Desicritics Author: C R Sridhar

Surviving at the Margins: The Politics of Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi

C R Sridhar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:18:58 EST

On Google Earth, Yamuna Pushta is eerie and striking. The satellite image of this piece of land shows clusters of buildings, roads and the banks of the Yamuna. Though one can see the geographical details of the place clearly, it is also, unwittingly, a falsification of reality. Absent in the topographical details of Yamuna Pushta is the pain and suffering of the thousands of men, women, and children who lived in informal, unauthorized settlements along the banks of the Yamuna. Their lives epitomized a sturdy resilience in the face of cruel exclusion both economic and social. Their consciousness of life was burdened with the pitiless awareness that their lives hung from fragile threads, which could be snapped at any moment. The 35000 working class families who lived here eked out a humble living from occupations such as porters, rickshaw pullers, domestic workers, rag pickers, and construction workers. Many of these people who had migrated to Delhi decades ago from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal, faced the prospect of eviction and resettlement.

The traumatic events that led to the utter devastation of nearly 150000 men, women, and children was the decision of the Tourism Ministry of the Government of India to develop a 100- acre strip of land on the banks of Yamuna into riverside promenade which would be marketed as a major tourist attraction. This announcement was made in January 2004.
Moreover, the Government of Delhi and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), facing strictures from the Supreme Court of India for their lapses in not cleaning the pollution of the river, became partners in the eviction process of juggi-jhonpdi colony on the banks of the river.

The people living in the colony courageously defended themselves by approaching the courts to stay the proposed eviction of their dwelling units. They also pleaded with officials of MCD not to proceed with the eviction, as they would be rendered homeless and destitute. All their pleas fell on deaf ears. The reaction of the court and that of the Government was one of implacable hostility to the plight of the juggi-jhonpdi dwellers.

The public opinion among the middle-class and the affluent –classes was one of intense hostility as the slum dwellers were demonised as criminals who lived in public property as encroachers. In the minds of the urbanised elite the slums were places festering with disease, filth and criminals which had to be cleaned up to give way to a world class cities with shopping malls, promenades and luxury villas.

The slum dweller as an encroacher

The apex court in its various judgments altered its earlier perception of slum dwellers as citizens with rights to that of encroachers without any rights. In its landmark decision in Olga Tellis vs. Bombay Municipal Corporation the Supreme Court declared that ‘ the right to livelihood is an important facet of the right to life’ and laid down the principle that the eviction of the pavement dwellers will lead to the deprivation of their livelihood and consequently to the deprivation of life. The other decisions of the court saw an expansion of the rights of the deprived and the court struck constitutional blows for the indigent slum dwellers in cases such as K. Chandru vs. State of Tamil Nadu, Shantistar Builders vs. Narayan Khimlal Ghotame and others (1990), Chameli Singh vs. State of Utter Pradesh (1996) the court ruled that housing constituted a fundamental right under Article 21(the right to life) of the Constitution. The protective arm of the Apex Court could be seen as it imposed other important safeguards on the state such as providing alternative accommodation to the displaced slum dwellers within areas not far removed for places of work so that the displaced persons could earn a living. The court also imposed a bar on eviction during monsoon times, as any displacement of slum dwellers in such periods would cause grave hardship to them.

But in a series of later judgments the protective arm of the court was withdrawn only to be replaced by the mailed fist. The court in 1999 in the case of Hem Raj vs. Commissioner of Police said ‘ when you are occupying illegal land, you have no legal right…’ The volte-face of the Apex Court was again reflected in other decisions as Dhar vs. Government of National Capital Territory and Delhi where the court differentiated between honest citizens who have to pay for land or a flat and slum dwellers who are unscrupulous citizens. In Almitra Patel vs. the Union of India (2000) the Supreme Court said that Delhi should be the showpiece of the country and described slums as ‘large areas of public land usurped for private use free of cost’ and negatively perceived any rehabilitation measures as rewarding the encroacher.

Bulldozed into oblivion.

The fate of the thousands of people living in make shift habitats along the banks of Yamuna was sealed when the public opinion went against them and the courts refused to intervene.

What was to follow was a tragedy of immense proportions in post independent India that was ignored in the mainstream media. In February and April 2004, the Pushta demolition was undertaken with a brutality reminiscent of the emergency excesses. Personally supervised by the then Minister of Tourism Jagmohan, the battalions of the Uttar Pradesh PAC were pressed into service. Those who resisted the demolition were mercilessly beaten up. Some died trying to save their children. Even women and children were not spared. The ruined colony was set on fire and the police attacked the people who tried to salvage their belongings with lathis.

The onslaught on the indigent slum dwellers did not pass unnoticed. The authors Kalyani Manon Sen and Gautam Bhan in their book titled ‘Swept off the Map’ have relentlessly documented the trauma of eviction and the resettlement of the dispossessed community of Yamuna Pushta. The traces of wounds suffered by the people of Yamuna Pushta is analysed with rigour and passion and laid threadbare for urban planners to contemplate the unspeakable brutality of a public policy bent on creating a world class city at an unacceptable human cost.

Nailing an official lie

By adopting scientific methodology with a feminist perspective, the authors question and challenge bland official statements that the evicted slum dwellers of Yamuna Pushta were happily resettled. In fact the Minister Jagmohan went on record that the evicted slum dwellers expressed their gratitude after they were resettled. Nothing could be further than truth. As a benchmark to test the claims of the government the authors adopted the key principle –‘shelter for all, economic development, quality and safe environment’ laid down by the Government of India in the Urban Housing and Habitat Policy in 2005 and reiterated in 2007. The Report ‘Swept off the Map’ is structured around a set of socio-economic parameters of rights of humankind, namely, Shelter for all, Economic development, quality of life and safe environment. ‘The Report,’ the authors explain, ‘ presents the results of our enquiry- data collected through our survey, information and perspectives contributed by members of the community over the course of several interviews and interactions and insights from our own experiences of working in Bawana.’

The results of the enquiry make depressing reading. As the authors observe with respect to the policy of resettlement in the Bawana area, ‘the levels of squalor in Bawana are definitely higher than in Pushta, contradicting the government’s claims of improved conditions in resettlement colonies.’ The access to services in Bawana was inferior as they were not regulated and the informal providers charged the people more. The authors also nail the canard that slum dwellers are free loaders living off public services. According to them many of them were paying for the services. If granted a secure tenure in the housing area, they took an interest in their environment in improving water supply, electricity, and garbage disposal. If sanitary facilities (Sulabh toilets) were available they used them even if they were expensive.

On other parameters such as economic development, life in resettlement is hard as there is unemployment staring at the work force. As the authors point out ‘our data from Bawana shows that 58 out of 1000 men and 93 out of 1000 women are unemployed.’ Apart from open unemployment, as the authors say, there is underemployment or hidden unemployment, which worsen employment conditions in the resettlement colonies. The workers in the casual sector end up ‘working harder and getting less’. They point out women are worse off as they bear the brunt of the disastrous effects of eviction.

Moreover as the resettlement colonies are located in the periphery of the city the job opportunities decline for the work force increasing insecurity for all. ‘The overwhelming majority have touched rock bottom,’ say the authors, ‘ Consumption has been cut to the bone.’ On the other parameter Quality of Life the residents of Bawana have slender chances of achieving even minimal benchmark. With non-existent safety nets and an indifferent government they exist in a fragile state on the fringes of existence. Other factors compound the problem such as increased crime and violence, which abound in resettlement colonies. Especially vulnerable are again women who suffer violence on a disproportionate basis.

Emerging from the debris

Painting on a larger canvas the authors make an interesting observation. The crisis of eviction and dispossession in Delhi is not unique to Delhi. The shock waves of dispossession are felt in other parts of the world. ‘ It is not only in the cities of the global south that growing numbers of people are being pushed into surviving precariously at the margins of the economy’ they thoughtfully add. Even in cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen the political commitment to social housing is waning with land prices shooting up. The ‘zero tolerance policing’, which is becoming popular in large cities of the world is the brutal response of the state to the problems of homeless people by making the homeless disappear from the city. Mike Davis in his Planet of Slums has written that the present trends indicate a creation of underclass of workers who are excluded from the formal economy constituting a permanent class of the dispossessed. One estimate puts the figure in the region of one billion, which is roughly one-sixth of the total world population.

But there are winds of change. In the last chapter of this remarkable book in a section titled ‘Reclaiming the Rights of the City’ the authors mention that the dispossessed are becoming more politically aware and are organising themselves. This is evident in the spirit of resistance expressed in diverse forms- squatters’ movement, movements around environments, struggles against evictions and demolitions, movements for access for services. That resistance can only deepen, the authors say, unless we shed the myth that the poor are dirty, ineducable, immoral and prone to violence.

The realisation that the slums have vibrant communities would pave the way towards a more egalitarian society where the Right to Shelter is not an empty dream but a reality built on the solid foundations of bricks, mortar and constitutional rights.

Reference:

Swept off the Map- Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi.

Kalyani Menon Sen, Gautam Bhan. Yoda Press- 2008.

Book Review: The Last Jews of Kerala

C R Sridhar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:10:40 EDT

Ms Edna Fernandes, a British Indian journalist, has written The Last Jews of Kerala which is about the Kerala Jews ‘charting their rise and fall, from their heyday to a decline in the twentieth century and the twenty first century denouement.’ The account, in the words of the author, is ‘a mixture of interview and confession, archive and diary.’ (Page 9)

Weaving history with story telling, the author recounts how the fortunes of this once vibrant community were destroyed by apartheid, inter-breeding, mental illness and the exodus from Kerala after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Ms Fernandes takes us on a fascinating journey through the maze of history spanning more than two thousand years when the first Jews landed on the Indian shores, sailing from Israel on trade missions from the court of King Solomon. According to the author the early Biblical accounts depict sailors and merchants docking at Kerala’s main harbour, charged with procuring spices and exotic treasure such as elephant’s tooth, peacocks and apes. Nathan Katz and Ellen Goldberg in their work The Last Jews of Cochin: Jewish Identity in Hindu India note that the Hebrew Bible contained a number of words which were similar to Sanskrit and Tamil, indicating that there were contacts between Solomon’s kingdom and India. (Page78)

Though the available history is obscured by folklore and fable, historians say that the Jews came to Kerala as merchant traders and settled as early as 700 BC for trade. A further trickle of settlers came to India several centuries after the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar razed the First Temple to the ground in 586 BCE. The foundation for the Second Temple was laid by 520 BCE. Some five hundred years later in 19 BCE, Herod restored it to its original grandeur. But the Romans crushed the Jews again and smashed the Temple to pieces and leaving only the sacred Western Wall or Wailing Wall standing. The Jews of Cochin in Kerala came in large numbers to Cranganore – an ancient port near Cochin- after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. As the author says ‘Out of the fire and devastation of Jerusalem, thus a community of Jews was delivered on the west coast of Kerala.’ (Page 81)

The Jews who were tradesmen enjoyed a good relationship with the Hindu Royalty. The Chera Emperor of Kerala, Bhaskara Ravi Varma II granted Jewish chieftain, Joseph Rabban, a principality over the Jews of Cochin. The Rights of the Jews, called the Magna Carta, were set out in copper plates which now lie in the Paradesi Synagogue. It is said that Joseph Rabban helped the Chera Emperor by placing men and assets at his disposal during the long Chera-Chola conflict fought in the south during 1000 CE. ‘Rabban’s reward for such fealty’ adds the author ‘ was a kingdom of his own, in perpetuity.’ This was the beginning of good relationship between the Jews and the Cochin’s line of kings which lasted centuries. ( page 84)

In 1524 the Muslims attacked the Jews of Cranganore on dispute relating to pepper trade. Most of the Jews fled to Cochin and went under the protection of the Hindu Raja there. He granted them a site for their own town that later acquired the name "Jew Town" (by which it is still known).

In the chequered history of the Kerala Jews fate intervened adversely in the shape of the Portuguese occupation of Cochin. The Portuguese persecuted the Jews mecilessly until they were displaced by the Dutch in1660. The Jews of Cochin enjoyed a period of great happiness and tolerence under the Dutch Protestants.In 1795 Cochin came under the control of the British Empire. During the 19th Century, the Cochin Jews lived in the towns of Cochin, Ernakulam, Aluva and North Paravur.

Soon after India became Independent in 1947 the State of Israel also came into existence. For many Jews in Kerala, Jerusalem was their spiritual homeland and Kerala was an interim paradise. The Kerala Jews migrated to Israel in large numbers abandoning their places of worship in Kerala. Large groups of the Jews from Kerala settled in the moshav of Nevatim in the Negev ( Southern Israel). Some settled down in the neighborhood of Katamon in Jerusalem, in Beer Sheva, Dimona and Yeruham.

