Wednesday, October 09, 2024

 

‘Long live Intifada’: Why decolonisation and protests still matter for Palestine




From the struggle of Palestinians to worldwide protests over the past year, decolonisation takes various forms and is essential for the freedom of Palestine.
 Published October 9, 2024  

As Gaza has been in the spotlight for a year now for the death and destruction wrought by Israel, Western media has often framed the narrative as beginning from just Oct 7, 2023.

For the West, the Oct 7 Hamas attacks “sparked the conflict” in Gaza. It may be more apt to refer it to as “recent conflict” instead, to acknowledge that the story goes decades back and has a layered history.

Under Israel’s settler colonialism — fully backed and catalysed by the West — Palestinians have been controlled, displaced, and killed. Their land has been occupied, bulldozed, and made barren. Their lives have been destroyed, dehumanised, and traumatised.

Yet, Palestinians have persisted. Time and time again, they have pushed against Israel’s colonial crimes. They have shown resistance — an act that is the basis of decolonisation.

This piece looks at the various forms in which decolonisation occurs in Palestine’s context — from the struggle of Palestinians to worldwide protests over the past year. The ongoing process of decolonisation is the journey that would one day culminate in freedom for Palestine.

Colonisation of Palestine

While colonies may sound like a thing of the past in today’s post-colonial world, the people of Palestine are not just under direct occupation of Israel but also subject to the violence and oppression inherent to colonialism.

According to a UN expert, Israel’s occupation is illegal and indistinguishable from a “settler-colonial” situation, which must end as a pre-condition for Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination.

Settler colonialism is an ongoing system of power that “perpetuates the genocide and repression” of indigenous peoples and cultures. The Israeli occupation has been termed settler-colonialism with similarities to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

It can be traced back to 1917 when Britain — our very familiar colonial empire on which the “sun still never sets” — pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, Al Jazeera explains.

The infamous ‘Balfour Declaration’ was included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine, which AJ describes as a “thinly veiled form of colonialism and occupation”. It was a carte blanche for the creation of a state that would occupy land belonging to the people there and use oppressive tactics and violence to maintain its stronghold.

According to the United Nations, the British mandate lasted from 1922 to 1947, during which “large-scale Jewish immigration” took place, mostly from Europe — changing the territory’s demographics.

“What the political concept of a Jewish state in Palestine needed to give it reality was to transfer people to Palestine,” the UN’s records note. They were to occupy a land that was not theirs.

Interestingly, France was also officially awarded its mandate over Syria and Lebanon at the San Remo conference in April 1920, which as history professor Carol Hakim writes, “helped establish an image of France as an archetypal colonial power”.

Coming to Israel as a colonising entity, it not only indulges in settler colonialism but also other oppressive tactics inherent to colonialism.

Elia Zureik writes in Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine: “Colonialism has three foundational concerns — violence, territory, and population control — all of which rest on racialist discourse and practice.”

Zureik lists that settler colonialism is “intrinsically associated with the dispossession of indigenous populations through violence, repressive state laws and practices, and racialised forms of monitoring (currently referred to as racial profiling)”.

He describes surveillance as an “indispensable tool of governance”. While Israel uses AI in its recent onslaught on Gaza, years-old instances of monitoring tech, facial recognition and drones have been reported as well, including in occupied West Bank.

 Palestinians carry aid unloaded from a truck, in Gaza City on March 23, 2024. — Reuters/File
Palestinians carry aid unloaded from a truck, in Gaza City on March 23, 2024. — Reuters/File

Another example is Israel calculating Gaza’s daily calorie needs during its 2007-2010 blockade, claiming it was to prevent malnutrition. However, Israeli advocacy groups Gisha and Hamas alleged it was to restrict the quantity of food Israel allowed in the enclave. These and numerous other methods to control the Palestinian population are also inherent to colonialism.

‘From the river to the sea’: Freedom means decolonisation

The phrase ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ is frequently heard at pro-Palestinian rallies and protests.

While this phrase originates from the 1940s referring to the liberation of the entire land that used to be historically Palestine, it has become a subject of debate regarding its interpretation, with Jewish groups claiming it is anti-Semitic.

‘From the river to the sea’ is a call for an “imagined future of peace and freedom”, “end to [Israeli] occupation” and “ability to return [to their historic land]”.

 People march for Palestine in downtown Chicago, US, on Oct 8, 2023. — Reuters/File
People march for Palestine in downtown Chicago, US, on Oct 8, 2023. — Reuters/File

However, as Mark Levine writes in AJ, the other side perceives it in “exclusivist terms” — equating the call for freedom to a violent destruction of Israel and “dehumanisation” of Israelis.

According to Eleyan Sawafta’s article in Middle East Monitor, decolonisation in the Palestinian context aims to address “structural, cultural and direct violence”, which does “not mean dehumanising individuals”.

It is the long-term answer to the conflict which must be viewed in “a wide historical lens encompassing global struggles for freedom as well as the enduring complexities of Israel as a settler-colonial, apartheid and occupation state”.

