirds of the agricultural acreage is rainfed, water is wealth. Telangana has shown the way. Once India’s driest region has in just eight years been transformed into another granary of India. Three years ago he had promised to double farmer’s incomes by 2022 and has clearly failed. He now needs a big stunt. With elections due in 2024, he doesn’t even have to show any delivery. A promise will do for now.

    This is also a Sangh Parivar favourite and I am quite sure the nation will once again set out to undertake history’s greatest civil engineering project by seeking to link all our major rivers. It will irretrievably change India. If it works, it will bring water to almost every parched inch of land and just about every parched throat in the land.

    On the other hand, if it doesn’t work, Indian civilization as it exists even now might then be headed the way of the Indus valley or Mesopotamian civilizations destroyed by a vengeful nature, for interfering with nature is also a two-edged sword. If the Aswan High Dam turned the ravaging Nile into a saviour, the constant diversion of the rivers feeding Lake Baikal has turned it into a fast-receding and highly polluted inland sea ranking it as one of the world’s greatest ecological disasters. Even in the USA, though the dams across mighty Colorado have turned it into a ditch when it enters Mexico, California is still starved for water.

    I am not competent to comment on these matters and I will leave this debate for the technically competent and our perennial ecological Pooh-Bahs. But the lack of this very debate is cause for concern. It is true that the idea of linking up our rivers has been afloat for a long time. Sir Arthur Cotton was the first to propose it in the 1800s. The late KL Rao, considered by many to be an outstanding irrigation engineer and a former Union Minister for Irrigation, revived this proposal in the late 60s by suggesting the linking of the Ganges and Cauvery rivers. It was followed in 1977 by the more elaborate and gargantuan concept of garland canals linking the major rivers, thought up by a former airline pilot, Captain Dinshaw Dastur. Morarji Desai was an enthusiastic supporter of this plan.

    The return of Indira Gandhi in 1980 sent the idea back into dormancy, where it lay all these years, till President APJ Abdul Kalam revived it in his eve of the Independence Day address to the nation in 2002. It is well known that Presidents of India only read out what the Prime Ministers give them and hence the ownership title of Captain Dastur’s original idea clearly was vested with Atal Behari Vajpayee.

    That India has an acute water problem is widely known. Over sixty per cent of our cropped areas are still rain-fed, much too abjectly dependent on the vagaries of the monsoon. The high incidence of poverty in certain regions largely coincides with the source of irrigation, clearly suggesting that water for irrigation is integral to the elimination of poverty. In 1950-51 when Jawaharlal Nehru embarked on the great expansion of irrigation by building the “temples of modern India” by laying great dams across our rivers at places like Bhakra Nangal, Damodar Valley and Nagarjunasagar only 17.4% or 21 million hectares of the cropped area of 133 million hectares was irrigated. That figure rose to almost 35% by the late 80s and much of this was a consequence of the huge investment by the government in irrigation, amounting to almost Rs.50, 000 crores.

    Ironically enough this also coincided with the period when water and land revenue rates began to steeply decline to touch today’s nothing level. Like in the case of power, it seems that once the activity ceased to be profitable to the State, investment too tapered off.

    The scheme is humongous. It will link the Brahmaputra and Ganges with the Mahanadi, Godavari and Krishna, which in turn will connect to the Pennar and Cauvery. On the other side of the country, it will connect the Ganges, Yamuna with the Narmada traversing in part the supposed route of the mythical Saraswathi. This last link has many political and mystical benefits too.

    There are many smaller links as well such as joining the Ken and Betwa rivers in MP, the Kosi with the Gandak in UP, and the Parbati, Kalisindh and Chambal rivers in Rajasthan. The project when completed will consist of 30 links, with 36 dams and 10,800 km of canals diverting 174,000 million cubic meters of water. Just look at the bucks that will go into this big bang. It was estimated to cost Rs. 560,000 crores in 2002 and entail the spending of almost 2% of our GNP for the next ten years. Now it will cost twice or more than that, but our GDP is now three times more, and it might be more affordable, and hence more tempting to attempt.

    The order to get going with the project was the output of a Supreme Court bench made up of then Chief Justice BN Kirpal, and Justices KG Balakrishnan and Arjit Pasayat, which was hearing a PIL filed by the Dravida Peervai an obscure Tamil activist group. The learned Supreme Court sought the assistance of a Senior Advocate, Mr Ranjit Kumar, and acknowledging his advice recorded: “The learned Amicus Curiae has drawn our attention to Entry 56 List of the 7th Schedule to the Constitution of India and contends that the interlinking of the inter-State rivers can be done by the Parliament and he further contends that even some of the States are now concerned with the phenomena of drought in one part of the country, while there is flood in other parts and disputes arising amongst the egalitarian States relating to sharing of water. He submits that not only these disputes would come to an end but also the pollution levels in the rivers will be drastically decreased, once there is sufficient water in different rivers because of their interlinking.”

    The only problem with this formulation is that neither the learned Amicus Curiae nor the learned Supreme Court is quite so learned as to come to such sweeping conclusions.

     

    Feature Image Credit: Hindustan Times

     

    This article was published earlier in deccanchronicle.com

  • What Ukraine needs to learn from Afghanistan about proxy wars

    What Ukraine needs to learn from Afghanistan about proxy wars

    The greatest enemy of economic development is war. If the world slips further into global conflict, our economic hopes and our very survival could go up in flames. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to a mere 90 seconds to midnight. The world’s biggest economic loser in 2022 was Ukraine, where the economy collapsed by 35% according to the International Monetary Fund. The war in Ukraine could end soon, and economic recovery could begin, but this depends on Ukraine understanding its predicament as a victim of a US-Russia proxy war that broke out in 2014.