The Jews who came to Kerala are referred to as the Black Jews. The Paradesi Jews, also called "White Jews", settled later, coming to India from European and Middle Eastern nations such as Holland and Spain and bringing with them the Ladino language. Spanish and Portuguese Jews (Sephardim) settled in Goa in the 15th century, but this settlement eventually disappeared. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Cochin had an influx of Jewish settlers from the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. ( refer Cochin Jews- Wikipedia)

Jews called the Bene Israel came to India 2000 years back and settled in Western Maharastra along the Konkan coast and later moving on to Bombay and to other cities such as Pune, Ahmadadbad and Karachi. In the Eighteenth Century Jews from Iran, Syria, Yehmen and mostly Iraq arrived in India. Called the Baghdadi Jews, they were prosperous merchants who later settled down in big commercial cities such as Surat, Bombay, and Calcutta.

The Jews of Cochin did not follow the Talmudic prohibition against public singing by women unlike other Orthodox Jews. The rich tradition of Jewish prayers and narrative songs sung by women in Judeo- Malayalam is preserved today by the Jewish Music Centre at Hebrew University.( refer Cochin Jews- Wikipedia)

Apart from tracing the history of the Jews of Kerala from Biblical times, the author also explores the colour apartheid between the Black Jews and the White Jews. This forms a dominant narrative in her book . As she explains ‘The two communities , the Blacks and whites, had suffered a bitter feud for centuries, their relations marked by apartheid, discrimination, claim and counter-claim over who arrived first in India..’ She adds ominously ‘this lay at the heart of the split within the Jewish community, evident for the last four centuries, polarising them when there should have been much more to unite them. It also proved to be their undoing.’ (page 6).

As the Black and White Jews rufused to intermarry, the Kerala Jews who once numbered thousands with eight synagogues and vast estates of plantations dwindled to fewer than fifty. Just one working syngogue remains ‘with not enough men to form the quorum needed for prayer on Sabbath.’ (page 7) She says sombrely ‘the other synagogue have fallen into disuse, crumbling into dust, annexed by jungle and home to writhing nests of cobras.’

The other factor which relentlessly cut down the number of Jews living in Kerala was the exodus of the Jewish people from Kerala. Part of the decline could also be attributed to conversion to Christanity. These Jews who were converted during the time of St Thomas and later were called Nasarani or St Thomas Christians.

A characteristic feature of her book is her strong story telling. She infuses life in her sombre topic by penning the portraits of unforgetable people. There is Gamey Salem, a self confessed cynic and scourge of convention whose father fought for equality for Black Jews, there is Babu the local butcher with gentle eyes whose job is to slit the bird’s jugular with his knife, then there is Anil who wants to marry a wife who will not give him headaches. Another unforgetable person in her book is Sammy the last Warden of his syngogue who is mercurial, irritable and elusive.

In the last chapter of her book titled Home the author captures the pain, desolation and the inner turmoil of Cochini Jews who left the peaceful and tolerant shores of Kerala for the rough and tumble of modern Israel riven with conflicts and violence. She describes the poignancy of a Cochini Jew Abraham who encountered only pain, sorrow and alienation in the promised land and wants to return to Kerala – a place where the Jews of Kerala flourshed for thousands of years without the fear of pogroms and persecution.. As the author mentions in the last lines of her book ‘ This desire to return provided an unexpected epitaph, compelling Abraham to find rest in a land that had given much, a peace that history has rarely bestowed. In the end it was the age old tolerence that drew him.’

It is said that the cruel fate that awaits all dying tribes is human forgetfulness. The best antidote to the fraility of human memory is recorded history which prevents dying communities from disappearing into the blackhole of oblivion. Books like The Last Jews of Kerala lend dignity to tribes that die out by preserving their rich culture, and tradition for posterity.

Along with another memorable book Ruby of Cochin:An Indian Jewish Woman Remembers, the author’s book should find a special place in our bookshelf..

The Shadow of the Great Game: Partition of India & British Strategic Interests

C R Sridhar — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:12:16 EDT

Mr Jaswant Singh’s book Jinnah - India, Partition, Independence reopened old wounds of India’s Partition in 1947. His central argument was that Jinnah- an epitome of secular values- was unfairly demonised in India and that the blame lay squarely on Indian leaders like Pandit Nehru and Sardar Vallabhai Patel. Stung by the ‘quirky’ views of Mr Singh the response of the BJP was swift: Jaswant Singh was expelled from the primary membership of the BJP. Explaining the decision to expel Jaswant Singh from the party Rajnath Singh- the party chief- tetchily told the members of the Press, “Views expressed by Jaswant Singh in his book 'Jinnah -- India, Partition, Independence' does not represent views of the party. In fact, the party completely dissociates itself from the contents of the book."1

While it may be tempting to think that Jaswant Singh committed political hara-kiri by praising Jinnah and denigrating Sardar Patel an icon of BJP, nothing could be farther from the truth. As far as political fortunes go, Mr Singh’s political career was in irreversible tailspin. The BJP had been humbled at the recent General Election and for the urbane polo playing princeling from Rajastan the future looked bleak and uncertain.

Ironically enough for Jaswant Singh, the political fortunes revived unexpectedly when his book was banned in Gujarat by the BJP strongman Narender Modi. His book became the toast of book launch at five star hotels where the jaded glitterati vied with each other to have them photographed in the presence of the distinguished author. Mr Singh was seen in cocktail circuits wearing his quasi- military attire (epaulettes and all) and basking in his secular aura. In his baritone voice he held forth on the secular credentials of the enigmatic Mohamed Ali Jinnah and the tortuous history of India’s Partition.

Guilty Men of Partition

But his book only flatters to deceive. Lacking the effervescence of bubbly champagne his book can be best described as a vapid rethreading of other people’s books. In fact, Maulana Azad in his book ‘India Wins Freedom’ blamed Nehru and Sardar Patel for their inflexibility over the Cabinet Mission Plan, which eventually paved the way for the Partition of India. The theme of lost opportunities and narrow vision of Indian Nationalist Leaders was taken up by the formidable Ram Manohar Lohia who in his book Guilty Men of India's Partition criticized the Congress leaders like Nehru and Patel for their failure to seize opportunities to prevent the Partition. Lohia in his book, which was published in 1960, also strongly condemned the role of fanatical Hindu extremism for the partition. As he said “The opposition of fanatical Hinduism to partition did not and could not make any sense, for one of the forces that partitioned the country was precisely this Hindu fanaticism.”2

Other historians argue that it was the intransigence of Muslim separatist leaders like Muhammad Iqbal, the ideological founder of Pakistan, who as early as 1930 preached, “The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other.” Thus the religious basis of the two-nation split goes back to 1930. Iqbal urged Jinnah who led a separatist movement as early as 1937 that it was imperative to prevent the domination of Muslims by Non-Muslims. Jinnah in his discussions with Congress leaders and British officials made unreasonable demands for equal representations in the interim Government as envisaged in the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946. The Congress leaders countered the proposal of Jinnah by arguing that the Hindus represented 75% of the population while the Muslim constituted only 20% of the population and hence the proposal was unworkable. As a compromise the Congress leaders offered Jinnah a 12-member cabinet having 6 Hindu, 5 Muslim and another representative from remaining religious groups. But Jinnah, some historians allege, wanted to grab full power and pushed India to the bloody Partition. As the gaunt and ascetic looking Jinnah said, “We shall have India divided or we shall have India destroyed.” 3

India was divided but it did not save the horrific carnage that was to follow. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered, millions mutilated or raped and tens of millions lost their homes. The religious segregation of India and Pakistan exacted a terrible toll, which continues even today from the riots of Babri Masjid to the dangerous nuclear arms race between these two countries.

But is the history of India’s Partition to be viewed from the narrow perspective of failure of the key players, namely, British, Hindu and Muslim leaders to prevent the Partition? Or were there larger geopolitical interests as a hidden agenda of the British Empire, which dictated that the Partition was a foregone conclusion?

The Wells of Power

In his book ‘The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition’ Narendra Singh Sarila, an ADC to Lord Mountbatten and who later served in the Indian Foreign Service, explores the perspective that there was a critical link between the partition and the British fears that USSR under Stalin had expansionist ambitions of gaining control over the oil wells of the Middle East. In the twilight years of their rule in India the British realised that they needed partners and military bases to acquire influence in the area lying between India and Turkey.

What made the British governing elites nervous was that to the Soviet Union’s southern border lay the region of the Persian Gulf with oil fields – the wells of power- that were of vital interest to the West. “ Britain could ill afford to lose control” says the author, “over the entire Indian subcontinent that had served as its military base in dominating the Indian Ocean area and the countries around the Persian Gulf for more than half a century.”4 The British fears about Stalin’s ambition were heightened when he announced in 1946 that his country’s dependence on oil had doubled since 1941.5

The British shrewdly realised the Indian Nationalists like Nehru and his close confidante V.K.Krishna Menon would have no alliance with Britain to protect her wells of power and be a pawn to counter the looming Russian Bear from gaining control over the Persian Gulf. The British needed willing partners in the Great Game to thwart Soviet Union influence over the area. In the cynical exercise of manipulative politics the British used the Islam card to encourage Jinnah and the Muslim League to press for a separate Muslim State.

Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India from 1943 to early 1947, was the British strategist who saw clearly that the breach caused in Britain’s capacity to defend the Middle East and the Indian Ocean area could be solved if the Muslim League were to succeed in separating India’s strategic northwest from the rest of the country. The cosy ties that Lord Linlithgow developed with Mohammad Ali Jinnah during the Second World War had the objective of influencing Jinnah to side with the British by offering military bases in the separate Muslim State.

Churchill an ardent imperialist expressed his contempt for ethical values when he explained “We do not think that logic and clear-cut principles are necessarily the sole key to what ought to be done in swiftly changing and indefinable situations… We assign a larger importance to opportunism and improvisation seeking to live and conquer..”

These were prophetic words for what was conceived by Churchill with scrupulous disregard for ethical values about the partitioning of India had to be implemented by the Labour party under Clement Attlee. On 14th August 1947 the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan was born and on 15th August 1947 saw the birth of India ending 350 years of British rule.

Poisoned Chalice

The New State of Pakistan kept her word and formed a bulwark against Communism. She joined the Baghdad Pact together with Iran, Turkey and Britain and later the CENTO of which US was the prime mover. These strategic moves were meant to counter the Soviet Union in the Middle East.

In 1954 Pakistan entered into a bilateral pact with Britain’s ally US and allowed the CIA to have an air base in Peshawar. The U2 spy planes took off from Peshawar and kept a close watch on Soviet Russia. In the 80’s Pakistan took the fateful step of helping US to eject Russian troops. This involved a tie up of its intelligence agency ISI with CIA to train the Mujaideen to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The US, which replaced Britain as a dominant power to stem the Soviet influence also played the Islamic card with devastating effect. Funds were diverted to ISI to radicalise Islamic schools to fight godless Communism. A genie called Islamic Radicalism, which escaped the bottle, haunted US for years to come. Several acts of terrorism were conducted against US assets all over the world culminating in the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Centre. The reason for this anger was that the Islamic Radicals perceived that US had used them and did not care for the oppression of their Muslim brethren in Palestine by the Israelis.

On the domestic front Pakistan fared badly with a corrupt Military oligarchy seizing power. She had civilian governments from time to time but did not last long. Some of the prominent politicians were either assassinated or judicially executed without fair trail. The military Generals attired in splendid military uniform took bribes from US- UK axis. The shaky economy is propped up by military aid from US and drug running. The plight of the decent people of Pakistan has deteriorated to the point that there is seething discontent in the streets. The government and the military are widely perceived to be unrepresentative of the people’s interests and acting as hired mercenaries to protect US geopolitical interests in the region. The State of Pakistan is unravelling with extremist violence spilling over in the streets of Pakistan.

India has emerged from the Partition slightly stronger but there should be no room for complacency. The relationship with Pakistan has been tense and uneasy. There have been military conflicts in Kashmir for which India has strongly accused Pakistan for creating most of them. The war over East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was a bloody one. The conflict in Kargil was another fierce struggle, which soured the relationship between India and Pakistan. Most sensational and grisly was the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai for which Pakistan was blamed by the Indian government. The long shadows of the partition are seen in religious conflicts of Babri Majid and the Godara riots.