Freedom for Palestine necessitates decolonisation to dismantle the perpetual colonial violence that existed even before Oct 7, according to Muhannad Ayyash, Professor of Sociology at Canada’s Mount Royal University.

Palestinian struggle to decolonise

Where colonialism exists, there also exists a struggle against it. And Palestinians have maintained their struggle against it for decades.

After more than 20 years of military occupation, a “spontaneous popular uprising” took place in the Gaza Strip and West Bank from December 1987 to September 1993 — known as the First Intifada.

According to the UNRWA, the movement was “marked by demonstrations, boycotts, tax resistance, strikes and largely unarmed protests”.

Later, a wave of protests and violence from 2000 to 2005 — sparked by the storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound — became known as the Second Intifada.

Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, who recently won an Emmy award for her documentary on her life in Gaza, has narrated the colonisation of Gaza in a video she released in March.

“How come a coloniser who had never lived in the land nor his great grandparents steal this land from an Arab Palestinian Cannanite farmer — whether a Muslim, Christian or Jew?” she asks, while seated among children and an old man.

Referring to the British Mandate of Palestine, she says ‘mandate’ was a “legal term that embellishes the idea of colonisation”.

“The brutality and terror of the coloniser can never force me to leave my land, to surrender or to lower my spirit or voice,” Bisan wrote on X last month.

While the Palestinian resistance is diverse, many welcome the armed resistance of Palestinians, saying it is the materialisation of decolonisation.

Some even consider last year’s October 7 attacks as an act of decolonisation.

According to an article by a researcher from the University of South Africa, the “use of violence is unavoidable for both colonialism and (genuine) decolonisation” and decolonisation uses “counter-violence” against colonial violence.

Frantz Fanon, in his book The Wretched of the Earth, highlights how a colonised group is only left with violence as a tool to decolonise its land.

He writes: “From birth, it is clear to him (the native) that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence.”

Fanon further says that the violence that has “ruled over the ordering of the colonial world, […] that same violence will be claimed and taken over by the native”.

While addressing the ICJ in February, China stated that Palestinians’ use of armed struggle to gain independence from foreign and colonial rule was “legitimate” and “well-founded” in international law.

On the other hand, the West employs “terrorism” to describe Palestinian fighters, even when Israel’s military offensive has killed countless civilians, including children.

Global Palestinian movement

The Palestinian cause has gained support from all parts of the world over the past twelve months, since Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza in the name of “defending itself” against Hamas’s Oct 7 attacks.

From Africa to Europe, South America to the Middle East, people have marched in solidarity with the Palestinians who are facing bombardment, displacement, and death on a daily.

The humanitarian plight of the Palestinians and the barbarity of the Israeli campaign against them has prompted massive outpourings, even in otherwise aloof Western cities and capitals.

But the most vocal support — in terms of public support as well as diplomatic — has arguably come from Latin America, where many countries have borne the brunt of European colonisation themselves.

There are some 700,000 Latin Americans of Palestinian origin, living in fourteen countries of South America, according to a 2020 research published in a peer-reviewed journal of Edinburgh University Press.

According to an article by researchers from Denmark’s Roskilde University, the Gaza conflict has become an ideological position transforming into a global leftist cause. For many Palestinian supporters, imagining a free Palestine is contingent upon decolonisation.

Meanwhile, Pakistanis across the country have shown solidarity through numerous protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

In Lahore, Pakistan’s Progressive Students Collective (PSC) marched outside the US consulate in April. They were joined by diverse groups of students, social and political activists, academics, artists, and concerned citizens — all demanding justice and freedom for Palestine.

In fact, students have led many pro-Palestinian protests across the world but were met with strict actions taken by their university administrations.

The student groups were suspended in places such as Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and other colleges. The British police arrested about a dozen Oxford University students and scuffled with some during a pro-Palestine sit-in at the university premises in May.

These vocal pro-Palestine protests have multiplied despite facing all kinds of repression. This raises an important question: What is so global and radicalising about the Palestinian struggle?

Muneeza Ahmed is a Pakistani activist who has organised pro-Palestine protests in Karachi. Speaking to Dawn.com, Ahmed highlights that the Palestinian movement “has been able to transcend borders and become a global discourse”.

The reason behind the movement’s global reach is “resistance and work that Palestinian activists and their allies have done over the years in different countries”, she says.

Marcelo Alves de Paula Lima, assistant professor at Morocco’s Al Akhawayn University, compares Israel to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

“South Africa is a country that underwent an apartheid regime that resembled a lot the Israeli state today. Indeed, the white settler colonialism that segregated blacks in South Africa until 1994 served as an inspiration for the Israeli segregation of Palestinians over the years,” he tells Dawn.com.

“Another sign of how the Palestinian struggle is part of a decolonisation movement is the decision of other non-western countries such as Brazil and China — both of which were victims of Western imperialism in the past — to speak up against Israeli actions,” Lima notes.

‘Beyond colonialism’: Roles of modernity and Western hegemony

Speaking about the West’s role in extending Israel’s colonial reign over Palestine, Lima highlights that Israel’s creation was proclaimed in 1948, which was a “moment when Western colonialism in Africa and Asia was starting to retreat”.