    The US has been heavily arming and funding Ukraine since 2014 with the goal of expanding Nato and weakening Russia. America’s proxy wars typically rage for years and even decades, leaving battleground countries like Ukraine in rubble.

    Unless the proxy war ends soon, Ukraine faces a dire future. Ukraine needs to learn from the horrible experience of Afghanistan to avoid becoming a long-term disaster. It could also look to the US proxy wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.

    Starting in 1979, the US armed the mujahideen (Islamist fighters) to harass the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. As president Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski later explained, the US objective was to provoke the Soviet Union to intervene, in order to trap the Soviet Union in a costly war. The fact that Afghanistan would be collateral damage was of no concern to US leaders.

    The Soviet military entered Afghanistan in 1979 as the US hoped, and fought through the 1980s. Meanwhile, the US-backed fighters established al-Qaeda in the 1980s, and the Taliban in the early 1990s. The US “trick” on the Soviet Union had boomeranged.

    In 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The US war continued for another 20 years until the US finally left in 2021. Sporadic US military operations in Afghanistan continue.

    Afghanistan lies in ruins. While the US wasted more than $ 2 trillion of US military outlays, Afghanistan is impoverished, with a 2021 GDP below $400 per person! As a parting “gift” to Afghanistan in 2021, the US government seized Afghanistan’s tiny foreign exchange holdings, paralysing the banking system.

    The proxy war in Ukraine began nine years ago when the US government backed the overthrow of Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych’s sin from the US viewpoint was his attempt to maintain Ukraine’s neutrality despite the US desire to expand Nato to include Ukraine (and Georgia). America’s objective was for Nato countries to encircle Russia in the Black Sea region. To achieve this goal, the US has been massively arming and funding Ukraine since 2014.

    The American protagonists then and now are the same. The US government’s point person on Ukraine in 2014 was Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who today is Undersecretary of State. Back in 2014, Nuland worked closely with Jake Sullivan, president Joe Biden’s national security adviser, who played the same role for vice president Biden in 2014.

    The US overlooked two harsh political realities in Ukraine. The first is that Ukraine is deeply divided ethnically and politically between Russia-hating nationalists in western Ukraine and ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

    The second is that Nato enlargement to Ukraine crosses a Russian redline. Russia will fight to the end, and escalate as necessary, to prevent the US from incorporating Ukraine into Nato.

    The US repeatedly asserts that Nato is a defensive alliance. Yet Nato bombed Russia’s ally Serbia for 78 days in 1999 in order to break Kosovo away from Serbia, after which the US established a giant military base in Kosovo. Nato forces similarly toppled Russian ally Moammar Qaddafi in 2011, setting off a decade of chaos in Libya. Russia certainly will never accept Nato in Ukraine.

    At the end of 2021, Russian president Vladimir Putin put forward three demands to the US: Ukraine should remain neutral and out of Nato; Crimea should remain part of Russia; and the Donbas should become autonomous in accord with the Minsk II Agreement.

    The Biden-Sullivan-Nuland team rejected negotiations over Nato enlargement, eight years after the same group backed Yanukovych’s overthrow. With Putin’s negotiating demands flatly rejected by the US, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

    In March 2022, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky seemed to understand Ukraine’s dire predicament as a victim of a US-Russia proxy war. He declared publicly that Ukraine would become a neutral country, and asked for security guarantees. He also publicly recognised that Crimea and Donbas would need some kind of special treatment.

    Israel’s prime minister at that time, Naftali Bennett, became involved as a mediator, along with Turkey. Russia and Ukraine came close to reaching an agreement. Yet, as Bennett has recently explained, the US “blocked” the peace process.

    Since then, the war has escalated. According to US investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, US agents blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September, a claim denied by the White House. More recently, the US and its allies have committed to sending tanks, longer-range missiles, and possibly fighter jets to Ukraine.

    The basis for peace is clear. Ukraine would be a neutral non-Nato country. Crimea would remain home to Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet, as it has been since 1783. A practical solution would be found for the Donbas, such as a territorial division, autonomy, or an armistice line.

    Most importantly, the fighting would stop, Russian troops would leave Ukraine, and Ukraine’s sovereignty would be guaranteed by the UN Security Council and other nations. Such an agreement could have been reached in December 2021 or in March 2022.

    Above all, the government and people of Ukraine would tell Russia and the US that Ukraine refuses any longer to be the battleground of a proxy war. In the face of deep internal divisions, Ukrainians on both sides of the ethnic divide would strive for peace, rather than believing that an outside power will spare them the need to compromise.
    Feature Image Credit: politico.eu

    This article was published earlier in dailymaverick.co.za and is republished with the permission of the author.

  • ‘World War 3 has already started’ between US and Russia/China, argues French scholar

    ‘World War 3 has already started’ between US and Russia/China, argues French scholar

    Ben Norton reviews the interview given by the prominent French Scholar, Emmanuel Todd. The interview was in French and published in the major French newspaper ‘Le Figaro’. Emmanuel Todd argues the Ukraine proxy war is the start of WWIII, and is “existential” for both Russia and the US “imperial system”, which has restricted the sovereignty of Europe, making Brussels into Washington’s “protectorate”. 

    America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system toward the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the “economic power” of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it –  Emmanuel Todd

    A prominent French intellectual has written a book arguing that the United States is already waging World War Three against Russia and China.