India has taken dangerous steps to cosy up to US and support her hegemonic interests in the world. On June 28, 2005 the Indian Defence Minister signed the ‘New Framework of Defence Relations’ with US. On July 18, 2005 the Indian Prime Minister issued a joint statement with the US President Bush on a wide range of issues including India’s nuclear programme. On September 24, 2005, India voted against Iran in the meeting of the Board of governors of IAEA. These measures are construed as a tilt towards US foreign policy.6

The US on its part has played up India’s Global status, which is a psychological ploy to change public opinion in the upper classes and considerable sections of the middle class who are in the dollar zone (through relatives in US, family members who work for US firms in India and US). There are carefully planted stories in the newspapers that US would make India the next global power. It is all a matter of fighting terrorism together and spread democracy in rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

Now the Great Game for US is not so much as to curb the expansionist ambitions of Russia, which collapsed with the Berlin wall. There is a new enemy called China which many political observers feel may be the next superpower. There are worrying signs that India may be used as a foil to Chinese ambitions. There are murmurs of discontent in the Sino-Indian relationship, which may brew into a full-scale war. India could become another pawn in the deadly game of chess played between US and China.

Would India drink from the same poisoned chalice as Pakistan did when she first served Anglo-US interests instead of her own? Would the same fate of Pakistan await India when she does so?

If the past were any indication, then inexorably, the events would hurl the ‘midnight children’ towards a future equally bleak and terrible.

1 Times of India News- BJP expels Jaswant Singh over Jinnah remarks- 19-09-2009.

2 Yahoo News- The BJP’s self-inflicted wound- 30-09-2009

3 Jinnah or Nehru: Who’s Responsible for India’s Partition? - M.A. Khan- islam watch.org

4 The Untold Story of India’s Partition- page 9-Narendra Singh Sarila.

5 The Untold Story of India’s Partition- Narendra Singh Sarila- page20.

6 India’s Place in the US Strategic Order-www.rupe-india.org

The Bombing of Pan Am 103: Pieces of a Jigsaw Puzzle.

C R Sridhar — Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:43:55 EDT

“They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear…”

Ezekiel- 12

The recent decision of the Scottish Government to release the Lockerbie bomber Al-Megrahi from the Scottish prison evoked strong protests from the US Government. The FBI Director Robert Mueller condemned the decision as ‘mockery of the rule of law and gives comfort to terrorists around the world.’ He bitterly accused Scotland’s Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill of rewarding a terrorist “even though he never admitted to his role in this act of mass murder.” Many American families who lost their loved ones in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 bound for New York echoed his criticism.1

The reason given by the Scottish Government for the release of the prisoner Al-Megrahi on Aug. 20 was, ironically, compassion. According to the Scottish government Mr Al-Megrahi aged 57 was ailing from terminal prostate cancer and was not expected to survive for more than three months. As he had already served around eight years in jail, it was felt, that the ends of justice were sufficiently met.

Beneath the hyperbole of compassion some observers feel that the Scottish Government decision had nothing to do with compassion but a deft move to distance itself from potential embarrassment arising from the case. In fact the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled there might have been a miscarriage of justice on the basis of lost or destroyed evidence. “Happily for London and Washington, Al-Megrahi was now dying of cancer, so a deal was possible. He would give up his plea for a retrial, no dirty linen about the original trial would be aired in public, and he would be set free,” writes Gwynne Dyer.2 Perhaps the Scottish Government feared that acquittal of Al-Megrahi by the appeal court that commenced the hearing on April 28 would harm its reputation for conducting fair trails with high standards of probity. As Dr Jim Swire whose daughter Flora died in the plane bombing said “If the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.”3

Cooking the Libyan goose

The trial of two persons, namely, Al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah both Libyans attracted intense media attention. The official story put out by the media was that the bombing was a victory of terrorist cunning over American innocence. As disturbing reports began to circulate that the evidence produced by the prosecution was shaky as crucial evidence was tampered, witnesses bribed for the prosecution to tell lies to the court and unreliable testimony of prime witness for the prosecution, the opinion changed. Now the grey version gained ground that Uncle Sam has as much blood on his hands as the bombers.4

The outcome of the trial was that only Al-Megrahi was convicted for bombing the Pan Am 103, which killed 270 people in Scotland. The co-accused Fhimah was acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Al- Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment. On account of intense international pressure Libya paid 2.7 billions in compensation to the families. But the Libyan Government and Al-Megrahi denied any involvement in the terrorist bombing.

The unravelling of the official story

On 21 December 1988, Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York exploded 31000 ft over Lockerbie (Scotland); 38 minutes after take off killing 259 passengers aboard and another 11 on ground.

The trial court found that the bomb that destroyed the plane contained one pound of plastic explosives (Semtex H) put in a Toshiba radio cassette player, which had been placed inside a brown hard-shell Samsonite suitcase.

The trial court also found that the suitcase was placed aboard Air Malta Flight KM 180 from Malta to Frankfurt where it was transferred by the baggage system to Pan Am flight 103A Frankfurt to Heathrow. The suitcase was loaded on Pam Am flight 103 at Heathrow bound for New York.

The prosecution told the court that Megrahi put the bomb inside the clothes purchased from Tony Gauci who owned a store in Malta. The prosecution relied on the testimony of its main trial witness Tony Gauci identified Megrahi as the person who purchased the clothes on December 7,1988.

The reliability of the main trial witness came under fire as it transpired that the clothes were purchased on November 23, 1988 when Megrahi was not in Malta and he had cast iron alibi to prove it. Moreover, the main trial witness for the prosecution could not identify Megrahi from the photographs and he told the investigating authorities that the man shown in the photo was much younger and that the man who purchased the clothes would be an older man of fifty years of age. Moreover Tony Gauci also said that the man who bought the clothes was taller man than the accused. The contradictory statements made by the main witness for the prosecution was not made available to the defence lawyers during the trial. There were also serious doubts cast on the integrity of the witnesses, as there were allegations that the witnesses were bribed to falsely implicate Megrahi as the person who caused the bombing.5

The other piece of evidence, namely, the electronic timing device (MST13) used by the Libyans for the bombing of the plane was extremely shaky as the testimony of the Swiss businessman Edwin Bollier whose company MEBO was said to have sold the timer devices only to the Libyans was false and used to mislead the court. The vital piece of evidence, namely, that the timer devices were also sold to the East German Secret Police Stasi who had links with other terror groups such as Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Mr Taylor, QC, told the trial court “The Stasi was one source an organisation such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) could have obtained timers from to carry out the destruction of Pan Am 103."6

The holes in the prosecution case grew bigger when Ulrich Lumpert a Swiss engineer who was “a crucial witness” now confessed that he lied about the origins of a timer switch. In a sworn affidavit filed before a Swiss court he said “I stole a prototype MST-13 timing device” and “gave it without permission on June 22, 1989 to a person who was officially investigating the Lockerbie affair”. Moreover, he insists the timer switch shown to the court had been tampered with since he initially viewed it in Scotland, saying the pieces appeared to have been “carbonised” in the interim. He also says the court was so determined to prove Libya’s guilt it brushed aside his evidence.7

Other factors including using expert witness who did not possess adequate qualification and training cast grave doubts on the prosecution case. Professor Hans Koechler, appointed by the UN to be an observer at the trial, described the trial as “a spectacular miscarriage of justice”. His plea that the British Government should look into the Lockerbie bombing afresh and conduct an independent inquiry fell on deaf ears.

Piecing together the jigsaw puzzle

If the case against Libya was weak and also a fabricated one then a question arises- what is the other plausible theory? Who were the perpetrators of the terrorist attack on Pan Am 103? What were the motives for the bombing of the ill-fated Pan Am flight?

One important piece to complete the puzzle was a catastrophic event, which took place on July 3, 1988, when the navy cruiser USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet Airbus 665 over the Persian Gulf. The civilian Airliner was carrying mostly Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. 290 died, mostly Iranians.

The Iranian reaction to the incident was furious accusing United States of barbaric acts of terrorism and promising to avenge the blood of the Martyrs. A spokesperson for the Iranian Embassy in London, Mohamed Beshti, predicted an act of revenge. He darkly hinted, “We do not disclose our response but it will be an appropriate response to the magnitude of the American Crime.” What infuriated the radicals and hardliners in Iran was that the Reagan government treated the incident as a tragic accident..

As tempers ran high among the Iranian public, Radio Tehran broadcast a warning to the US Government-"The criminal United States should know that the unlawfully shed blood in the disaster will be avenged in the same blood-spattered sky over the Persian Gulf.” Iran's President, Hojatolislam Ali Khamenei sharpened the rhetoric, by calling the US President Ronald Reagan and his administration "criminals and murderers."

The hardliners in Iran then took the fateful step of contacting a Syrian based group, the Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine, General Command (PFLP- GC), to carry out a revenge attack. Ahmed Jibril was the head of the organisation, which had specialised in bombing planes. A price of about 10 million dollars was offered by the Iranian hardliners to Jibril to carry out the retaliation.

Jibril was ready for the bombing of American planes by mid October 1988 and his expert bomb maker Marwan Khreesat had by then gone to Germany and had already assembled five bombs meant to explode at high altitude.

The German police kept a watchful eye on the activities of PFLP. On October 26, 1988 the German police in an operation called Autumn Leaves rounded up Khreesat and 14 other members of PFLP. The police discovered one bomb placed in a Toshiba recorder but the other four went missing. It is thought that the German police operation did not completely immobilise Jibril’s operations and that one of the missing bombs was placed in the Pan AM flight 103. Moreover the police released Khreesat and the other suspects within days of their arrest. The reason for their release is still shrouded in mystery.

The mule or the courier who was used to carry the bomb was a young Lebanese-born American Khalid Jafaar who believed that he was only carrying a shipment of heroin. It is believed that Jibril’s men substituted the bomb for the heroin possibly at Frankfurt by Turkish baggage handlers and Jafaar went aboard the Pan Am flight 103 still under the impression that he was carrying dope and not a bomb. Jafaar was identified as one of the dead passengers in Lockerbie.

Puzzling questions do crop up for explanation - how did the baggage pass the security check? Was the security system so lax that a bomb could be placed in the aircraft?

It transpires that the DEA/CIA allowed controlled deliveries of drug to be transported by planes in Europe and US. As John Ashton explains that it was part of a shady bargain struck between elements within the CIA and the Syrian overlords of Lebanese narco-terrorism. In return for the Syrian using their influence to free the remaining American hostages, the CIA helped them to safely transport their heroin on transatlantic flights.8 The DEA/ CIA wanted to keep a lid on this secret drug operation as the exposure could have damaging repercussions on the credibility of US government as the scandal of Iran gate did. As Dr. Jim Swire wryly says, “ If the allegations prove to be correct, it will make Watergate look like a vicar's tea party.”

Even though the alternative theory sounds more plausible and appears more consistent with the facts known there is still another piece missing in the puzzle- Why did UK and US governments shield the Iran –Syria axis and divert attention to Libya as the perpetrator of the crime?

Initially, both UK and US pointed their accusing fingers at Iran / Syria but somewhere in 1990 the interest in the Syria backed PFLP waned. By now the political situation in Middle East had changed with Sadam Hussein invading Kuwait. President Bush had quickly calculated that as the erstwhile friend had turned foe posing a real threat to its oil security the US Government needed new friends in the Middle East to counter the threat posed by Sadam Hussein. In the Gulf conflict that followed Syria sent its troops to fight Sadam Hussein in the Gulf war. The Syrian backed PFLP completely disappeared from public scrutiny of US-UK.

The other issue, which dictated that Iran – Syria should be kept away from the public eye, was the hostage crisis in Lebanon. Between 1982 and 1992 at least 96 foreign nationals mostly West European and US nationals were kidnapped. The hostage takers were strong allies of Iran. It was also believed that Syria had a dominant role in Lebanon. As US-UK were involved in sensitive negotiations to resolve the hostage crisis geopolitical interests dictated that the cooperation of both Iran and Syria was imperative in releasing the hostages. So it was thought expedient to involve a tiny and internationally unpopular country like Libya to face international wrath for its act of terrorism in the bombing of Pan Am 103.9 So the fate of Al Magrahi was sealed.

The allegory of the cave

In the allegory of the cave the Greek philosopher Socrates asks a question- what happens to human beings who are chained in such a way that they are unable to turn and see the light. The philosopher replied, “ In such a world the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”

For the intrepid few who challenged the official version of the story there was intimidation and threat of legal proceedings. The Trial of the Octopus written by Donald Goddard and Lester Coleman, which exposed the CIA/ DEA dirty deals in dope trade, faced legal hurdles for the publication. Lester Coleman, an ex- operative of DIA, had the ignominy of being called a conman and conspiracy theorist. A journalist, Danny Casorolo, phoned Coleman and tried to follow up his story. But nine days after his first phone call to Coleman, Casorolo was knifed to death in a hotel room in West Virginia. His body was embalmed before a post-mortem could be carried out. For Allan Frankovich who produced and directed the Film The Maltese Double Cross challenging the official cover up ran into rough weather when his film was withdrawn for viewing at the last minute from The London Festival.