“Hence, many authors see the state of Israel as an outpost of Western colonialism in the Middle East in a moment when Western domination was fading away,” he adds.

Lima stressed that Israel did not only receive financial and military support from the West but also “intellectual/ideological” support. He highlighted how Israel was “often portrayed as an ‘oasis’ of freedom, tolerance, and progress amidst an allegedly backwards and authoritarian Arab world”.

“When looking at Israeli modernity — urbanisation, democratic political system, respect to LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalist policies, technological advances, etc — one must never lose sight of the colonial pillars on which that modernity was built (just like Western capitalism was built slavery),” he states.

Ahmed, the protest organiser, looks at the massive demonstrations through a slightly different lens that still ties in with coloniality — that of modernity and Western interests.

She believes that the Pakistani pro-Palestine movement lacks an informed narrative.

“Many people who show up to protests don’t necessarily know the history of Palestine,” Ahmed says, adding that the “outlook is more about Muslim solidarity”.

She further asserts, “Western powers, who have supported Israel, must be called out by our people, government and the establishment.

“In Pakistan, there isn’t enough political activism around what [those in] the US has been doing with Israel,” she notes.

In February, a US airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in protest over the assault in Gaza. The 25-year-old had filmed himself shouting “Free Palestine” as he lit himself on fire.

This act drew attention to the US’s unending support to Israel. Several US officials resigned following Bushnell’s act, in protest against Washington’s support for Israeli military operations in Gaza.

The US annually provides approximately $3.3 billion in aid to Israel. It has also shown unwavering support to Israel in the Gaza conflict with providing $8.7bn just last month.

Many argue that the pro-Israel lobby in the US is responsible but this idea overlooks that the US has its own economic and strategic reasons for supplying military aid.

Ahmed emphasises the need to understand “why Israel gets the support of the West”, which was absent from the Pakistani discourse.

The activist says: “One of the biggest reasons the US supports Israel is because they want an ally in the Middle East. It is also quite a bit about capitalism; that narrative is missing.”

“How can you talk about decolonisation without talking about modern capitalism?” she asks.

Muneeza describes the Gaza conflict as an “extreme military occupation and complete genocide”. She says: “Settler colonialism as a word cannot describe what happened in Gaza for the last 20 years, since Hamas [formed the] government.

“It is beyond colonialism. Gaza struggle is a struggle for survival, life, freedom, identity and land,” Muneeza highlights. She states that what modern capitalism and the US hegemonic structure have done is “worse than traditional colonialism”.

However, the global Palestinian movement is “not a decolonising one”, according to Muneeza, as “the aims are not so centralised”.

According to the activist, there would “always be a connection and alliances between people who have been colonised and people of colour” but, she adds, the worldwide protests and activism “do not necessarily show a collective struggle against colonialism”.

Muneeza says that the Palestinian movement is “more localised”.

“It is more about Palestine, which is okay. It is okay to also have localised struggles, and have solidarity between them, but it is not a global takedown of US imperialism or Western colonial powers,” she adds.

The colonial project is further propagated by the Western world, including the United States — Israel’s most ardent ally. For example, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has criticised calls for a ceasefire and also pledged Israel the support it needs to “win fast”.

On the Democrat side, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, when asked if he supported a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran, said getting the hostages was fundamental “but the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute necessity for the United States to have a steady leadership there”.

Argentinian scholar Walter D Mignolo points to the same in his book The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. He states that the “colonial matrix of power is the very foundational structure of Western civilisation”.

“Coloniality, in other words, is constitutive of modernity—there is no modernity without coloniality,” he writes.

Way forward

The International Court of Justice in July ruled that “Israel’s continued presence in the Palestinian Territories is illegal”, adding that it was under an obligation “to evacuate all settlers”. In September, the United Nations also passed a resolution demanding the end to Israeli occupation.

While these demands cannot be forcefully implemented, they are an indictment of Israel’s colonial actions — now coming from across the world. They also echo wider support for Palestine as an independent and free state, forming part of a global decolonising project.

Human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, in his recent opinion piece in Mondoweiss, termed the UN resolution as indicative of a new era in which the “foundations of Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid and ethnonationalism have begun to crumble”.

While Israel has been persistent in defying calls for a ceasefire — and is instead adamant on wreaking havoc in the entire region — international condemnations continue to highlight its rogue behaviour.

As protests and slogans have conveyed: a ceasefire is not the solution to Israel’s settler colonialism of Palestine.

An enduring solution and halt to the war crimes being committed by Israel lies in the creation of an independent State of Palestine.

The world must keep up its protests to amplify the voice of Palestinians so that the West — the torch-bearers of so-called modern values of equality and freedom — is forced to pressure Israel into allowing a viable solution to the Palestine issue.


Header image: A man carries a Palestinian flag, as students walk out of classes in what they call “one year of genocide on the people of Gaza”, as they demonstrate at the University of California, in Irvine, California, US on Oct 7, 2024. — Reuters

 

Experts Call for Altering Food Systems in Hindu Kush Himalaya to Meet Climate Change Threat



Mohd. Imran Khan 






The HKH region was warming at double the global average, and changes in water supply from loss of mountain snow and ice were putting extraordinary pressure on food and farming, it was noted.