    He also warned that Europe has become a kind of imperial “protectorate”, which has little sovereignty and is essentially controlled by the US.

    Emmanuel Todd is a widely respected anthropologist and historian in France.

    In 2022, Todd published a book titled “The Third World War Has Started” (“La Troisième Guerre mondiale a commencé” in French). At the moment, it is only available in Japan.

    But Todd outlined the main arguments he made in the book in a French-language interview with the major newspaper Le Figaro, conducted by the journalist Alexandre Devecchio.

    According to Todd, the proxy war in Ukraine is “existential” not only for Russia, but also for the United States.

    The US “imperial system” is weakening in much of the world, he observed, but this is leading Washington to “strengthen its hold on its initial protectorates”: Europe and Japan.

    This means that “Germany and France had become minor partners in NATO”, Todd said, and NATO is really a “Washington-London-Warsaw-Kiev” bloc.

    US and EU sanctions have failed to crush Russia, as Western capitals had hoped, he noted. This means that “the resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system toward the precipice”, and “the American monetary and financial controls of the world would collapse”.

    The French public intellectual pointed to UN votes concerning Russia, and cautioned that the West is out of touch with the rest of the world.

    “Western newspapers are tragically funny. They don’t stop saying, ‘Russia is isolated, Russia is isolated’. But when we look at the votes of the United Nations, we see that 75% of the world does not follow the West, which then seems very small”, Todd observed.

    He also criticized the GDP metrics used by Western neoclassical economists for downplaying the productive capacity of the Russian economy, while simultaneously exaggerating that of financialized neoliberal economies like in the United States.

    In the Le Figaro interview, Todd argued (all emphasis added):

    This is the reality, World War III has begun. It is true that it started ‘small’ and with two surprises. We went into this war with the idea that the Russian army was very powerful and that its economy was very weak.

    It was thought that Ukraine was going to be crushed militarily and that Russia would be crushed economically by the West. But the reverse happened. Ukraine was not crushed militarily even if it lost 16% of its territory on that date; Russia was not crushed economically. As I speak to you, the ruble has gained 8% against the dollar and 18% against the euro since the day before the start of the war.

    So there was a sort of misunderstanding. But it is obvious that the conflict, passing from a limited territorial war to a global economic confrontation, between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia backed by China on the other hand, has become a war world. Even if military violence is low compared to that of previous world wars.

    The newspaper asked Todd if he was exaggerating. He replied, “We still provide weapons. We kill Russians, even if we don’t expose ourselves. But it remains true that we Europeans are above all economically engaged. We also feel our true entry into war through the inflation and shortages”.

    Todd understated his case. He didn’t mention the fact that, after the US sponsored the coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014, setting off a civil war, the CIA and Pentagon immediately began training Ukrainian forces to fight Russia.

    The New York Times has acknowledged that the CIA and special operations forces from numerous European countries are on the ground in Ukraine. And the CIA and a European NATO ally are even carrying out sabotage attacks inside Russian territory.

    Nevertheless, in the interview, Todd continued:

    Putin made a big mistake early on, which is of immense sociohistorical interest. Those who worked on Ukraine on the eve of the war considered the country not as a fledgling democracy, but as a society in decay and a ‘failed state’ in the making.

    I think the Kremlin’s calculation was that this decaying society would crumble at the first shock, or even say ‘welcome Mom’ to holy Russia. But what we have discovered, on the contrary, is that a society in decomposition, if it is fed by external financial and military resources, can find in war a new type of balance, and even a horizon, a hope. The Russians could not have foreseen it. No one could.

    Todd said he shares the view of Ukraine of US political scientist John Mearsheimer, a realist who has criticized Washington’s hawkish foreign policy.

    Mearsheimer “told us that Ukraine, whose army had been taken over by NATO soldiers (American, British and Polish) since at least 2014, was therefore a de facto member of NATO, and that the Russians had announced that they would never tolerate a NATO member Ukraine,” Todd said.

    For Russia, this is there a war that is “from their point of view defensive and preventative,” he conceded.

    “Mearsheimer added that we would have no reason to rejoice in the eventual difficulties of the Russians because, since this is an existential question for them, the harder it was, the harder they would hit. The analysis seems to hold true.”

    Germany and France had become minor partners in NATO and were not aware of what was going on in Ukraine on the military level. French and German naivety has been criticized because our governments did not believe in the possibility of a Russian invasion. True, but because they did not know that Americans, British and Poles could make Ukraine be able to wage a larger war. The fundamental axis of NATO now is Washington-London-Warsaw-Kiev.

    However, Todd argued that Mearsheimer “does not go far enough” in his analysis. The US political scientist has overlooked how Washington has restricted the sovereignty of Berlin and Paris, Todd said:

    Germany and France had become minor partners in NATO and were not aware of what was going on in Ukraine on the military level. French and German naivety has been criticized because our governments did not believe in the possibility of a Russian invasion. True, but because they did not know that Americans, British and Poles could make Ukraine be able to wage a larger war. The fundamental axis of NATO now is Washington-London-Warsaw-Kiev.

    Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is nothing but a power “game” among others. After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, one debacle more or less… What does it matter?

    The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: ‘We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us’. Nothing would be existential for America. Insufficiency of analysis which today leads Biden to a series of reckless actions.

    America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system toward the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the “economic power” of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.

    The French public intellectual went on in the interview to argue that, by resisting the full force of Western sanctions, Russia and China pose a threat to “the American monetary and financial controls of the world”.