For the bereaved families of the passengers there is very little hope of a public enquiry to expose the dark secrets of Lockerbie. Like the prisoners in a cave they are shown shadows instead of reality, darkness instead of light. The identity of the actual perpetrators may never see the light of the day. The deceit and the duplicity of the governments and the intelligence agencies would in all probability keep the families in darkness and ignorance. The UK government has shown no willingness to investigate the travesty of justice by instituting an enquiry. The US Government under President Obama has shown no willingness either. Both Governments have much to hide and truth could be painful.

The Libyan Government under Gheddafi would be in no mood to contest the travesty of justice occasioned by the conviction of its citizen. Already there are overtures by Western Governments to strike oil deals and pump in investments in Libya. The new Gheddafi has shed his rhetoric about Western Imperialism and appears to be quite pragmatic and flexible to Western interests.

For Al-Megrahi the terminal cancer would kill him and the dirty secrets of Lockerbie would be swept under the carpet.

Then in the comforting illusion of darkness there would be rejoicing among the prisoners of the cave. All would seem right in the world.

1 FBI’s Mueller Says al-Megrahi Release Is ‘Mockery’ of Justice- Bloomberg.com

2 Gwynne Dyer: Al-Megrahi is free because the case was so weak.

3 J’accuse- Ludwig De Braeckeleer- a hard-hitting fact sheet pointing out loop holes in the prosecution case.

4 US Government Still on Ropes Over Lockerbie- John Ashton- June 9, 1996 edition of
The Mail on Sunday—London

5 Ludwig De Braeckeleer- Lockerbie Witnesses Were Paid- ohmy news.

6 Lockerbie witness branded liar- BBC news-Wednesday, 17 January 2001.

7 Was Libya Framed for Lockerbie Bombing? By Linda S. Heard- democratic underground.com.

8 US Government Still on Ropes Over Lockerbie
By John Ashton- review of the book Trail Of The Octopus.

9 Killing Hope- US Military &CIA interventions since World War 11- William Blum- pages 288-299.

Wall Street - Cold, Flat, and Broke

C R Sridhar — Mon, 6 Oct 2008 11:40:33 EDT

“Dreamed about AIG and the stock market, woke up with the urge to stock up on canned goods and shotguns.” - Michele Catalano of Long Island, an angry blogger.

The month of September was cruel for Wall Street. Stormy winds blew away the venerable institutions of Wall Street and they collapsed one by one like a pack of cards. Lehman Brothers, the 158-year investment global investment bank, went belly up. Merrill Lynch was swallowed up by Bank of America. American International Group (AIG), a $1 trillion insurance company, had to be rescued by $85 billion dollar deal by the Federal Government on the ground that it was too big to fall. Capturing the mood of panic in Wall Street Mike Whitney, a widely quoted freelance writer, wrote ‘Lehman gone; Merrill Lynch swallowed up; AIG Going… Who’s Next for Madam Defarge?’¹

Madam Defarge and the tumbrels were kept busy while heads rolled in the basket in a grisly fashion. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the biggies of Mortgage lenders, became terminally ill requiring a massive bail out at a cost estimated to be in the region of $5.3 trillion. Washington Mutual went bust followed by Wachovia. Earlier in March, Bear Stearns became insolvent after bad bets turned into bad debts requiring Fed intervention. The concept of Wall Street investment banking was blown sky high when the remaining Goliaths Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs haemorrhaged sustaining huge losses and took the unprecedented step to covert themselves into low risk and tightly regulated commercial banks. The pervasive mood of despair and anger of Main Street was reflected by the black humour on Wall Street, one of the most popular being-“Question-What is the difference between a pigeon and an investment banker? Answer- Only a pigeon can make a deposit on a BMW.”

The dour looking, Harvard educated economist Nouriel Roubini was one of the early sceptics to predict the financial meltdown in Wall Street when he dropped the bombshell way back in 2006 that US would be heading towards the most serious financial and banking crisis since the Great Depression. His dark prophecies were met with derision and disbelief earning him the epithet- the prophet of doom. But Roubini had the last laugh when the US financial system melted down as he had predicted and he became an instant celebrity on media channels.

A bipartisan blunder

One of the contributing factors for the financial meltdown was the reckless financial deregulation that led to financial concentration and inefficient markets. The perception of regulation as hampering the animal magnetism of Wall Street bankers was a dangerous delusion that fostered the irrational drive to take unacceptable risks. As the economist Arthur MacEwan explains-“When financial firms are not regulated, they tend to take on more and more risky activities. When markets are rising, risk does not seem to be very much of a problem; all—or virtually all—investments seem to be making money. So why not take some chances? Furthermore, if one firm doesn’t take particular risk—put money into a chancy operation—then one of its competitors will. So competition pushes them into more and more risky operations.”²

Moreover, the extent of deregulation reached dangerous levels with the repeal of Glass- Steagall Act of 1933, which was passed after the financial debacle of 1929. This act separated investment banking from commercial banking and protected the investors from risky speculation of investment banking. Thus a commercial bank could not be in both insurance and/or investment business.

Hectic lobbying for Wall Street by Phil Gramm -the Republican Senator from Texas and the economic advisor for John McCain - and Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration were the guiding forces for the repeal of the act. This repeal became law when it received President Clinton’s assent in 1999. In 2000 another nail was driven in the regulatory coffin when Gramm introduced the Commodity Futures Modernisation Act, which excluded the scrutiny of counter derivatives, credit derivatives, credit defaults, and swaps, by regulatory agencies. Many economists hold the view that the repeal of the Glass –Steagal Act was instrumental in causing the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.

The crucial point is to note that Wall Street enjoyed the support of both the Republicans and the Democrats for the repeal of the act. Even today both the presidential candidates Obama and McCain receive campaign money from Wall Street bankers and executives. This prompted Ralph Nader, the consumer activist, to acidly comment that there are no significant differences between Democrats and Republicans on major issues pertaining to Wall Street.

A flawed business model

The reward system is skewed in favour of brokers who make money for their Wall Street employer and not how well the client portfolios perform. As Pam Martens, an insider of Wall Street, says “A Wall Street broker receives remuneration that rises from approximately 30 to 50 per cent of the gross commission based on their cumulative trading commissions with zero regard to how well the clients’ accounts have done.” This attitude is responsible in her words for “ the industry to be irreconcilably incentivized to corruption just as brokers have been socialized to silence.” This is on account of the fact that the broker receives more commission on investing junk bonds in client portfolios rather than investing in safe treasuries.

The other questionable practice is housing a trading desk inside the same company that is supposed to give unbiased research to the public. As Pam Martens points out “For example, let’s say that XYZ Brokerage buys a big stake in ABC Company on its proprietary trading desk (the desk that trades for profits for the firm) on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday afternoon, it could almost guarantee profits for itself by issuing a research report upgrading the stock. Conversely, it could short the stock on Wednesday and issue a negative report to drive down the price on Thursday, also guaranteeing itself a profit. Other than a fictional Chinese Wall, there is absolutely nothing to stop this type of public looting.”³

Perils of a casino economy

While greed, corruption, and an excessively deregulated financial market offer interesting explanations about the systemic collapse of Wall Street, they remain unsatisfactory as they not explain or explore the deeper malaise afflicting the US economy. For a rigorous and conceptually sound analysis, one must turn to the series of extraordinary essays written by Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy in Monthly Review during 1970 and 1980’s.

The main thrust of the articles was to show that the general economic tendency of mature capitalism is toward stagnation. The main challenge of capitalist economy is surplus capital, which has diminishing opportunities for profitable investment. Deploying investment in the mature productive economy yields fewer returns as the markets are saturated. A number of strategies such as military spending, government spending, consumer spending, exploitation of third world economies as sources of cheap labour, raw materials and markets are used to counter stagnation in capitalist economies but do not resolve the problem of stagnation. As the authors point out “The tendency to stagnation is inherent in the system, deeply rooted and in continuous operation. The counter-tendencies, on the other hand, are varied, intermittent, and (most important), self-limiting.”⁴

The problem of surplus capital finding suitable avenues for profitable return is sometimes solved by key inventions and technologies, which provide economic stimuli. The invention of automobile in the “early twentieth century led eventually to huge developments that transformed the U.S. economy, even aside from the mass ownership of automobiles: the building of an extensive system of roads, bridges, and tunnels; the need for a network of gas stations, restaurants, automotive parts and repair shops; the efficient and inexpensive movement of goods from any location to any other location.” But the new information technologies such as computers, software, and the Internet do not appear to provide the same epoch making long-term economic stimuli as automobiles did.⁵

In the productive economy, money is used to purchase raw materials, machines, and labour to produce commodities, which are sold, with the capitalist receiving back money (M-C-M). While in speculation, money makes more money directly, represented as M–M. A significant change in the way banks and financial institutions operate today as opposed to the past lies in the fact that the massive borrowed money goes into speculative finance and very little is invested in the productive economy. There is practically no stimulatory effect on the economy as there are few jobs created as there are relatively fewer people employed in the speculative economy. The profits generated by speculation are rarely invested in factories or the service sector but finds its way for financing more risky financial schemes creating speculative bubbles.

This sorry state of affairs is evident when one examines the failed financial institutions of Wall Street. One common denominator linking these institutions is that all were under capitalised and over leveraged. As Mike Whitney points out “when Bear Stearns went down, it was levered at a ratio of 26 to 1. When Carlyle capital blew up, it was levered at 32 to 1. And when Fannie and Freddie were finally taken over by the US Treasury; the two behemoths were levered at 80 to 1, which is to say that they had a one dollar cushion for every $80 they had loaned out.”

With huge quantity of money sloshing around the world and being invested into financial speculation there has been an explosion of speculation. One mind-boggling figure is “the daily trading on the world currency markets, which has gone from $18 billion a day in 1977, to the current average of $1.8 trillion a day! That means that every twenty-four days the dollar volume of currency trading equals the entire world’s annual GDP!” Moreover, “Today financial analysts frequently pretend that finance can levitate forever at higher and higher levels independently of the underlying productive economy. Stock markets and currency trading (betting that one nation’s currency will change relative to another) have become little more than giant casinos where the number and values of transactions have increased far out of proportion to the underlying economy.”⁶

This flight of investment from the productive economy to the casino economy is made worse by the availability of easy credit to persons who are least credit worthy. Many Americans who had little financial stability to buy houses took on mortgages, which were attractive on the face of it but carried a heavy debt burden. As real wages declined for the American household, it took on more debts for meeting the consumption needs. Total household debt stood at the end of March 2006 at 11.8 trillion.

Prudence in lending money to credit worthy persons was thrown to the winds as the banks encouraged people to borrow more and spend more. As the report in Wall Street Journal says “The banks are more aggressive because they rarely keep the loans they make. Instead, they sell them to others, who then repackage, or securitize, the loans and sell them to investors in exotic-sounding vehicles, such as CLOs, or collateralized-loan obligations. Every week brings announcements of billions of dollars in new CLOs, created by traditional money-management and hedge funds, which then sell them to other investors.”⁷

The toxic power of optimism

The belief in alchemy led mankind in the futile quest of converting base metal into gold. The bankers and traders in Wall Street were the practitioners of the alchemy of finance, which was the elusive quest of converting junk bonds into real wealth. There was an incorrigible optimism and conviction that ordinary people were meant to be rich. There was also goodwill for the captains of finance whose investment schemes were magic wands to transport investors to prosperity. Such a feeling of trust, as Galbraith reminds us, is essential for the boom.

The media played its role by lulling us into a false feeling of comfort by assuring that the fundamentals of the economy was strong and invincible. Critical views were suppressed in debates as the effusions of malcontents. A financial disaster was merely technical correction and there was more money to be made in depressed stock prices. As the financial pillars collapsed in Wall Street last month, a pie hit the glum faces of the financial analysts. The malcontents were right. As Galbraith again reminds us wisely-“when people are cautious, questioning, misanthropic, suspicious, or mean, they are immune to speculative enthusiasms.”⁸ In the aftermath of the melt down, the sceptics were rehabilitated quickly and became instant celebrities on talk shows. They taught us an important lesson, which the financier Bernard Baruch learned during the Great Depression: “ Any one taken as a individual is tolerable sensible and reasonable- as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.”

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

From the financial bubbles of the Mississippi scheme and South-Sea Bubble to the delusions of Tulip mania and the Great Depression nothing much has changed. As Charles Mackay says in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds, “Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.”

But there is very little that one learns from speculative disasters, as human memory is short and unreliable. The Great Depression taught the American public the perils of unregulated market and the elected representatives passed the Glass- Steagal Act to protect the ordinary investors from financial ruin. The Act was repealed in 1999 when the memory dimmed about the Great Depression. Then another financial disaster hit Wall Street. Now there is talk of imposing controls on financial markets again.