Patna: At a time when climate change is affecting food security and safety, experts have called for urgent need to transform food systems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region to meet the triple threat of climate change, nature loss, and acute food insecurity.

The call was given at a recent event hosted by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), attended by academics, researchers and policymakers from Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, and Pakistan. The event focused on the need for climate-resilient agriculture for sustainable food systems in the HKH region.

“It is urgent, in the teeth of the climate crisis, that we reshape agriculture in the Hindu Kush Himalaya,” Abid Hussain, who
leads the ICIMOD’s economies work, said at the event. He noted that this region was warming at double the global average, and changes in water supply from loss of mountain snow and ice, and much more extreme rainfall, were putting extraordinary pressure on food and farming.

“It’s increasingly clear that industrial farming methods – including the use of chemical fertilisers and deforestation – have been a calamity for the biosphere, for human health, and for the climate, and have failed to deliver prosperity for farmers. Switching to alternative methods of agriculture has the power to improve livelihoods, human health, the health of our rivers, the quality of the air we breathe and, with soil being such a potent tool for carbon sequestration, offers a huge opportunity for us to hold onto a habitable planet,” he added.

Food and farming are responsible for one quarter of global greenhouse emissions, second only to energy use. But with alternative models of farming capable of actually locking away carbon in the soil, global experts increasingly emphasise the sector as a solution to the climate crisis. 

Given the population sizes in the HKH region, and acute food insecurity needs, it’s crucial this be a priority zone for investment in this transition to agroecological methods, other experts said, at the event.

Kamal Prasad Aryal, who led the action research component of the GRAPE project, said “Our work in these provinces, working closely with smallholders, shows how low-cost, scalable agricultural solutions can really quite quickly result in better soil health on farms, which translates to better quality yield, while reducing farmers’ reliance on costly externalities”. 

He said “We’re already seeing these organic and natural methods of production contributing to an uptick in farmers’ incomes and food security. With two-thirds of the population in Nepal engaged in agricultural work, we really hope more policymakers, farmers, donors, businesses, and publics from across this region embrace the huge opportunity that these climate-resilient agricultural practices underpin.”

At the event, experts shared their studies and vision that helped delegates learn methods that could be scaled up, including climate-resilient agricultural practices, community learning centres, digital solutions and renewable energy technologies in agriculture.

In August this year, at a workshop on climate-resilient and inclusive agriculture in Nepal at ICIMOD , it was discussed that agriculture had long been an integral part of livelihoods in the HKH region, including Nepal. It was noted that agriculture in Nepal was facing numerous challenges induced by climate change, such as natural disasters, increased incidence of pests and diseases, loss of agro-biodiversity, and soil degradation. These issues, alongside increased workload of women and youth migration, threaten food security and exacerbate poverty in the region.

Experts stressed that the critical need for food and nutrition security required urgent action to enhance the sustainability of food systems. In this context, the Renewable Energy for Resilient-Food Systems (RERAS) project aims to achieve this by promoting climate-resilient solutions and renewable energy across various stages of agricultural value chains in Bajura, Jumla, Mugu, and Sindhuli districts, it was noted.

The writer is a freelancer based in Patna, Bihar.

Why Arresting the Waning Influence of Trade Unions is Vital



Pranita Kulkarni 

TUs might be far from perfect and must indeed be subjected to scrutiny and reform. Yet, their disappearance from the political horizon is highly undesirable.

In the build-up to the most recent elections in the United Kingdom, there was, understandably, a spate of predictions about the term of the now-Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a relatively lesser-known face on the UK political landscape. Interestingly, a reasonable amount of this conjecture pertained to what Starmer’s outlook would be on workers’ rights and trade unions.

A piece by The Telegraph (UK) went to the extent of making a “revelation” that the Labour Party leader had plans to give trade unions “a stranglehold on workplaces” which would result in the loss of jobs and enable unions to “bring the country to a halt with crippling walkouts”.  The article – which further lists the promise to give all the workers equal rights as one of the dangerous decisions – might not be worthy of serious attention, as its key objective seems to be fear-mongering. However, its claims, in reality, are in contrast with the party’s attempt at watering down some of the progressive pro-worker provisions from the green paper ‘A New Deal for Working People’, which had left the UK unions concerned.

In fact, what truly deserves attention is the space taken up by trade unions (TUs) in this narrative, and the portrayal of their real or imagined strength. With the advent of neoliberalism, trade unions globally are facing challenges of declining membership. The proportion of UK employees who were trade union members fell to 22.3% in 2022 down from 23.1% in 2021 and is the lowest since 1995, according to the country’s Department of Business and Trade.

And yet, unions, as an institution, are far from disappearing from the political horizon in the UK. Their influence—even though shrunken—is recognised, and even exaggerated by Right-wing conservatives. Overall, there seems to be some space available to accommodate their voice and protests and something to gain from their political support; their standing matters.