    This, in turn, challenges the US status as the issuer of the global reserve currency, which gives it the ability to maintain a “huge trade deficit”:

    If the Russian economy resisted the sanctions indefinitely and managed to exhaust the European economy, while it itself remained backed by China, the American monetary and financial controls of the world would collapse, and with them the possibility for United States to fund its huge trade deficit for nothing.

    This war has therefore become existential for the United States. No more than Russia, they cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go. This is why we are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other.

    Todd warned that, while the United States is weakening in much of the world, its “imperial system” is “strengthening its hold on its initial protectorates”: Europe and Japan.

    He explained:

    Everywhere we see the weakening of the United States, but not in Europe and Japan because one of the effects of the retraction of the imperial system is that the United States strengthens its hold on its initial protectorates.

    If we read [Zbigniew] Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard), we see that the American empire was formed at the end of the Second World War by the conquest of Germany and Japan, which are still protectorates today. As the American system shrinks, it weighs more and more heavily on the local elites of the protectorates (and I include all of Europe here).

    The first to lose all national autonomy will be (or already are) the English and the Australians. The Internet has produced human interaction with the United States in the Anglosphere of such intensity that its academic, media and artistic elites are, so to speak, annexed. On the European continent we are somewhat protected by our national languages, but the fall in our autonomy is considerable, and rapid.

    As an example of a moment in recent history when Europe was more independent, Todd pointed out, “Let us remember the war in Iraq, when Chirac, Schröder and Putin held joint press conferences against the war” – referring to the former leaders of France (Jacques Chirac) and Germany (Gerhard Schröder).

    The interviewer at Le Figaro newspaper, Alexandre Devecchio, countered Todd asking, “Many observers point out that Russia has the GDP of Spain. Aren’t you overestimating its economic power and resilience?”

    Todd criticized the overreliance on GDP as a metric, calling it a “fictional measure of production” that obscures the real productive forces in an economy:

    War becomes a test of political economy, it is the great revealer. The GDP of Russia and Belarus represents 3.3% of Western GDP (the US, Anglosphere, Europe, Japan, South Korea), practically nothing. One can ask oneself how this insignificant GDP can cope and continue to produce missiles.

    The reason is that GDP is a fictional measure of production. If we take away from the American GDP half of its overbilled health spending, then the “wealth produced” by the activity of its lawyers, by the most filled prisons in the world, then by an entire economy of ill-defined services, including the “production” of its 15 to 20 thousand economists with an average salary of 120,000 dollars, we realize that an important part of this GDP is water vapor.

    War brings us back to the real economy, it allows us to understand what the real wealth of nations is, the capacity for production, and therefore the capacity for war.

    Todd noted that Russia has shown “a real capacity to adapt”. He attributed this to the “very large role for the state” in the Russian economy, in contrast to the US neoliberal economic model:

    If we come back to material variables, we see the Russian economy. In 2014, we put in place the first important sanctions against Russia, but then it increased its wheat production, which went from 40 to 90 million tons in 2020. Meanwhile, thanks to neoliberalism, American wheat production, between 1980 and 2020, went from 80 to 40 million tons.

    …

    Russia has therefore a real capacity to adapt. When we want to make fun of centralized economies, we emphasize their rigidity, and when we glorify capitalism, we praise its flexibility.

    …

    The Russian economy, for its part, has accepted the rules of operation of the market (it is even an obsession of Putin to preserve them), but with a very large role for the state, but it also derives its flexibility from training engineers, who allow the industrial and military adaptations.

    This point is similar to what economist Michael Hudson has argued – that although Moscow’s economy is no longer socialist, like that of the Soviet Union was, the Russian Federation’s state-led industrial capitalism clashes with the financialized model of neoliberal capitalism that the United States has tried to impose on the world.

     

    The Peninsula Foundation is happy to republish this article with the permission of the author, Ben Norton.

    The article was published earlier in geopoliticaleconomy.com

    Feature Image Credit: newstatesman.com

    Portrait Sketch of Emmanuel Todd: Fabien Clairefond

     