“Wall Street”, a cynic once said, “ is a Street with a river at one end and a graveyard at the other.” Perhaps it would be appropriate to inscribe on the tombstone the words, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The inscription in French simply means, the more things change, the more they're the same.

----------------
1 The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn- Mike Whitney
2 The Greed Fallacy- Arthur MacEwan-Dollars & Sense.
3 The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design- Pam Martens- Counterpunch.org
4 Stagnation and the Financial Explosion- Monthly Review Press.
5 The explosion of debt and speculation- Fred Magdoff- Monthly Review
6 The explosion of debt and speculation- Fred Magdoff- Monthly Review
7 Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2006.
8 The Great Crash 1929-J.K.Galbraith- Pelican Book.

The Nexus of Corruption: Reliance and Government

C R Sridhar — Tue, 9 Sep 2008 00:58:19 EDT

‘A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.’ - Amos Bronson Alcott, American Educator.

One of the common myths circulated in Indian mainstream media is about the inherent dynamism of the Private sector, which offers a refreshing contrast to the venal, corrupt and mendacious class of politicians and government officials. The Captains of Industries are sympathetically portrayed as dynamic, hard working and enterprising people who are thwarted by soul stifling regulation imposed by the Government. Unlike the moribund Public Sector, say the business friendly media, the Private Sector is efficient and creates a big pie in the economy. But unfortunately, like all myths, it has elements of truth but deceives us by not presenting the whole picture.

While there appears to be no dearth of books praising the virtues of Business Magnates, there are few books documenting the corrupt nexus between Big Business and Big Government. One of the most remarkable books to emerge in the Indian publishing scene in recent times is Reliance- The Real Natwar written by Arun K. Agrawal. This book is an unflattering study of the behemoth Reliance Group and its alleged loot of public money with the connivance of politicians and bureaucrats in the government.

The spotlight of the book is on the alleged involvement of Reliance Petroleum Limited (RPL) in the Iraq oil-for-food scam. As the author says in his book,

‘This book has its origin, in the compulsion, born of exasperation, experienced by the author to record the failure- or, more accurately, the self-serving refusal – of the Indian political and administrative system to investigate the award of extremely lucrative oil contracts under the United Nations- administered Oil- for-Food programme in Iraq to RPL in transactions manifestly driven by kickbacks/ bribery and bipartisan political patronage.’

Mr Agrawal, a lawyer and activist, has impressive credentials to his credit having exposed corporate-government scams in the past. He filed a PIL against the 1000MW Cogentrix Power Project in Karnataka alleging that the company with a capital of only forty lakh was awarded the power project by the government of Karnataka without any competitive bidding. When the game was up Cogentrix abandoned the project, which had inflated capital costs, saving the Indian public crores of Rupees. He was also instrumental in preventing the transfer of the highly profitable Alamatti Power Project in Karnataka to the Private sector, which was built with public money. As a consultant to Prasar Bharati, he unearthed the cricket telecast scam which saved twenty crores for Prasar Bharati. Justifiably, the author concentrates his ire on government policies, which bills costs to the public while the profits are pocketed by the private sector.

The Oil-for-Food scam

The lingering public memory of this scam as a political fallout of the Volcker Report involving Mr Natwar Singh, his son Jagat Singh, family friend Andaleeb Sehgal, Asad Khan (son of Congress politician) and the Andaleeb-owned Hamdaan Exports Limited is a distorted picture which is complicated by the alleged involvement of the Congress Party named as non-contractual beneficiary in the Volcker Report. But the prime beneficiary of the scam was Reliance Petroleum Industry, which got off scot-free without any investigation whatsoever.

Perhaps it would be necessary to have an historical perspective on the Oil for Food scam to understand the full ramification of the scam. The story begins with the military misadventure of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. Even though a cease-fire was agreed by Iraq in February 1991, after her expulsion from Kuwait, the Security Council kept in place one of the cruelest sanctions, which caused untold hardship to the Iraqi people. As the International public opinion mounted against the UN sanctions, the UN Security Council decided to lessen the hardship of the sanction by establishing Food for oil programme in 1995 under resolution no. 986 as a temporary measure to provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people.

The Oil for Food programme allowed Iraq to export oil to parties registered with UN and the use of the proceeds of oil sale by UN to pay for the food and medicines imported by Iraq, after deducting reparation, war compensation and commission. The programme started from 1996 and completed 13 phases until Saddam was toppled in 2003.

However the Oil for Food programme became a hotbed of corruption involving many highly placed UN officials who turned a blind eye to the irregularities of the programme, which led to the skimming off huge sums of money to the relatives of UN officials, Iraqi officials and oil companies all over the world.

The opportunity of corruption lay in the fact that the Iraqi Oil was sold at a price less than international rates. The difference in pricing of amounts actually paid to UN and the prevailing international price of oil was split between Iraqi officials (bribes/ surcharge), political allottees (commission) and the balance of profits to the traders and financiers.

The lid was blown off the scam when a Committee was appointed to go into the murky dealing of the UN programme. This Committee was headed by Paul Volcker who was former Chairman of Federal Reserve (US). The report of the Committee opened the Pandora’s box as Table III of the report identified three non-contractual beneficiaries, which had paid bribes/ surcharge to the Iraqi officials. The fourth beneficiary Mr Bhim Singh was absolved, as he did not lift even a single barrel of oil. In the report the Natwar–Congress combine lifted 2.93 million barrels, while Reliance lifted 15.78 million barrels for which it paid a bribe of US$3.57 million. 1

The patsy

Making scapegoats of lesser criminals is a national pastime while bigger fish go scot-free. In fierce parliamentary debates that followed the disclosure, there were fingers pointed at Sonia Gandhi who had just recovered from the whiff of cordite fumes of Bofors Guns. The BJP targeted the Congress Party for paying bribes and demanded its resignation. Other members asked for a through probe and made impassioned speeches for the punishment of the guilty. As the top leaders of the Congress Party felt jittery a plot was hatched to make a scapegoat of Mr Natwar Singh who was a Minister for External Affairs. In a damage control operation the Congress party appointed Mr R.S. Pathak, an eminent jurist, who served as the Chief Justice of India and also as a judge in the International Court of Justice at The Hague to institute an enquiry into the Oil for Food programme. The terms of reference of the R.S Pathak Inquiry Authority was restricted to two non-contractual beneficiaries, namely, the Congress Party and Mr Natwar Singh. The significant omission was Reliance Petroleum Limited, which was the largest beneficiary of Oil for Food scam.

Mr Natwar Singh whose wrongdoing was minor when compared to Reliance Petroleum Limited was sacrificed on the altar of expediency, as he was not a fundraiser for the Congress party unlike the Reliance Group, which had friends in high places. The commission of 70 lakhs of rupees made by Andaleeb Sehgal certainly involved Natwar Singh who could be accused of using his political connections to favour his son and his crony Andy by providing letters of introduction to the Iraqi authorities. The paltry gain for which Natwar Singh damaged his political future astounded political observers in Delhi. The fact that Natwar Singh was not given the option of disowning his son and leaving political life in blaze of glory sent tongues wagging in political circles. This was indeed strange given the fact that no part of the commission did end up in the personal bank accounts of Natwar Singh. Apparently it was necessary for the powers in the Congress Party to make an example of Natwar Singh and squelch the scandal. Predictably, the Inquiry fixed the blame on Natwar Singh and he was forced to resign.

Parliamentary cover up

In the speeches made by Members of Parliament, the name of Reliance Petroleum Limited never figured in the controversy. If it was mentioned in passing that could be attributed to Mr Sitaram Yechury who to his credit raised the involvement of Reliance in the Oil for Food scam. But even the left party flattered to deceive. At a press conference Prakash Karat of the Left did mention the role of Reliance in the bribery scandal, but there were no coordinated efforts on the part of the Left to bring Reliance within the purview of the Inquiry Commission. There were also reports suggesting that Mukesh Ambani met with the Left leaders but what transpired between them is a matter of conjecture.

All the speeches of the house were directed against the Congress party and Natwar Singh but Reliance Petroleum was spared the attention. A careful transcript of the speeches made at the floor of the Parliament reveals this fact. The Finance Minister, PC Chidambaram carefully avoided any reference to Reliance Petroleum Limited and blew smoke rings. The performance of the seasoned lawyer Kapil Sibal was masterly in suppressing critical facts about the involvement of Reliance in the scam. The BJP also adroitly sidestepped the Reliance issue and harmlessly indulged in verbal pyrotechnics. There was a strange unity among political parties to protect Reliance Petroleum from legal proceedings.2

Tip of the iceberg

The Oil for Food scam was not an isolated instance of Reliance Petroleum Limited walking away from corruption unscathed. There are also other scandals involving the Reliance Group. One of which was the deal involving Panna-Mukta- oil fields - given to Reliance during the Congress government by Captain Satish Sharma who was the Minister of oil and Natural Gas and a close friend of Rajiv Gandhi. The deal was sweetened to benefit Reliance on the specious plea that ONGC’s cost of exploration was inefficient when compared to the exploration costs of the private sector. Further, the royalty payment was on the basis of fixed rate instead of ad valorem rates, which would be beneficial to the government. This is evident as oil is a non-renewable asset and subject to upward revision of prices. The loss to the national exchequer was to the tune of thirty billion US dollars if the price of the barrel is fixed at US$80 with reserves at around 120 MMT. If the additional gas reserves of 1.9 trillion cubic are calculated then there is another staggering loss of about another 10 billion dollars.

The Comptroller and Auditor General adversely commented on the decision, saying no in depth analysis was carried out by the Ministry to arrive at such conclusions. Satish Sharma was later subject to a CBI probe, which said that there was a prima facie case indicating assets disproportionate to known sources of income

For future deals such as KG basin the Royalty payments were changed from fixed rate to ad valorem rates of 5% to 10% of sale realisation. As a result of absurdly low rates of royalty charged the government lost heavy revenues to the tune of over one hundred billion dollars, which was handed on a platter to Reliance as windfall profits.

Other controversies have dogged Reliance such as jacking up capital costs from $1.5 billion (2002) to $8.4 billion in 2006 with respect to the Krishna- Godavari project. The amount represented a massive scam, as gold plating of costs would be recovered before sharing of any production with the government.

The Reliance Group has also shown ingenuity in alleged tax evasion of customs duty of 120 crores in its illegal import of machinery for its PTA plant. The matter has been pending in the courts for over twenty years and has not seen the light of the day.

As the author sums up, the secret of Reliance Group becoming the largest conglomerate in the country could be attributed to,

‘financial engineering, propping up of its own shares, issuing shares of new companies at premium to the public and then merging the companies and, of course, the oil bonanza handed over to it by the government.’3

A dangerous collusion

When the interests of Big business coincide with the personal interests of politicians and bureaucrats of the government, then it can be safely assumed that public good or national interest would be in an irreversible terminal decline. As Timothy P. Carney in his book The Big Rip-off: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money says,

‘Today's largest corporations have mastered the art of working with government officials at every level to stifle market competition. They reap billions through a complex web of higher taxes, stricter regulations, and shameless government handouts.’

He adds ominously that when the players in big business and big government unite, the end result is one of consumer misfortune, where prices are artificially inflated, fewer substitutes are available for sale and there are huge barriers to market entry for small businesses entrepreneurs signifying the death of free competitive markets.4

Apart from creating a stifling monopoly, which destroys competition, the coffers of the state dry up when it hands out national resources for a song and forgoes opportunity to collect revenues. When the state is not able to fulfill its constitutional obligation on account of paucity of resources, it loses its legitimacy in the eyes of the people and becomes inherently unstable.

The important achievement of Arun Agrawal’s book, Reliance - The Real Natwar is to show that it is bad economic policy to substitute the invisible hand of the market with the greased palm of corruption. For this reason alone this book should be read and reread without the ideological blinkers in our mind.

-------
1 For more details refer to Chapter 1 - Scam - pages 23-49-Reliance The Real Natwar- Arun Agrawal- Manas Publications- edition 2008.
2 Refer to chapters 8 and 9 at pages 127 –251 covering parliamentary debates.
3 For details on oil related scams of Reliance refer to chapter 7- the Reliance Saga on pages 89-126
4 Human Events.com- "New book reveals Big Business scams"-Ms Evans- 20/07/2006

The Russia-Georgia Conflict - Stoking The Embers Of The Cold War

C R Sridhar — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:18:40 EDT

On 7th August 2008, Friday, Georgia, which became independent of the Soviet Union in 1991 began an offensive on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Fashioned along the lines of a blitzkrieg, the Georgian military launched a heavy rocket and artillery fire and air strikes, killing hundreds of innocent civilians. An American witness Joe Mestas who was living in South Ossetia at the time of the military offensive said ‘I thought that since U.S. is supporting Georgia there would be some control over the situation in South Ossetia and that there would be a peaceful solution to the conflict. But what is happening there now it’s not just war, but war crimes. George Bush and [Georgian president] Mikhail Saakashvili should answer to the crimes that are being committed – the killing of innocent people, running over by tanks of children and women, throwing grenades into cellars where people are hiding.’¹

The Russian response was swift and bloody. Russia sent tanks and troops into the province and carried out series of air strikes on Georgian military targets. By Saturday the Russian air force pounded the nearby town of Gori. The Russian troops went deep into Georgian territory and the battered Georgian forces had to be pulled back to defend its capital, Tbilisi. The massive show of force by Russia was understandable as South Ossetia has close to 90% of the citizens having Russian citizenship. Moreover, the province broke away from Georgia in the nineties when it declared itself independent. South Ossetia has closely aligned itself with Russia.