Now, contrast this with the Indian general elections conducted over a month before the UK elections and the visibility accorded to trade unions here in the political narratives by key parties. Arguably, it isn’t a completely fair comparison given the drastically different economic, political, and industrial trajectories of the two countries. Trade unions also follow very different systems of political and ideological alignments in both countries. Yet, there are a few important commonalities.

The neoliberal policies of the successive governments in India have led to the weakening of Indian trade unions as well, with dwindling membership. Both UK and India have seen a long rule of Right-wing governments that have been averse to unions and pro-worker policies and trade unions from both these countries have missed out, in the past, on reaching out to significant demographics of workers – migrants/immigrants and women, among others.

The onus is often put on the unions themselves for focusing mainly on blue collar, male, and industrial workers in the past. However, in the past few years, many trade unions have tried some course corrections and re-strategised to remain more relevant and inclusive.

In the Indian context, over the past three years, we also saw trade unions aligning with the farmers’ movement, speaking of peasant-worker unity to triumph over divisive barriers, such as caste and religion. And it has yielded results. The central trade unions that campaigned relentlessly against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the farming belts did claim a share in the ruling saffron party’s relative decline and gains for Opposition unity.

But, there is still a long way to go for trade unions before they can be truly representative of the majority of workers in India (over 90% of whom are engaged in the unorganised sector). Yet, in an increasingly fragmented, precarious, and volatile labour market—not to mention a highly polarised society—organisation of labour and political action is needed more than ever. To what extent have political parties, particularly those in the Opposition, acknowledged this? A quick look at the election manifestos of some of the Indian political parties may not quite leave us hopeful.

Wide Berth to Trade Unions

The manifesto of the Right-wing BJP, predictably, steers clear of any mention of trade unions. This is hardly a surprise given the ruling party’s infamous bonhomie with Big Capital and its attempt to diminish workers’ rights, protections, and unions’ legitimacy with the ushering of the new labour codes in a bid to encourage “ease of doing business”.

The Industrial Relations Code, 2020, stipulates that every industrial establishment must have a negotiating union or a negotiating council. If there is one registered union for an establishment, that automatically becomes the ‘negotiating union’, as per the Code. If there are several registered unions, the one supported by more than 51% of the workforce forms the negotiating union, according to Section 14(3) of the Code. Such a regulation undermines the presence and scope of the smaller or non-registered unions, who will be denied the opportunity to participate in the negotiations or widen their base, while the one big union – which could easily be a management dummy – dominates the bargaining processes. Apart from this, the Code effectively extends the barriers to striking work by making the process mind-bogglingly long and complicated, handing more power to employers.

The past decade, with the BJP at the Centre, has been a profoundly hostile period for trade unions, workers, and social movements. The ruling party resorted to a myriad of tactics to suppress the farmers’ protests—ranging from vilification and shoddy negotiations to outright suppression and communalisation. It has largely turned a deaf ear to workers and unions protesting against the labour codes and scheme workers demanding fair remuneration, social security, and better working conditions. Ashish Mishra, son of then Union Minister Ajay Mishra, is currently on trial for the brutal murder of four farmers and a journalist during a farmers’ protest in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, against the now-repealed farm laws. In this context, BJP’s manifesto is aligned with its politics, leaving no space for the right to collective bargaining

As for the Congress election manifesto released ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in May, the central theme was social justice – apparent from its title ‘Nyay Patra’. Its release followed the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, a campaign led by the party leader Rahul Gandhi, which aimed at “uniting India through justice” by seeking to understand the challenges and injustices faced by the poor, labourers, farmers, women, youth, backward classes, Dalits, tribals, and minorities.

The largest Opposition party, through its campaign as well as the manifesto, spoke a great deal about the anti-people policies of the incumbent regime. Unfortunately, yet predictably, it also steered clear of any mention of the workers’ right to collective bargaining and the need to reverse the successive governments’ attempts at weakening trade unions in the past four decades.

The Congress manifesto touched upon the unemployment issue and proposed schemes for skilling and job creation. However, a better permeation of the social justice theme warranted a commitment to strengthening the institutions that can protect workers from the exploitative and predatory practices.

This commitment could have been achieved by broadly three approaches. One, strengthen the pre-existing labour laws. This exercise on the level of legislative intervention needs to be guided by a thorough understanding of the severe under-implementation of the laws and of the overall inadequacy of the present systems and mechanisms.

Two, introduce progressive labour law reforms, especially equipped to deal with the rapidly changing structure and composition of the labour market and the fragmented labour force today. And, three, extend legal and political support to workers’ organisations, which can play a crucial role in amplifying workers’ voices, protecting the latter’s rights, and acting as a counterweight to the might of the capital.

The party manifesto’s section dedicated to the ‘workers’ category is a tad more inclusive with attention paid to hitherto overlooked categories—such as migrant and unorganised sector workers—and dimensions of discrimination (although limited to only gender). But it fails in paying any attention to the role trade unions can play in ensuring the implementation of labour laws and workers’ welfare. This isn’t surprising given Congress's history with trade unions; in its post-Independence rule, the party sought to control unions, contributing to the depoliticisation of the working class in its quest for "industrial peace”.