  • China’s People Crisis

    China’s People Crisis

    For the first time in sixty years, China’s population has fallen. The population in 2022 – 1.4118 billion – fell by 850,000 from 2021. Its national birth rate has fallen to 6.77 births per thousand people.
    Deaths have also outnumbered births for the first time last year in China. It logged its highest death rate since 1976 – 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, up from 7.18 the previous year.
    China has now hit an impenetrable economic wall. The People’s Republic has a people crisis – it has now stopped growing and is getting old. The reason is paradoxical. China’s one-child policy worked exceedingly well for it in the past. By preventing almost 400 million births since 1979, it gave the Chinese greater prosperity. It is estimated that between 1980 and 2010, the effect of a favourable population age structure accounted for between 15% and 25% of per capita GDP growth.
    That bonus with the demographic dividend has now ended. China’s population was expected to stabilise in 2030 at 1.391 billion, moving at a slow crawl from 1.330 billion in 2010. But it has hit that spot seven years ahead. In 2050, China is projected to decline to 1.203 billion.
    The flattening population and its somewhat unfavourable demographic profile have been causing concern in China for some years now. In 2013, the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee allowed couples to have a second child if one parent was an only child. But Chinese families have gotten used to one child existence. The demographic wall is not going to be crossed, and China’s workforce is not growing anymore.
    Whereas China added as many as 90 million individuals to its workforce from 2005 to 2015, in the decade from 2015, it will, at present trends, add only 5 million. In 2010, there were 116 million people aged 20 to 24. By 2020, the number will fall by 20% to 94 million. The size of the young population aged 20-24 will only be 67 million by 2030, less than 60% of the figure in 2010.
    One immediate consequence of this slowdown is that by 2030 the cohort aged above 60 years will increase from the present 180 million to 360 million. The other immediate economic consequence is that its savings rate will decline precipitously.
    As a nation climbs the economic ladder, people inevitably live longer. But old age is also more expensive. For instance, in the US, the old actually consume more than the rest due to medical expenses. Either they support themselves or their families have to support them. Apart from low consumption in the first few years of life, consumption is reasonably constant over the life cycle. But while income is earned and output produced, in the working life between 20 and 65 years, it is not so before and after. This ratio of working-age and non-working-age cohorts is called the dependency ratio.
    As Indian, African and (surprise, surprise) American dependency ratios turn increasingly favourable in the coming decades, China’s will go downhill and it will join Europe and Japan as the world’s aged societies.
    In comparison, in 2021, the United States recorded 11.06 births per 1,000 people, and in the United Kingdom, 10.08 births. The birth rate for the same year in India, which is poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, was 16.42.
    China’s total fertility rate – the average number of children born to each woman – is among the lowest in the world, at only 1.4. In contrast, the developed world average is 1.7. China’s replacement rate – the rate at which the number of births and deaths are balanced – is 2.1, as against India’s 2.5. At purchasing power parity, China’s per capita income is just a fifth or less of other large economies. At the same time, China’s fertility level is far below that of the US, UK or France (all around 2.0), and is on par with those of Russia, Japan, Germany and Italy – all countries with sharply declining populations. This is a big reason why Germany so readily accepted to take about a million refugees from Syria and Libya.
    Over the next 20 years, China’s ratio of workers to retirees will drop precipitously from roughly 5:1 today to just 2:1. Such a big change implies that the tax burden for each working-age person must rise by more than 150%. This assumes that the government will maintain its current level of tax revenue. In addition, mounting expenditure on pensions and healthcare will put China in a difficult position. If the government demands that taxpayers pay more, the public will demand better scrutiny of how their dollars are collected and spent. This could very well open the floodgates of challenges to the Communist Party.
    Can China succeed to get out of the low growth rate cycle? The conditions now are against it. The cost of rearing a child in China has increased hugely. The state may require more children, but most families will find the costs unaffordable. This is mainly because China is now a predominantly middle-class nation.
    How will this policy reversal pan out for China? Demographers give three scenarios. The highest outcome will mean 1.43 billion in 2050, while the more plausible outcome will be between 1.35- 1.37 billion. Either way, it is not going to alter the future much for China. It will become old before it becomes rich.
    Feature Image Credit: Reuters
    Graph Credit: World Economic Forum
  • Most of the world’s ocean is unprotected: This is why that needs to change

    Most of the world’s ocean is unprotected: This is why that needs to change

    • More than three billion people rely on the ocean for their livelihoods, most of them in developing countries.
    • Only 7% of the world’s ocean, a vital resource for fighting climate change, is under any protection, and just 3% is highly protected.
    • The ‘Blue Leaders’ campaign urges countries to join international treaties that would protect the ocean and all the benefits it provides to humanity.

    The ocean is a vital life support system for the planet, and we are running out of time to preserve the marine biodiversity that it is home to and upon which we all depend.

    Having played a key role thus far in the mitigation of climate change, our blue ally is quickly running out of steam. With water temperature and sea levels rising, acidification, pollution, unsustainable exploitation of marine resources, depletion of fish stocks, the near disappearance of coral reefs, and the destruction of fragile ecosystems, the ocean is being disproportionately impacted by human activities.

    Now, more than ever, we must consider the possible implications of its demise.

    The ocean plays an indispensable role in providing and regulating resources that are vital to sustaining life on Earth — from rainwater to drinking water, and as a source of our food, weather, and the oxygen we breathe

    Securing our ocean’s future

    Recognizing the key role that the ocean plays for people all over the world, the United Nations has adopted a sustainable development goal focused on conserving the ocean, with targets for action on an array of problems. While some progress has been made, more is yet needed to secure our ocean’s future.

    Scientists have called for securing at least 30% of marine waters as fully or highly protected sanctuaries, free from damaging human activities like bottom trawl fishing and seabed mining. By doing so, we can give the ocean a fighting chance in the face of climate change.

    Today, just 7% of the world’s ocean is under protection, and only 3% is highly protected. Moreover, there is no legal mechanism in place to establish fully protected marine areas in the high seas and deep seabed areas, our shared international waters that constitute nearly two thirds of the global ocean.

    Marine coastlines are home to 2.4 billion people — approximately 40% of the world’s population. More than three billion people rely on the ocean for their livelihoods, most of them in developing countries. Degradation of coastal and marine ecosystems threatens the physical, economic, and food security of communities around the world.

    Continuing along our current path towards ocean destruction will impact human lives and livelihoods.

    The role of the ocean and coastal and marine ecosystems in climate change mitigation is often overlooked. Protecting and restoring ocean habitats such as seagrass beds, salt marshes, and mangroves, and their associated food webs, can sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at rates up to five times greater than tropical forests.

    Choosing not to prioritize the protection of our ocean is depriving us of the tools we desperately need to achieve our climate mitigation goals.

    Commitments are needed

    With multiple high-level ocean negotiations planned in 2022, this year is one filled with opportunity for the preservation of our oceans. Our only hope for a better future lies in the adoption of unprecedentedly bold ocean conservation commitments.

    The science is clear: to maximize the health and resilience of the global ocean, at least 30% of it must be protected through a network of “highly” and “fully” protected Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) by 2030.