No roses for Mr. Putin

The simmering discontent between Georgia and Russia arose over an event, which was called the Rose Revolution of 2003. This was a bloodless coup, which saw the ouster of President Eduard Shevardnadze. Mikheil Saakashvili who entered the Parliamentary building interrupting a speech of Shevardnadze forcing him to escape with his bodyguards. Eduard Shevardnadze finally stepped down on November 23, 2003 to avoid civil war. The new ruling elites- Mikhail Saakashvili, Nino Burdzhanadze and Zurab Zhvania- took control of power in Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili who is now the President of Georgia is a graduate of George Washington University and studied law at Columbia Law School. He is known to support US role in the Caucasus. He has publicly supported Bush in his global commitment to expand democracy and has extolled the virtues of real market economy. This sent alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin as Putin and his political advisors saw the hand of U.S. in the Rose Revolution. The alarm of Kremlin was perhaps justified as the Wall Street reported on November 24, 2003 ‘the three politicians [Saakashvili, Burdzhanadze and Zhvania] are backed by a raft of nongovernmental organizations that have sprung up since the fall of the Soviet Union. Many of the NGOs have been supported by American and other Western foundations, spawning a class of young, English-speaking intellectuals hungry for pro-Western reforms.’²

The relationship between Georgia and Russia also soured because Mikheil Saakashvili lobbied hard for Georgia to become a member of NATO with the active support of U.S. The Russians perceived the situation as potentially dangerous as they saw Georgia as becoming a NATO outpost posing a threat to Russian territorial interests. Vladimir Putin- the Russian President- voiced his strong protests accusing U.S and NATO as gradually encroaching Russian space.

The Politics of Oil

In a detailed article titled ‘Oil intrigue and US Realpolitik heighten tensions in the Caucasus’ the authors say ‘The US-backed coup in Georgia and Washington’s subsequent diplomatic sabre-rattling have nothing to do with the spread of democracy or similar clichés. Georgia, strategically situated between the Black Sea and the oil-rich Caspian, has long been a focus of intrigue and conflict between the great powers. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the goal of weakening Russian influence and achieving US domination of Georgia and the rest of the Caucasus became a central preoccupation of US imperialist policy.’³

The U.S. interest in Georgia lies in its geographical position. As Dr Alexey Muraviev, strategic affairs analyst in his article says ‘the control of Georgia gives access to the oil and gas rich areas of the Caspian Sea and former Soviet Central Asia. It allows firming up control over the Turkish Straits, a critically important shipping point. And further, it reduces Russia and its influence in some critical areas such as the Balkans, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.’⁴

Another event of great importance to understand the cold war rivalry surfacing between U.S and Russia is building of the Baku pipeline (BTC), which was completed in May 2005. Costing 3.6 billion dollars, it is one of the most expensive oil projects. The interests in this massive project involves BP. The other partners are Unocal (US) and Turkish Petroleum Inc. The oil is pumped through pipelines and shipped via the Turkish port Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Significantly, Ceyhan is located near to the US air base Incirlik. The pipeline project had top-heavy advisors who held extremely senior positions in the government of US. Some of the important officials - Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, Brent Scowcroft, and Dick Cheney- have shaped US strategic oil interests in the region.⁵

The battle lines and emerging power blocs

Since the breaking up of the Soviet Union, the politics of the Caspian region has become complex, volatile and dangerous, as there is scramble for the oil-rich resources of the Caspian from the United States. In this scenario, power blocs have emerged with opposing strategies-‘ On the one side is an alliance of US-Turkey-Azerbaijan and, since the Rose Revolution, Georgia, that small but critical country directly on the pipeline route. Opposed to it, in terms of where the pipeline route carrying the Caspian oil should go, is Russia, which until 1990 held control over the entire Caspian outside the Iran littoral. Today, Russia has cultivated an uneasy but definite alliance with Iran and with Armenia, in opposition to the US group.’⁶ The geopolitical strategy of U.S has been to bring regime changes friendly to US interests in countries (earlier Soviet bloc), which are located in pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea. The scramble for oil by these power blocs would provide flashpoints for conflicts in these regions.

The Georgia-US-Israeli Nexus

The US interest in Georgia is shaped by the scramble for oil in the region. The Western media such as BBC, CNN and other electronic media simplify complex issues pertaining to the present conflict by defining it as big power such as Russia intimidating a small country.

What the mainstream media did not report is the extensive involvement of US-NATO in the planning of the military offensive against South Ossetia which is at the cross roads of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes. US has provided extensive military aid to Georgia with transport planes (US) assisting the redeployment of 2000 Georgian forces in Iraq back to the country to fight. It is also believed that US provided logistical support to Georgia to move 11 tons of military cargo. In the past, Israel has also supplied military equipment to Georgia. As Peter Hirschberg reports ‘In recent years, ties have also taken on a military dimension, with military industries in Israel supplying Georgia with some $200 million worth of equipment since 2000. This has included remotely piloted planes, rockets, night-vision equipment, other electronic systems, and training by former senior Israeli officers.’⁷

Israel is also an interested party to get the oil from the Caspian region. ‘What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tip line, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon. Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East’⁸

The Seeds of Cold War

The Russian perspective on this issue is best summarized by Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006) ‘[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region’s countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel.’ A fact, which would be resisted by Russia, as she perceives the threat of the encirclement of countries friendly to US. This was made amply clear by the sharp violent response to Georgia’s military attack on South Ossetia.

Even though cease-fire has been declared between Russia and Georgia, there has been an uneasy peace. Is this a lull before the storm? Is the recent conflict in the Caucasus a dress rehearsal for the more serious conflicts to break out between US and Russia? With Russia flush with oil money and flexing its nationalist muscles the future holds the fear of a sharpened cold war. A war that we thought lay buried in the memories of history.

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1 This is Genocide: American Witness Says U.S. and Georgia to answer for violence - Russia Today - Monday, Aug 11, 2008.
2 Georgia's "rose revolution"; made in America coup- Barry Grey and Vladimir Volkov, wsws.org
3 Oil intrigue and U.S. Realpolitik- Barry Grey and Vladimir Volkov, wsws.org
4 US plays a shadowy hand in Georgian conflict- Dr Alexey Muraviev, strategic affairs analyst, Crikely.com
5 Colour Revolutions, Geopolitics and the Baku pipeline-F. William Engdahl-Global Research- June 25,2005.
6 Colour Revolutions, Geopolitics and the Baku pipeline-F. William Engdahl-Global Research June 25,2005.
7 Israeli Arms Sales to Georgia Raise New Concerns- Peter Hirschberg - anti-war.com
8 War in the Caucasus: Towards a broader Russia-US Military confrontation?-Michel Chossudovsky- Global Research

Nuclear Power - The Seduction of Mephistopheles

C R Sridhar — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:32:24 EDT

‘MEPHISTOPHELES, in the Faust legend, the name of the evil spirit in return for whose assistance Faust signs away his soul.’- Classic Encyclopaedia.

The trope of Nuclear Energy as Mephistopheles is rooted in history. The dropping of the Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 by the Americans exposed to the world the destructive power of the Atom. The belief that nuclear energy was a benign genie in service of humankind received a rude jolt when accidents occurred in nuclear plants, one of which was the accident at Chernobyl in 1986 in Ukraine when Unit Four of the plant exploded spewing radioactive fission products into the environment. The fallout of radioactivity from Chernobyl had horrific medical and ecological consequences. It is estimated that nearly 10000 persons of 6,50,000 involved in the clean up operation died prematurely. The long radioactive tail reached large areas of the breadbaskets of the Ukraine and Byelorussia contaminating the soil. The fallout also affected other countries such as Austria, Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, Baltic states and other countries in the Northern Hemisphere. The incidence of cancer increased significantly among the population living in areas close to the nuclear plant.

The long radioactive tail of Mephistopheles

Before the Chernobyl accident, there was another accident that rocked the complacency of nuclear Industry who said that the chances of a meltdown happening were the same as a bolt of lightening striking a person dead in a parking lot. On March 28, 1979, a nuclear power plant at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had a meltdown on account of a mechanical failure causing the core reactor to overheat. Soon large amounts of radioactivity escaped into the atmosphere. Radioactive water was also released into Susquehanna River, which drains into Chesapeake Bay, a major fishing location. Hundreds of people reported nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding from the nose, hair loss and skin rash. There were also reported deaths of farm animals and there were fears that the cows were radiated contaminating the milk supply. Official studies on the impact of radiation on health and the increased incidence of cancer among people living near the plant were not conducted raising the suspicion that the government friendly to the nuclear lobby were hushing up the bad news about the radiation and its effects.1

It would be short sighted on our part to view Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as isolated incidents not warranting a caveat on the use of nuclear energy. There were other incidents such as the accident at the Davis-Besse reactor (Ohio), which occurred in 2002. The inspectors found a cavity in the reactor pressure vessel. The stainless steel liner had not ruptured and a major tragedy was averted. The risks of such accidents would increase as the reactors are aging with the bulk of the reactors moving into the old age cycle. The near misses would dangerously increase as the years go by.

The bad news about nuclear safety does not go away. As recently as last month there were radioactive leaks in France. The Guardian (UK) reported ‘Last month an accident at the treatment centre during a draining operation saw liquid containing untreated uranium overflow out of a faulty tank. About 75kg of uranium seeped into the ground and into the Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers which flow into the Rhône.’ This is not the end of the story. As the Guardian again reports ‘But in recent days there have been other, lesser incidents at nuclear sites. In Romans-sur-Isère, north of Tricastin, at another site run by an Areva subsidiary, officials discovered a burst underground pipe which had been broken for years and did not meet safety standards.’ The environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, said there were 86 level-one nuclear incidents in France last year and 114 in 2006. More than 80% of France's electricity is generated by the country's 58 nuclear reactors - the world's highest ratio.2

Nuclear Renaissance

In spite of dangers associated with the use of nuclear energy, the seduction of Mephistopheles remains as potent as ever. With Bush – Cheney in US and Sarkozy in France pushing for nuclear energy as an alternative to oil, there appears to be a sort of nuclear renaissance emerging in the wake of oil crisis. The prospects for the nuclear industry seem bright after languishing in doldrums throughout the end of the Twentieth Century as result of environmental movements and protests.

The Nuclear Energy Institute - a propaganda wing of the Nuclear Industry - has spent millions of dollars in spreading highly misleading messages that Nuclear Energy is cheap, clean and green. The ads that reinforce the image of nuclear as a benign force show children gambolling in green grass. The caption at the top of the ad reads - Nuclear Electricity & Clean Air Today & Tomorrow.

Blunting the PR blitz

The propaganda of the Nuclear Industry has not gone unchallenged. In her book Nuclear Power is not the Answer, Dr. Helen Caldicott, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and a leading spokesperson for the anti-nuclear movement, subjects the ‘clean and green’ argument of nuclear energy to withering criticism. She accused the Nuclear Industry of hiding significant facts from the public and peddling nuclear energy with the same ethical disregard to truth as a snake oil salesman.

According to the author, nuclear power ‘is not clean and green’, because large amounts of traditional fossil fuels are required to mine and refine the uranium needed to run nuclear power reactors, to construct the massive concrete reactor buildings, and to transport and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the nuclear process. Moreover, the burning of this fossil fuel emits significant quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2)- the primary greenhouse gas- into the environment. In addition, large amounts of the now banned CFC are emitted during the enrichment of uranium. CFC is more dangerous than CO2 in creating the greenhouse gas and is also a potent destroyer of the ozone layer.

While it is true that nuclear electricity produces one-third of the CO2 emitted from a similar sized conventional gas generator, this is a transitory phase. Soon as the uranium ore declines in grade, more ores are required to be mined by using more fossil fuels. It is estimated that within ten to twenty years nuclear reactors will produce no net energy because of the massive amounts of fossil fuels required to mine and to enrich the poor grades of uranium ores. The tech-fix solution of obtaining large quantities of uranium by reprocessing radioactive spent fuel is not a pragmatic option as it is expensive, extremely hazardous for the workers and releases large amount of radioactive material into the air. In the long run the nuclear plants would emit the same amounts of greenhouse gasses and air pollution as conventional power plants.