Even in the recent manifesto of the Congress party, one can see a strange emphasis on productivity in the section dedicated to workers. The very first point speaks the language of capital and corporations, advocating high productivity. One might have reasonably expected that this section would instead highlight the extreme exploitation faced by workers in the relentless pursuit of productivity.

The manifesto also mentions restoration of a balance between labour and capital, yet it glaringly ignores the significant power imbalance between the two. To address this imbalance, it is imperative to empower workers. Allowing them to collectivise and use their agency to articulate their needs and interests would be the logical solution. However, the Congress manifesto conspicuously omits any reference to workers’ unions or their right to organise.

Even if we engage with the contention that the absence of support for unions is due to concerns about corruption, the manifesto fails to propose any alternatives for workers to be heard. There is no mention of support for NGOs or activists working with labourers, leaving a void where there should be advocacy and support for workers’ rights.

Manifestos and poll promises or “guarantees” of the major Opposition parties, such as Aam Aadami Party, Samajwadi Party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and Trinamool Congress, show similar apathy towards trade unions, the Left parties, such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) being one of the few exceptions.

 

Need for Better Collaboration

The political parties now sitting in the Opposition in the Lok Sabha must seize the opportunity as well as take the responsibility to stand with trade unions and share the space for political action. While manifestos might be thought of as outdated, they do continue to be roadmaps that reveal a party's ambitions, positioning, ideology, and policy stances, even when out of power. Reflecting on these commitments, revising them, forging new and gainful partnerships, and redrawing this roadmap, could, therefore, pave the way forward for them.

In this process, recognising the potential of trade unions can be greatly beneficial. The need to ensure good working conditions, fair pay, and the eradication of exploitative employment practices must be equally amplified along with the demand for job creation and the role of trade unions in giving voice to the working people.

Trade unions may be far from perfect and must indeed be subject to scrutiny and reform. Yet, their disappearance from the political horizon is highly undesirable.

The writer is an independent researcher who looks at the intersection of migration and labour organisation. She is also associated with the Centre for Financial Accountability. The views are personal.



Pan-African Resistance Against Imperialism Grows


Prabhat Patnaik | 


West Africa’s endeavour should make India seriously rethink its current policy of rolling back the public sector, especially in the sphere of natural resources.

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons 

West Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonisation of the sort that India did. For a start, the erstwhile French colonies’ currency continued to be linked to the French franc at a fixed exchange rate, which meant that they could not pursue any fiscal and monetary policy of their choice (for that would have threatened the fixed exchange rate). Not only were their foreign exchange reserves kept by France, as had been the case with colonial India where its gold reserves, acquired through enforced borrowing (since all its annual export surplus earnings were taken by Britain) had been kept in London; but France also effectively controlled their fiscal and monetary policy despite formal decolonisation. Control over their natural resources remained with metropolitan corporations.

What is more, French troops stayed on in these countries despite decolonisation, initially on the excuse that they are required to guard French property, subsequently on the ground that they have to defend these countries against Islamic militants (who themselves had got strengthened by imperialist destabilisation of the Gaddafi regime in Libya), but in reality to ensure that the newly-independent governments continued to act in conformity with French diktat. Any effort to get rid of these troops was met with a French response that could, as the Burkina Faso episode had shown earlier, even include a coup d’etat.

Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary Marxist leader of Burkina Faso and a committed pan-Africanist, who had wanted French troops out of his country, was assassinated in a coup d’etat staged by persons belonging to his own party but generally presumed to have enjoyed French backing.

Most of the time, however, even coups were hardly necessary: the normal electoral politics involving political parties with leaders trained in the metropolis, who keep the issue of the continuing presence of French troops out of their political agendas, has been quite enough to keep the arrangement going and even to give it a democratic façade.

In several West African countries of late, however, revolutionary elements within the army have seized power from such elected but spineless governments to build up a wave of anti-imperialist resistance. While the imperialist countries have portrayed such seizure of power as a blow against democracy that should be condemned and opposed, the masses in these countries, ironically, have typically supported these new regimes with enthusiasm despite their having supplanted governments which they themselves had elected “democratically”.

Indeed, these countries expose a crucial flaw in the functioning of extant electoral democracy. The prettified picture of electoral democracy that we are normally presented with pretends that anyone can form a political party and raise any issue to enter the electoral arena, and that this arena constitutes a level playing field; because of this the people’s genuine concerns get invariably reflected in electoral outcomes.

In fact, however, there are what economists call “barriers to entry” into the electoral arena arising from insufficiency of financial resources, which ensures that this arena is not a level playing field. Hence, it is perfectly possible to have an apparently well-functioning electoral democracy that does not at the same time address the real issues that agitate the people.

This is precisely what is happening with Western democracies at present where despite the apparent smooth functioning of the electoral system, the overwhelming desire for peace that exists among the people gets totally ignored in electoral outcomes. And this is also what characterised the West African democracies where the functioning of the electoral system never brought to the fore the people’s overwhelming desire to be free of the presence of foreign troops.

Of late, however, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, each of which is ruled by military leaders that have recently captured power, have asked French troops to leave; and as far as fighting the Islamic militants is concerned, Mali at any rate is relying on Russia’s Wagner group, which has now been more or less assimilated into the Russian state. These three countries -- Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger -- also came together in July 2024 to form a union called the Alliance of Sahel States. The three regimes are committed, as Thomas Sankara had been, to pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism.