    To achieve this goal, a new treaty for the conservation and management of marine life in the high seas must be concluded to ensure that human activities are managed to prevent significant adverse impacts, with robust oversight mechanisms and provisions to establish fully protected MPAs in the high seas.

    Governments who have joined the “Blue Leaders” campaign call on all countries to rally behind these commitments at the upcoming meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CoP15), expected to take place in Kunming, China in August 2022.

    Another key moment is the UN Ocean Conference, which is scheduled to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, from 27 June to 1 July. Each of these meetings offers an opportunity for countries to come together, join the Blue Leaders, and take the action that our ocean desperately needs.

    The ocean knows no boundaries: it unites us all as a physical link between coastal countries, communities, and individuals, and as the source of our food, water, and air. We all face similar challenges and similar opportunities. Let us be bold for the ocean together.

    Feature Image: pewtrusts.org
    This article was published earlier in weforum.org  and is republished under the Creative Commons 4.0 International Public License.
  • Ukraine War Tolls Death Knell for NATO

    Ukraine War Tolls Death Knell for NATO

    President Vladimir Putin addressed an expanded meeting of the Russian Defence Ministry Board, Moscow on Dec. 21, 2022

    The defining moment in US President Joe Biden’s press conference at the White House last Wednesday, during President Zelensky’s visit, was his virtual admission that he is constrained in the proxy war in Ukraine, as European allies don’t want a war with Russia.

    To quote Biden, “Now, you say, ‘Why don’t we just give Ukraine everything there is to give?’  Well, for two reasons. One, there’s an entire Alliance that is critical to stay with Ukraine.  And the idea that we would give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different than is already going there would have a prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world… I’ve spent several hundred hours face-to-face with our European allies and the heads of state of those countries, making the case as to why it was overwhelmingly in their interest that they continue to support Ukraine… They understand it fully, but they’re not looking to go to war with Russia.  They’re not looking for a third World War.”

    Biden realised at that point that “I probably already said too much” and abruptly ended the press conference. He probably forgot that he was dwelling on the fragility of Western unity.

    The whole point is that the western commentariat largely forgets that Russia’s core agenda is not about territorial conquest — much as Ukraine is vital to Russian interests —but about NATO expansion. And that has not changed.

    Every now and then President Putin revisits the fundamental theme that the US consistently aimed to weaken and dismember Russia. As recently as last Wednesday, Putin invoked the Chechen war in the 1990s — “the use of international terrorists in the Caucasus, to finish off Russia and to split the Russian Federation… They [US]claimed to condemn al-Qaeda and other criminals, yet they considered using them on the territory of Russia as acceptable and provided all kinds of assistance to them, including material, information, political and any other support, notably military support, to encourage them to continue fighting against Russia.”

    Putin has a phenomenal memory and would have been alluding to Biden’s careful choice of William Burns as his CIA chief. Burns was Moscow Embassy’s point person for Chechnya in the 1990s! Putin has now ordered a nationwide campaign to root out the vast tentacles that the US intelligence planted on Russian soil for internal subversion. Carnegie, once headed by Burns, has since shut down its Moscow office, and the Russian staff fled to the West!

    The leitmotif of the expanded meeting of the Board of the Defence Ministry in Moscow on Wednesday, which Putin addressed, was the profound reality that Russia’s confrontation with the US is not going to end with the Ukraine war. Putin exhorted the Russian top brass to “carefully analyse” the lessons of the Ukraine and Syrian conflicts.

    Importantly, Putin said, “We will continue maintaining and improving the combat readiness of the nuclear triad. It is the main guarantee that our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity and the general balance of forces in the world are preserved. This year, the level of modern armaments in the strategic nuclear forces has already exceeded 91 per cent. We continue rearming the regiments of our strategic missile forces with modern missile systems with Avangard hypersonic warheads.”

    Equally, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed at Wednesday’s meeting a military build-up “to bolster Russia’s security,” including:

    • Creation of a corresponding group of forces in Russia’s northwest to counter Finland and Sweden’s induction as NATO members;
    • Creation of two new motorised infantry divisions in the Kherson and Zaporozhya regions, as well as an army corps in Karelia, facing the Finnish border;
    • Upgrade of 7 motorised infantry brigades into motorised infantry divisions in the Western, Central and Eastern military districts, and in the Northern Fleet;
    • Addition of two more air assault divisions in the Airborne Forces;
    • Provision of a composite aviation division and an army aviation brigade with 80-100 combat helicopters within each combined arms (tank) army;
    • Creation of 3 additional air division commands, eight bomber aviation regiments, one fighter aviation regiment, and six army aviation brigades;
    • Creation of 5 district artillery divisions, as well as super-heavy artillery brigades for building artillery reserves along the so-called strategic axis;
    • Creation of 5 naval infantry brigades for the Navy’s coastal troops based on the existing naval infantry brigades;
    • Increase in the size of the Armed Forces to 1.5 million service personnel, with 695,000 people serving under contract.

    Putin summed up: “We will not repeat the mistakes of the past… We are not going to militarise our country or militarise the economy… and we will not do things we do not really need, to the detriment of our people and the economy, the social sphere. We will improve the Russian Armed Forces and the entire military component. We will do it calmly, routinely and consistently, without haste.”

    If the neocons in the driving seat in the Beltway wanted an arms race, they have it now. The paradox, however, is that this is going to be different from the bipolar Cold War era arms race.

    If the US intention was to weaken Russia before confronting China, things aren’t working that way. Instead, the US is getting locked into a confrontation with Russia and the ties between the two big powers are at a breaking point. Russia expects the US to roll back NATO’s expansion, as promised to the Soviet leadership in 1989.