Safe running of the nuclear plants do not guarantee they would be emission free. Government regulations allow the nuclear plants to emit thousands of curies of radioactive gasses and material into the air. There is also radioactive waste in accumulating in the cooling pools in the nuclear plants in the world. As the author warns, ‘this waste contains extremely toxic elements that will inevitably pollute the environment and human food chains, a legacy that will lead to epidemics of cancer, leukaemia, and genetic disease in population living near nuclear power plants or radioactive waste facilities for many generations to come.’3

A white elephant

Contrary to the optimistic pronouncement of the Nuclear Industry that nuclear electricity is cheap in as much as it costs only 1.7 cents per kilowatt hour when compared to coal costing 2 cents and gas fired power costing 5.7 cents it is actually exorbitant. The estimates are misleading as they are based on the operational costs of existing plants. Moreover as the author points out ‘ They represent a classic omission of capital costs from a pricing equation.’4 Once realistic construction and running costs are considered, the price of nuclear electricity rises from an estimated 3 pence per kilowatt hour (5 cents in US) to 8.3 pence (14 cents). The capital costs of new plants are very high whereas the costs of running old reactors are not that high. When other costs are added such as subsidies received out of tax payers money, managing pollution, health costs in the event of radiation and its treatment and costs of maintaining nuclear plants secure from terrorist attacks, nuclear energy loses its appeal as a cheap source of electricity.

The road to Perdition

Apart from the disadvantages of high cost and high risk, nuclear energy also opens the Pandora’s box of proliferation of atomic weaponry. Every nuclear power plant has the potential of being an atom bomb factory. A 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 500 pounds of plutonium a year; normally ten pounds of plutonium is fuel for an atom bomb. A bomb made from the plutonium could easily devastate a city making the world an unsafe place. Any non-nuclear weapon state could easily acquire a nuclear plant and have the ability to make nuclear bombs.

With technology becoming simpler and information becoming available on the Internet, the technology to make bombs with nuclear material is not an esoteric skill, which is beyond the means of any rogue state.

In the Indian sub-continent both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. It is estimated that India has 65 nuclear weapons, Pakistan has 30 to 50 weapons and China has 400 weapons. To add to the dangerous scenario, India is being positioned by US to contain China’s rise to super power status. The simmering tension between India and China could worsen in the times to come. The uneasy relationship between India and Pakistan does not augur well for peace in the sub-continent. The prospect of nuclear Armageddon is not science fiction but a case of fiction becoming reality.

A more sustainable energy policy

Electricity is generated when heat boils water converting into steam, which turns turbine-producing electricity. From the energy perspective ‘a nuclear reactor’ - in the words of Helen Caldicott - ‘ is just a very sophisticated and dangerous way to boil water - analogous to cutting a pound of butter with a chain saw.’5

Globally, coal supplies about 64% of the world’s electricity, hydro and nuclear each provide 17%, and renewable energy provide 2%. But recent studies indicate that solar power could supply clean electricity to 100 million people living in the sunny parts of the world by 2025. Tidal and Wind power could provide up to 20% of the UK’s current electricity needs. An integrated energy plan using a mix of wind power, cogeneration, geothermal energy, biomass, and tidal/ wave power combined with energy conservation could displace existing reliance on nuclear power. And with the shift of resources in the form of billions of dollars given as subsidies to the nuclear industry to renewable energy the dream of a clean world environment would be realised.

Individuals need not be mere pawns in the game that big energy corporations play for their own ends. They could play an important role in measures promoting energy conservation – simple acts as not driving fuel guzzling SUV’s, not leaving lights burning all over the house, relying less on air conditioners and heaters by allowing the sweat glands to work more or wearing heavy sweaters in times of winter. Some lifestyle changes are painful but necessary. But self- sacrifice and nobility also motivate human beings. As Helen Caldicott aptly says in the last chapter of her remarkable book, ‘These are the qualities that will lead the world toward sanity and survival.’6

Also hopefully, end the fatal seduction of Mephistopheles once and for all.

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1 Nuclear Power is not the Answer- Helen Caldicott- Books for Change- pages 65-74.
2 Accidents tarnish nuclear dream-environment- The Guardian.
3 Nuclear Power is not the Answer- Helen Caldicott- Introduction- page ix.
4 Nuclear Power is not the Answer- page 19.
5 Nuclear Power is not the Answer- page xii.
6 Nuclear Power is not the Answer- page 183.

'Mommy Dearest' - The Controversial Legacy of Mother Teresa

C R Sridhar — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:31:46 EDT

‘Saints, should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.’
-George Orwell.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, also known as Mother Teresa, captured the media attention of the world for her pious service of the poor and abandoned children of Calcutta. Born in Skopje – now capital of Macedonia- on 26th of August, she was raised by her strict Albanian mother to be a staunch Roman Catholic .At the age of eighteen she joined the sisters of Loreto as a missionary and came to India in the year 1929. In the year 1950 the Vatican gave permission to Mother Teresa to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity. The mission of the charity was a noble one as it was to take care of the homeless, the destitute and the unwanted people. The order, Missionaries of Charity, had thirteen members, which grew to more than four thousand nuns running orphanages, hospices for the care terminally ill and Aids patients. In 1952 Teresa converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat home for the dying. The order opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth. The charitable activities of the order established organisations in other parts of India and also worldwide, especially, in Venezuela, Asia, Africa, US and Europe.¹

The Extraordinary career of Mother Teresa

The brief curriculum vitae of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu does not do adequate justice to the extraordinary career of Mother Teresa. In public and in the media, her wizened body and her wrinkled face radiated a quiet compassion, which could only be seen on saints' faces as they calmly served the wretched of the earth. The media revelled in showing photographs of starving babies in Mother Teresa’s hands. Other photos revealed Mother Teresa in a saintly light as she hugged the dying who were vulnerable in their last moments of life. She became an icon of service to humanity and international recognition poured in first as trickle and then as flood. She won Padma Shri (India), Order of Merit, Golden Honour of the Nation (Albania), culminating in the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to her in 1979. As an international celebrity, Teresa became a brand ambassador of the Vatican espousing the controversial policies of the Roman Catholic Church with regard to abortion, divorce and contraception.

When she died in 1997 the Holy See began a process of beatification towards declaring Mother Teresa as a saint. For canonizing Mother Teresa it was necessary to establish two miracles unless the Pope dispensed it. The first miracle- the healing of a tumour in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, following the application of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture- was mired in controversy as the medical doctors attending on her and her husband claimed that the tumour was cured by conventional medicine.

A devil’s advocate

Christopher Hitchens, an author and journalist, who declared Mother Teresa as a pious fraud, challenged the beatification and canonization of Mother Teresa. He said ‘her intention was not to help people’ but ‘she was working to expand the number of Catholics.’ His objections were overruled by the Roman Curia who saw no obstacle to the canonization of Mother Teresa. Hitchens alleged that there was no examination of the witnesses who claimed that Monica Besra was not cured by a miracle but by prescription medicine. It was also alleged that Monica Besra had tubercular cyst not malignant tumour as claimed by her order. All these claims were perfunctorily examined without critical scrutiny raising doubts that the standards were deliberately lowered to put the canonization of Mother Teresa on a fast track.²

But the Vatican was in a quandary - if the scrutiny process was diluted and divine intervention in human affairs is too promiscuously recognized, the church exposes itself to skeptical questions that if one leper can be cured by divine help then why not other lepers? Does the Lord show preference in not eradicating infant leukemia and mass poverty? If so, is such a God biased in saving some souls but not the others? Such questions relentlessly open the floodgates of critical challenge lowering the credibility of the Faith. This unease was reflected in some cardinals who objected to the fast track canonization of Mother Teresa. However the beatification of Mother Teresa took place on 19th October 2003 and the title ‘Blessed’ was conferred on her. This placed her firmly in the ante- room of sainthood.

A spanner in the hagiography

In a cynical age such as ours, where the highest form of human endeavour are self-seeking individuals working for the maximization of personal advantage, it is not surprising that tales of personal sacrifice bring tears to the eyes. The reputation of Mother Teresa as a saviour of the poor received a turbo boost when Malcolm Muggeridge filmed Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta titled Something Beautiful for God, which was shown on BBC. He wrote a book with the same title, which sold more than 300,000 copies sold, reprinted 20 times and translated into 13 languages. There was no looking back for the obscure Albanian Nun who catapulted to world celebrity. The hagiography industry churned out books with titles helper of the poor, protector of the sick, and friend of the friendless, which established the icon status of Mother Teresa as a living example of a saint.

It must be said to the credit of Hitchens that he initiated the critical process of challenging the status of Teresa and the hagiography industry devoted to the sanctimonious humbug of deifying Teresa. In 1994 he produced a documentary film called Hell’s Angel, which was broadcast on Channel 4. The film was vilified and the author was subjected to abuse. Undeterred, Hitchens meticulously researched the life of Mother Teresa and published a book called The Missionary Position. In this book, Hitchens rakes up controversial issues about Teresa and calls into question the credulous nonsense written about the saviour of the poor.

In bad company

In a broadside delivered against the uncritical adulation of Mother Teresa, Hitchens asks inconvenient questions- what was Mother Teresa of Calcutta doing in the presence of the hated family of Baby Doc Duvalier who was the ruthless dictator of Haiti? The event referred to by Hitchens was the visit of Mother Teresa to Haiti in 1981 to accept the Legion d'Honneur. In a magazine called L’Assaut, a propaganda organ for the Duvalier family, there are photos of Mother Teresa holding the bangled hand of Michele Duvalier (wife of Baby Doc) and gazing at her with respect and reverence. The magazine quotes Teresa as having said, ‘Madame President is someone who feels, who knows, who wishes to demonstrate her love not only with words but also with concrete and tangible actions.’ Whether the oppressed people of Haiti who were murdered, raped and pillaged by the Duvalier family for generations, echoed her sentiments is not known, as they were not quoted in the magazine. Her pious endorsement of the Duvalier family was in line with the extreme Right wing and conservative faction of the Vatican hierarchy supporting the Duvalier oligarchy.³

While it would be tempting to view Mother Teresa’s Haiti visit as a social faux pas not worthy of criticism, there is overwhelming evidence that she supported repressive dictators and regimes in Central and South America. She gave support to the Reagan administration by her participation in the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was awarded to her inside the White House in 1985, when right wing death squads embroiled the administration in a scandal relating to the murder of four American nuns and the Archbishop of San Salvador in Central America. Her admonition of the Sandinista Revolutionary Party gave support to the contras, a vicious mercenary army actively funded by the Reagan government to bomb schools and hospitals in Nicaragua, raised serious doubts about her political neutrality.

During the suspension of civil liberties in India by Indira Gandhi in 1975, the Mother uttered no words of criticism. She purred beatifically-‘ People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes.’ Her friendly relationship with Mrs Gandhi and the Congress party played an important role in silencing the criticism. ‘Mother Teresa’ says Michael Parenti, ‘is a paramount example of the kind of acceptably conservative icon propagated by an elite-dominated culture, a saint who uttered not a critical word against social injustice, and maintained cosy relations with the rich, corrupt, and powerful.’⁴

Money has no smell

Other controversies dogged Mother Teresa. One of the most serious scandals to affect her reputation was her financial involvement with one of the biggest frauds known in American history - Charles Keating. The savings and loan scam of Keating swindled $252 million, mainly from small and poor depositors. A staunch Catholic he gave Teresa $1,250,000 in cash and the use of a private jet. In return Mother Teresa gave a glowing character certificate and pleaded for his clemency during the trial. The Deputy District Attorney for LA, Paul Turley in a tersely worded letter addressed to Teresa asked her to return the money stolen by Keating. Mother Teresa did not return the money. No action was taken by the court for its recovery. It appears that saints are immune from coercive proceedings.⁵

The theology of suffering

At the heart of suffering lies a deception, which must be examined rationally to understand the theory and practice of Mother Teresa. At a 1981 press conference she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: ‘I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.’⁶ Her reply made her critics accuse her of loving suffering more than the sufferers. The spectacle of suffering was beneficial for faith as only in pain one thought of the Lord. The alleviation of pain of dying patients was not an important objective.