Now Burkina Faso has taken its anti-imperialism a step further by nationalising two of its gold mines which had originally been with the Endeavour Mining company of Britain. Burkina Faso is supposed to be the 13th largest gold producer in the world, its annual gold production being 100 tonnes or about $6 billion at current world prices.

The gold is produced entirely through European or North American companies who refine it outside the country and retain much of the value of the output. Because of this, despite such substantial gold production, its current Gross National Product in 2022 was only $19.37 billion.

The present government of Ibrahim Traore has decided not only to nationalise gold production completely but also to set up a local gold refinery for the first time. Even if just $2 billion additional value is retained for the economy, this extra amount comes to over 10% of the GNP that can be used to finance additional government expenditure on education, healthcare and other essential services for the people.

Of all the different kinds of foreign investment, that used for extracting a country’s mineral resources is by far the worst, as Joan Robinson, the eminent economist, had stressed  long ago; or, put differently, a country must always develop its mineral resources through its own public sector rather than through multinational corporations. This is because minerals constitute an exhaustible resource that lasts only for a short time for any individual country; and unless the bulk of the value of the mineral resource comes back to the country’s exchequer, with the help of which its economy can be suitably diversified in the interim, the country is left high and dry when this resource gets exhausted.

This has happened in our own neighbourhood. Take Myanmar, for instance. When it had oil, there was a temporary boom associated with oil extraction in that country, with oil multinationals raking in huge profits. Since these profits were not used for diversifying the economy (which would have been the case if oil development had been in the public sector), once Myanmar’s oil reserves got exhausted and the multinationals packed their bags and left, Myanmar was back to square one. It is counted today among what the United Nations calls the “Least Developed Countries”.

A country must, therefore, always have ownership and control over its mineral and other exhaustible resources, and also develop them on its own through its public sector. And Burkina Faso’s recognition of this basic principle constitutes a great advance.

One must not, of course, underestimate the immense obstacles that imperialism will place against the realisation of this objective. There is a long history of imperialist destabilisation of Third World regimes that have attempted to acquire control over their own natural resources, starting with the toppling of the government of Mossadegh in Iran. And when despite all this skulduggery, exclusive control over Third World mineral resources still eluded imperialism, it trapped the Third World within a neo-liberal arrangement, whose primary objective was to roll back the public sector and to re-acquire for Western multinational corporations control over its natural resources. The very fact, therefore, that the deviousness of the neo-liberal arrangement is being recognised in West Africa and with it the need for national control over natural resources, is of great significance.

In India, after a successful struggle to win control over our natural resources, a struggle for “economic decolonisation” that was perhaps even more arduous than the struggle for political decolonisation, a struggle that succeeded because of help from the Soviet Union, we are once again surrendering our gains through our embrace of neo-liberalism.

The West African endeavour should make our government seriously rethink its current policy of rolling back the public sector, even in the sphere of natural resources.

Domestic private enterprise in this sphere incidentally is hardly any better than multinational corporations; it suffers from exactly the same defects. There is no alternative to the public sector for developing such national resources. To be sure, even with a public sector, this sphere may not contribute much to national development if there is misappropriation or inefficiency; but its development under the public sector still constitutes a necessary condition for national development. Besides, a regime committed to the public sector will also have the ability to rectify its functioning.

 

Why World Economy is Facing Stagnation



Prabhat Patnaik 



The capitalist system in its latest neo-liberal phase has slowed world economic growth and has brought the overwhelming mass of the population to a state of income stagnation.


Representational Image. Image Courtesy:  Rawpixel

The fact that the world economy has slowed down since the financial crisis of 2008 is beyond dispute. In fact, even conservative American economists have started using the term “secular stagnation” to describe the current situation (though they have their own peculiar definition for it). The purpose of the present note is to give some growth-rate figures to establish this particular point.

Calculations of GDP (gross domestic product), which are notoriously unreliable for particular countries, are even more so for the world as a whole. In India, many researchers have questioned the official estimates of the growth rate of GDP, and have suggested that this rate can scarcely be above 4-4.5% per annum over the past several years in contrast to the 7% or so shown by official statistics.

The exultation over the acceleration of GDP growth in the neo-liberal period, compared with the dirigiste period, would appear to be entirely misplaced. And if the growth rate of GDP has scarcely increased compared with earlier, while inequalities have widened significantly, then the assertion that the condition of the working people has deteriorated in the neo-liberal period, as is clearly shown by other indicators, such as nutritional intake figures, would be even more firmly established.

But notwithstanding the utter shakiness of GDP data, let us examine what has been happening to world GDP.

For this purpose, let’s use World Bank data, with “real” GDP being estimated at 2015 prices for each country and aggregated for the world as a whole in terms of dollars at the 2015 exchange rates. The division of the entire period since 1961 into sub-periods and comparison across these sub-periods is quite tricky. Taking decadal growth rates is problematical, for, if the beginning of the decade happens to be a trough year, then the growth rate for the decade would get exaggerated, and hence give a distorted picture.