    The neocons had expected a “win-win” in Ukraine: Russian defeat and a disgraceful end to Putin’s presidency; a weakened Russia, as in the 1990s, groping for a new start; consolidation of western unity under a triumphant America; a massive boost in the upcoming struggle with China for supremacy in the world order; and a New American Century under the “rules-based world order”.

    But instead, this is turning out to be a classic Zugzwang in the endgame — to borrow from German chess literature — where the US is under obligation to make a move on Ukraine but whichever move it makes will only worsen its geopolitical position.

    Biden has understood that Russia cannot be defeated in Ukraine; nor are Russian people in any mood for an insurrection. Putin’s popularity is soaring high, as Russian objectives in Ukraine are being steadily realised. Thus, Biden is getting a vague sense, perhaps, that Russia isn’t exactly seeing things in Ukraine as a binary of victory and defeat, but is gearing up for the long haul to sort out NATO once and for all.

    The transformation of Belarus as a “nuclear-capable” state carries a profound message from Moscow to Brussels and Washington. Biden cannot miss it. (See my blog NATO nuclear compass rendered unavailing, Indian Punchline, Dec. 21, 2022

    Logically, the option open to the US at this point would be to disengage. But that becomes an abject admission of defeat and will mean the death knell for NATO, and Washington’s transatlantic leadership goes kaput. And, worse still, major west European powers — Germany, France and Italy — may start looking for a modus vivendi with Russia. Above all, how can NATO possibly survive without an “enemy”?

    Clearly, neither the US nor its allies are in a position to fight a continental war. But even if they are, what about the emerging scenario in the Asia-Pacific, where the “no limits” partnership between China and Russia has added an intriguing layer to the geopolitics?

    The neocons in the Beltway have bitten more than what they could chew. Their last card will be to push for a direct US military intervention in the Ukraine war under the banner of a “coalition of the willing.”

    This commentary was published earlier on the author’s website – indianpunchline.com

    Feature Image Credit: Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

  • For Democracy to be real and vibrant it needs people with impeccable Integrity at the Helm

    For Democracy to be real and vibrant it needs people with impeccable Integrity at the Helm

    Democracy at its core is the power of the people. But all over the world, it is becoming anything but that. Truly the fear is that democracy is dying, as most nations that call themselves democracies are in effect controlled by capitalist oligarchs and majoritarian fascists. The power of money and vested interests have vitiated democratic processes worldwide. Michael Hudson calls the USA, once the beacon of democracy, a deep state controlled by three main oligarchic groups: Military Industrial Complex (MIC); Oil, Gas, and Mining (OGAM); and Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE).  Add the new emerging giant group – Big Tech – as the fourth. The UK, the world’s oldest parliamentary system, is in shambles as a democracy. India, seen as the world’s largest democracy, is heading the majoritarian way. Majoritarianism is not democracy but tyranny. This is what the Father of the Nation had to say about democracy at the height of the freedom struggle:

    “My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest….No country in the world today shows any but patronising regard for the weak….Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism….True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the centre. It has to be worked from below by the people of every village.”    – Mahatma Gandhi

    His words could not have been more apt for the times we live in. This quote is placed in the Sabarmati Ashram. One wonders how many take a moment to stop by to read it carefully and take in the import of his words. The Mahatma is the shining example of personal integrity, character, and moral courage. Since democracy is primarily driven by people and politics, it is vital that those at the helm of governance display impeccable integrity to ensure real democracy.

    Professor Arun Kumar PhD, an eminent economist and our adjunct Distinguished Fellow, writes eloquently on the subject and says ‘absence of persons with impeccable integrity is the bane of India’s democracy’. TPF is happy to republish this article.

    A version of this article was published earlier in theleaflet.in

    –TPF Editorial Team

     

    Gandhiji said that institutions reflect what the people are, and that they cannot function as they are intended to unless those manning them are people of integrity.

     

    A Supreme Court Constitution bench recently said that the Chief Election Commissioner should be one “with character” and who would not get “bulldozed” – a self-evident truth. Further, it suggested that the selection committee for the post should consist of an independent person like the Chief Justice of India (‘CJI’). It added that people and bureaucrats like the former Chief Election Commissioner late T.N. Seshan, who could act independently, “happen once in a while”.

    Perhaps without meaning to, these comments indict the election commissioners appointed since Seshan’s time. Therefore, they have given voice to recent public concerns about the independence of the institution.

    Integrity of Constitutional authorities

    Will the CJI’s presence in the committee to appoint the Election Commissioners make a difference? The CJI is a member of the committee to appoint the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (‘CBI’). But the Supreme Court itself has called the CBI a “caged parrot”. The problem arises since the party in power would prefer a sympathetic person as an Election Commissioner, not an independent person.

    The appointment of Supreme Court judges has become contentious, with the judges and the Union Law Minister currently at loggerheads. Judges themselves have talked of pressures and counter pressures from within and from the government. Appointments of some who are seen to be inconvenient have been withheld. Earlier this week, a division bench of the Supreme Court mentioned that by delaying appointments, good people are dissuaded from becoming judges. It is suspected that the appointment of certain judges is delayed so that they do not become CJI in due course of time. It appears that pliability is a desirable attribute to becoming a judge.

    The Supreme Court, by raising the issue of the appointment of the Election Commissioner, has also brought into question the integrity of the Prime Minister (‘PM’), who is key to the appointment. Thus, doubt has been raised about the country’s constitutional authorities, including the judiciary. The executive, in any case, does the bidding of the political masters. So, where are the people of integrity in the corridors of power in India?