There is a memorable anecdote about her attitude to suffering. A patient was approached by Mother Teresa who dished out theological platitudes instead of providing painkillers to the patient. ‘You are suffering like Christ on the cross,’ Mother Teresa allegedly told the patient. ‘So Jesus must be kissing you.’ The patient is said to have replied, ‘Then please tell him to stop kissing me.’⁷

This bizarre attitude to suffering was reflected in her hospices and orphanages. ‘In 1991, Dr. Robin Fox, then editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, visited the Home for Dying Destitute in Calcutta and described the medical care the patients received as "haphazard". He observed that sisters and volunteers, some of whom had no medical knowledge, had to make decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors in the hospice. Dr. Fox specifically held Teresa responsible for conditions in this home, and observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment.’⁸

Moreover, the formulary at the facility Fox visited lacked strong analgesics. Fox also wrote that needles were rinsed with warm water, which left them inadequately sterilised, and the facility did not isolate patients with infectious diseases. There have been a series of other reports documenting inattention to medical care in the order's facilities. Some former volunteers who worked for Teresa’s order have also expressed similar points of view. Mother Teresa herself referred to the facilities as "Houses of the Dying”

The orphanages where abandoned children were housed showed shocking lapses of care so strongly advertised in the media all over the world. Donal MacIntyre - a reporter and documentary-maker for Channel 5 Television who worked undercover was astonished at what he saw-

‘ I saw children with their mouths gagged open to be given medicine, their hands flaying in distress, visible testimony to the pain they were in. Tiny babies were bound with cloths at feeding time. Rough hands wrenched heads into position for feeding. Some of the children retched and coughed as rushed staff crammed food into their mouths. Boys and girls were abandoned on open toilets for up to 20 minutes at a time. Slumped, untended, some dribbling, some sleeping, they were a pathetic sight. Their treatment was an affront to their dignity, and dangerously unhygienic.’9

The donations, which poured from all parts of the world, were not invested in buying drugs and medical equipment for the care of the sick and dying. Instead, it was diverted to the Vatican Bank for general use. But when it came to her own treatment ‘Teresa checked into some of the costliest hospitals and recovery care units in the world for state-of-the-art treatment.’¹⁰

Conservative agenda

The Vatican under Pope Paul II used the popularity of Mother Teresa to support controversial issues on abortion, divorce, and contraception. The Roman church remained implacably hostile to abortion even if was necessary to save the life of the mother or in instances where women were raped and requested abortion. Its views on divorce and contraception were steeped in medieval values. The dogma of the Roman Catholic Church with respect to contraception is well known and has invited protests from all over the world.

Mother Teresa lobbied hard on the referendum to lift the constitutional ban divorce in Ireland in 1995. Her position was that of a hardliner opposing the removal of the ban on divorce. In her meeting with Margaret Thatcher in the year 1988 the main discussion centred on Abortion instead of the plight of the city’s homeless. In Spain she lobbied hard on behalf the clerical forces to prevent legislation liberalising abortion, divorce and birth control. At a open- air mass in Knock (Ireland) in 1992, she addressed the devout with the following words-‘Let us promise Our Lady who loves Ireland so much that we will never allow in this country a single abortion. And no contraceptives.’¹¹

In her Nobel Peace Prize speech in 1979, Mother Teresa famously said -‘ I think that today peace is threatened by abortion, too, which is a true war, a direct killing of a child by its own mother. Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace. Because if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves, or one another? Nothing.’¹²

Sums up Susan Jacoby,‘Teresa never showed any concern, in India or elsewhere, about the root causes of poverty -- including lack of education, corrupt dictatorships, inequitable distribution of wealth, bigotry against social, ethnic, or religious under classes, and contempt for women.’¹³

Selecting Saints

Any Institution such as the Roman Catholic Church, which has a relationship of trust with its devotees, must maintain high standards of moral probity to retain the trust and confidence of its members. Such confidence should not be diluted in the name of political expediency. In the past, the Church crushed dissent and heresy through the office of the Inquisition to retain power. In modern times, such powers do not exist. Its legitimacy lies in moral persuasion, which is exercised through the proper selection of saints who epitomise all that is best and pure about the Church.

During the 26-year papacy of Paul II, the Pope had canonised 483 individuals to sainthood. Among the less savoury individuals selected for the honour of beatification was the reactionary Msgr. José María Escrivá de Balaguer, supporter of fascist regimes in Spain and elsewhere, and founder of Opus Dei, a powerful secretive ultra-conservative movement feared by many as a sinister sect within the Catholic Church. Other selections for beatification, which raised eyebrows, were Pius IX, who reigned as pontiff from 1846 to 1878, and who referred to Jews as dogs and Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, the leading Croatian cleric who welcomed the Nazi and fascist Ustashi takeover of Croatia during World War II and openly supported the Croatian fascist regime that exterminated hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma. ¹⁴

Mother Teresa was a mild reactionary when compared to the egregious examples of Msgr. José María Escrivá de Balaguer, Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, and Pius IX but certainly not an inspiring example for the Church. More worthy persons such as Archbishop Oscar Romero who spoke against Right wing death squads for oppressing the people of El Salvador received shabby treatment at the hands of Pope Paul II. The death squad murdered the Archbishop for speaking out his mind against tyranny and oppression. The people of El Salvador venerated him as a saint. But Pope Paul II used his authority to ban any discussion for his beatification for a period of 50 years. No protests were made by the Pope to condemn the murder. The Pope merely murmured –‘Tragic’ when asked for his comments. The ground swell of support for the martyred priest made the Pope to relent: the ban was cut down to 25 years. The Archbishop was put on a slow boat to sainthood.

The Byzantine intrigue of the Vatican in selecting its saints would make a cynic say in mock wonder, ‘The ways of the Vatican are indeed mysterious.’ And that sense of mystery only deepens when one considers the extraordinary beatification of an Albanian nun called Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

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1 Wikipedia- Mother Teresa.
2 The fanatic, fraudulent Mother Teresa- Christopher Hitchens- Slate Magazine.
3 The Missionary Position- Christopher Hitchens- Verso- pages 3-6.
4 Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints- Micheal Parenti.
5 The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens- Verso- pages- 68-70.
6 The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens- Verso- page- 11.
7 Mother Teresa and her order come under criticism- By Clark Morphew / Knight-Ridder Newspapers.
8 Dr Robin Fox- Lancet 17th September 1994- extracts published in The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens- Verso- pages- 38-39.
9 "The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa" - Donal MacIntyre- New Statesman- 22 August 2005.
10 "Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints"- Micheal Parenti
11 "The Missionary Position"- Christopher Hitchens- Verso- page- 58
12 The illusory Vs Real Mother Teresa- Dr. Michael Hakeem- free thought today- August 1996.
13 Road to Sainthood Paved with Good Publicity- Susan Jacoby- On faith.
14 Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints- Micheal Parenti.

Book Review: The Global Food Economy by Tony Weis

C R Sridhar — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:28:57 EDT

The corporate images of the food economy are full of deceptive advertisements of a mythical cornucopia of contented animals waiting for their disposal as someone else’s meal. The other images, which reinforce the intrinsic ‘fun and plenty’ of the food economy, are of supermarkets catering to the affluent sections of society, with food products stacked in shelves procured from far off places.

Beneath the illusion of plenty, there are other contradictory images of starved babies with distended bellies in famine stricken Africa, coexisting obscenely with obese people from the developed world. Starved farmers in agriculturally dependent economies who eke out a miserable living out of cash crop economy offer a harsh contrast to the bon vivant life style of CEOs of Transnational Corporations.

Tony Weis, an Assistant Professor of Geography teaching at the University of Western Ontario- Canada, has written a book called The Global Food Economy, which is a searing indictment of Big Agri-businesses destroying small farmers and the delicate eco-systems devastated by modern capital-intensive modes of production. Going beyond the platitudes of corporate PR, the author ‘examines the human and the ecological cost of what we eat.’

At the heart of the problem, the author argues, lies the role of TNC agribusiness, especially the grain-livestock complex, in adopting industrial methods, which are inimical to the eco-systems and the condition of human beings in general.

Ecological footprint

The ecological footprint left by Industrial Agriculture is a negative one and exacts a mounting toxic burden. In the past the long-term viability of farms depended on a sensitive relationship with respect to the ecological limits of growing food. It was recognized that there must be functional diversity in crops, soil species, trees, animals and insects to maintain ecological balance and nutrient cycles. This was maintained in traditional farming methods by multi-cropping, rotational patterns, green manure, fallowing land, careful seed selection and the integration of small animal populations.

In contrast modern farming transformed by capitalism and industralisation represented ‘a movement toward the radical simplification of the natural ecological order in the number of species found in an area and the intricacy of their interconnections’. This was made possible by the development and rising use of synthetic fertilizers, agro-chemicals, enhanced seed varieties/genetically modified seeds, farm machinery, concentrated feedstuffs, animal antibiotics and hormones, and the expansion of irrigation systems, which allowed industrial techniques to override previous ecological constraints. Moreover, embedded in industrialized farming is the new dependence upon fossil fuel consumption in the twentieth century, not only on transportation costs involved in bringing the food from the place where it is grown to the plate of the consumer and the demands of the machinery used for agriculture instead of animals, but with the petroleum demands of proliferating synthetic fertilizers and agro-chemicals. With the price of oil reaching $120 per barrel (expecting to touch $200 per barrel) it is certain that food prices would shoot upwards.

Rejecting simplistic notions that the industrial transformation in agriculture has resulted in high yielding crops, which are also yield stable, the author points out the inconvenient truth that it leads to chronic toxicity. This is evident as crops grown in industrial monocultures are prone to pest infections- a threat that is suppressed by the use of pesticides leading to greater pest resistance to the pesticides and involving greater use of pesticides in a never-ending cycle. The excessive use of pesticides results in pesticide poisoning which afflicts nearly three million suffering every year leading to 2,50,000 deaths. The other problems that arise with mechanized tillage are that the soil is drained off its nutritive power. The quick fix in the form of technology is a mere illusion as more and more use of inputs serves to mask the problems while creating fresh ones, one of which is the increasing use of fresh water for agricultural purposes, which is becoming scarce and a flash point of conflict.

Hoof prints left by livestock

The increased meatification of diet offers fresh challenges to the eco-systems as the increased demand for consumption of meat products leads to large-scale supply from feedlots. There are also health problems associated with increased meat intake as it increases the risk of strokes and cardio-vascular diseases.

In the factory, the dense livestock population is the major consumer and polluter of water. It is calculated that in excess of 3000 litres of water go into producing a single kilogram of US beef while a factory farmed pig requires about 132 litres of water for drinking and flushing of its wastes. A typical slaughterhouse in US uses in a day the water used by 25000 people.

The faecal matter of the cattle and pigs creates problems of waste disposal, as it is a gigantic task to get rid of 1.4 billon tons of animal manure (US) without polluting the rivers and streams. Added to the problems of sink function, there are health hazards arising out of over crowding of poultry birds in production factories which exposes the public to the dangers of a virulent strain of H5N1 which is capable of mutating and jumping the species barrier to human beings. The WHO warning led to hundreds of millions of birds getting culled in China, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. The feeding of neural tissues, bone meal and blood from cattle carcass to essentially herbivorous cattle created the mad cow disease (BSE), which could transmit to humans when they eat the infected meat. Thus the hoof prints left by livestock production leaves an intolerable burden on eco-systems and public health.

An Uneven Playing field

The human cost of the food economy is a heavy burden disproportionately resting on developing countries- where overwhelmingly large sections of the rural people depend on agriculture for livelihood. TNC Agri-businesses, which are subsidised by rich developed countries (especially US) flood the world market with cheap grains/ cereals, driving the poor farmers of the developing world out of the market leading to destitution and poverty. They are driven to cities in search of jobs in Urban areas, where they constitute the under class found in Urban ghettos living in abject poverty and filth. Most of the poorer countries are still trapped in neo-colonial relationship with centers of Metropolitan capital as they increasingly depend on cash crops grown for export to the affluent people of the world and face the daunting prospect of not able to feed themselves out of their dwindling export earnings. The producing countries simply do not control the international price for their commodities- they take what they get. The export earnings are insufficient to buy finished goods from the developed countries and they face the dreary prospect of increasing the volume of export of cash crops without increasing the value, which is just not enough to pay for the imports.

The author’s book is a sane and compassionate plea to reorder the global food economy to serve human needs and not the diktat of corporate agriculture with its obsession of profit maximization. In the last chapter of his book called the future of farming, he passionately calls for moving agricultural systems off the chemical and fossil energy treadmill and towards lower-input, labour-centered intensification and more bio-diverse agriculture. That this vision is not that of a Luddite who wants to turn the clock back to a romantic past, is borne out by the fact that there is an urgent need for agro-science to be shaped by more scientific research for more humane ends like empowering the small farmer and not for mindlessly enriching the corporate coffers of the few.

For people of India, especially the middle class, who are enthralled by the IT service economy, it may be a wake up call to know that even today two-thirds of its one billion plus population still depend on agriculture as source of income. The author’s book, which pleads for a socially just, ecologically rational and humane food economy, should find a place in our bookshelf.