As far as possible, we have taken peak years and calculated the peak-to-peak growth rates of the world economy, which certainly gives a more reliable picture of the secular change in the growth rate. The specific years are 1961, 1973, 1984, 1997, 2007, and 2018, which was the last peak year before the pandemic set in. The growth- rates of world GDP during the sub-periods defined by these years are as follows:

 

Period             GDP Growth Rate

                         (Per Year)        

1961-1973:      5.4%

1973-1984:      2.9%

1984-1997:      3.1%

1997-2007:      3.5%

2007-2018:      2.7%

Source: World Bank data

Three conclusions stand out from these figures. First, the growth rate of the world economy during the dirigiste period was much higher than during the neo-liberal period as a whole. This is a point often overlooked in the standard discussion where the harping on the theme of the “superiority of the market” gives the impression that the world economy must have grown faster in the neo-liberal era. This impression, however, is completely false. Indeed, the exact opposite is the case, namely, a remarkable slowing down of the world economy in the period of neo-liberalism.

Second, between the dirigiste period and the neo-liberal period, there was an intervening period when there was a slowdown: the growth rate dropped from 5.4% to 2.9%. This slowdown was a consequence of the capitalist strategy to combat the acceleration of inflation that had occurred in the late 1960s and the early 1970s in the capitalist world and it marked the end of the dirigiste period.

It is this intervening period of a slowing down of world GDP growth that created the setting for the introduction of the neo-liberal regime. Finance capital that had been increasing in size and growing increasingly international had been pressing for a shift to neo-liberalism. But this pressure finally bore fruit because of the crisis of dirigisme that was manifested first in an inflationary upsurge and then as a slowing down of growth, as official policy all across the capitalist world sought to fight inflation by reducing government expenditure and creating mass unemployment.

Third, the figures show that a prolonged slowdown under neo-liberalism has followed the collapse of the housing bubble in the United States. This collapse precipitated a financial crisis in the capitalist world; but while the financial system was rescued through State intervention (so much for the “efficiency of the market”), the real economy has not seen any stimulus, in the form either of larger State expenditure or of a new bubble comparable to the housing one, to revive its growth rate.

We have deliberately taken 2018 as our terminal year, which represents a peak year. The period after 2018 has been even more dismal for the world economy. In fact, the GDP growth rate between 2018 and 2022, the latest year for which we have figures, has been a meagre 2.1% per annum.

World population figures again are not very reliable, with India itself not carrying out its decennial Census either in 2021 when it was due, or even subsequently; but the usual estimate is that it has been growing at a rate that is just short of 1% (it is estimated to be 0.8% in 2022). World per capita income, it would follow, is growing at just over 1% per annum at present.

Given the fact that income inequality in the world has been increasing, the overwhelming majority of the world’s population must have witnessed a virtual stagnation in their real incomes on average. An illustrative example will make this point clear. It is estimated that the top 10% of the world’s population receives at present more than half of the world’s total income. It follows that if the income of this top 10% grew by even 2% per annum, then the income of the remaining 90% would have remained absolutely stagnant on average.

The conclusion is inescapable that the capitalist system in its latest neo-liberal phase has brought the overwhelming mass of the world’s population to a state of income stagnation, on average, that is reminiscent of the colonial times; for vast numbers of people in the world there must have been a decline in real incomes.

What is more, this is not just some transient phenomenon that will disappear over time. This is what neo-liberalism has in store for them. A revival of growth in the present juncture would require an increase in aggregate demand in the world economy, which in turn would require the agency of the State; and the State can succeed in increasing demand only if it finances its larger expenditure either through a larger fiscal deficit or through larger taxation of the capitalists and, generally, of the rich.

But both these ways of financing larger State expenditure are frowned upon by international finance capital; and since the State is a Nation-State, while finance is globalised and can leave a country en masse at the drop of a hat, the State must kow-tow to the dictates of finance in order to prevent such a capital flight. Hence, State intervention by any particular Nation-State to boost aggregate demand and thereby increase the growth-rate of its economy is out of the question.

A coordinated fiscal stimulus, where several States simultaneously increase expenditure through either of the above-mentioned means, which might prevent finance from fleeing this entire group of countries, has not even been mooted. This leaves monetary policy as the only means of intervention available to the State.

Even here however a country’s interest rate cannot be too low compared with what prevails in advanced countries, especially the US, for then finance would find that country “unattractive” and leave it en masse. It is only the US that has the capacity to autonomously lower its interest rates to whatever it considers appropriate for stimulating aggregate demand (which would then allow other countries too to lower their interest rates). But the interest rates in the US for much of the recent period were close to zero and still there was no revival of the world economy. On the contrary, such low interest rates maintained over a long period had the effect of emboldening corporates in that country to raise their profit mark-ups and give rise to an acceleration of inflation, as has occurred of late.

Economist John Maynard Keynes’ lifelong project of stabilising capitalism at a high level of activity so that it is not overtaken by a socialist revolution, has thus turned out to be a chimera. The current state of neo-liberal capitalism amply demonstrates this fact.