    Defining integrity

    Institutions can run as they ought to only if they are manned by people with integrity. Its absence from the top down is a societal challenge. Mahatma Gandhi in ‘Hind Swaraj’ (Indian Home Rule), more than a century back, said, “As are the people, so is their Parliament.” Since the Parliament is key to the functioning of a democracy, this flaw afflicts institutions down the line.

    PMs heading the government are political persons. Since politics is about power, they try everything to keep themselves and their party in power. Their election depends on the support of vested interests who fund both them and their party and therefore, dominate the working of the party. So, staying in power is a high stake business which requires manipulation of the systems in their favour.

    The Supreme Court, by raising the issue of appointment of the Election Commissioner, has brought into question the integrity of the Prime Minister, who is key to the appointment. Thus, doubt has been raised about the country’s constitutional authorities, including the judiciary. 

    There is then a separation of the interest of the nation, and of the party and its head, the PM. Consequently, for the party, integrity means that which serves its interest, which is not necessarily what the nation needs. This separation is what Gandhi implies in Hind Swaraj. No wonder, it is only a rare PM who has the moral integrity to select independent people for important Constitutional positions like the Election Commission and the judiciary.

    Politicians go through years of such conditioning before becoming PMs and it becomes their second nature. It cannot be expected to change upon becoming the PM. The opposition in a democracy is supposed to check the misuse of power. But the leaders of the opposition also go through the same conditioning as leaders of the ruling party and therefore, act no differently. Politicians often pride themselves on managing conflicts by making compromises and accepting the manipulation of power. So, politicians take a pliable stand, based on the chair they occupy – in power or out of it.

    Gandhi on parliamentary democracy

    Gandhi, commenting on the British Parliamentary democracy in Hind Swaraj, wrote, “The Prime Minister is more concerned about his power than about the welfare of Parliament … [and] upon securing the success of his party.” He added that they may be considered to be honest “because they do not take what is generally known as bribes… [but] …they certainly bribe the people with honours.” Therefore, “… they neither have real honesty nor a living conscience”.

    Regarding the Members of Parliament who could keep the PM in check, he wrote, “… Members are hypocritical and selfish. Each thinks of his own little interest. … Members vote for their party without a thought.” Regarding the media, another institution that could help check misuse of public authority by creating public awareness, he wrote that they “are often dishonest. The same fact is differently interpreted … according to the party in whose interest they are edited.” Gandhi was also scathing about the legal profession when he wrote, “… the profession teaches immorality …”.

    Gandhi was pointing to the fundamental flaws in the functioning of democracies. It also applies in the current Indian context. He was pointing to weak public accountability of those in power since public awareness was low. The public has little choice but to accept the existing imperfect political system. The British Parliamentary democracy may be the best available system, but it is highly flawed and its defects appear more starkly in weak democracies like that in India.

    We may be called the largest democracy in the world and we have succeeded in preserving it in the last 75 years, but it is frayed, as made clear by the current political problems facing us.

    Feudal attitudes and democracy

    Indian democracy’s weakness is a result of the persistence of feudal consciousness among a majority who easily accept authority. This is true even in institutions of higher education, where people are expected to be the most conscious. Most of these institutions are headed by academics with a bureaucratised mindset, who expect compliance and treat dissent as a malaise to be eradicated. In turn, they yield to politicians and bureaucrats.

    A feudal system has its own concept of integrity. The ruler’s interest is broadly the nation’s interest. This congruity breaks in a parliamentary democracy where the consciousness is feudal. In such a case, integrity as defined by national interest is likely to be subverted, as is visible in India.

    In 1947, India with its feudal consciousness ingrained and copied parliamentary democracy, not because people were ready for it, but because the leadership desired it since they wanted to copy Western modernity. People blindly accepted it since it came from their leaders, not because they understood it. Liberality at the top frayed post mid-1960s, as retaining power became more difficult and leaders turned increasingly authoritarian. So, while retaining the façade of democracy, it increasingly got hollowed out.

    In 1947, India with its feudal consciousness ingrained and copied parliamentary democracy, not because people were ready for it, but because the leadership desired it since they wanted to copy Western modernity. People blindly accepted it since it came from their leaders, not because they understood it.

    The political economy also pushed policies that marginalised the majority in the interest of the few. The black economy grew rapidly, making elections formalistic and draining them of their representational character. Most importantly, the rulers realized that neither the people ask for liberality nor do they demand accountability from leadership.

    Need for accountability at the top

    Accountability has to come from the top, whether in politics or in the government or the courts. It is not going to automatically come about without public pressure. A few freebies are enough to divert public attention. So, is accountability a luxury when basic issues are many?

    The lack of integrity in public life is costly. The nation’s energy is diverted. Reforms favouring the marginalised are circumvented. Laws are framed ostensibly to improve matters, but when the spirit is not willing they fail to deliver. Perfect laws are not possible, since human ingenuity can circumvent any law. The result is more complex laws and growing cynicism.

    What Gandhi pointed out is playing itself out in India. He said institutions reflect what the people are, and that they cannot function as they are intended to unless those manning them are people of integrity. But, can people with integrity emerge when it is missing all around, feudal consciousness pervades and people bend to authority?

    Reform requires us to resolve the contradiction between parliamentary democracy and the prevailing feudal consciousness. This cannot happen from above. It requires the transformation of the people’s consciousness – Gandhi’s unfinished agenda.

     

    Opinions expressed are those of the author.

    Feature Image Credit: Gandhi in a public address – Painting at Sabarmati Ashram.