CJ Ireen Mambilima and the Independence of the Judiciary in Zambia

Munyonzwe Hamalengwa

The appointment of Chief Justice Ireen Mambilima by President Edgar Lungu is turning out to be a breath of fresh air. Her belief in the imperative of the autonomy and independence of the judiciary is alluring. At the Law Association of Zambia conference on April 25th, 2015, she bemoaned the lack of both operational and financial independence of the judiciary. She worried about the constraints such limitations may have on the men and women of the judiciary as individuals: “It is expected that these men and women will not succumb to pressure from any quarter, political or otherwise, and that they will not inflict self-censorship on themselves in fear of the unknown.” Pressure will be forthcoming.

Acting Chief Justice Lombe Chibesakunda had stated that there were elements of corruption within the Zambian judiciary, no doubt due to lack of operational and financial independence and the overwhelming poor conditions of service in the judiciary.

Will the lawyer-presidency of Honourable Lungu finally respond to this perennial prayer for the need for judicial independence and autonomy by granting the judiciary the operational and financial independence sine qua non to the same?   This independence of the judiciary however, is consequent upon the character of the men and women who occupy the bench, chief among them is the equality gravitas of the Chief Justice.

To get the flavour of what I am saying here, compare what others in other countries have said about the appointment of their chief justices.  Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, in his book, Contrary to Public Opinion has written the following about the then Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court of the United States:

“Rehnquist is widely regarded by defense lawyers as a prosecutor in robes.  He nearly always sides with the government and he often helps the prosecution make its case.  Many defense lawyers do not regard him as a “judge” – in the sense of a neutral arbiter of constitutional rights – in criminal cases.

Indeed, it was precisely because both Richard Nixon, who originally appointed him to the Supreme Court, and Ronald Reagan, who elevated him to chief justice, believed that he would not be a neutral judge in the criminal cases - that he would side with the prosecution – that he is where he is today.  Nixon appointed him because of his reputation as an extreme-right-wing ideologue, a lawyer who had recommended declaring “qualified martial law” during antiwar demonstrations in Washington.  Reagan promoted him to chief because of his consistent record of voting against the rights of criminal defendants – a record of one-sidedness unequalled by any other then-sitting justice.  He was clearly not promoted or elevated because of his qualities as a neutral “judge.””

Chief Justice Mambilima cannot be accused of any of the above or the following evaluation of some judges in the United States and elsewhere, again as per Alan Dershowitz who states:

“The recent trend in Supreme Court nominations – toward younger candidates appointed not because of their distinction but because of their ideology and the brevity of their paper trail – threatens to further diminish the quality of our highest court.  Ideology aside, the U.S. Supreme Court is already among the least distinguished high courts in the Western world.  Most of the members of our Supreme Court do not hold a candle to their judicial brothers and sisters on the Canadian, English, Israeli, New Zealand, and Australian high courts, where merit, experience, and professional distinction are the primary considerations for appointment.”

Further Dershowitz states:

“Our judges, including our Supreme Court justices, are among the least qualified in the democratic world today.  Many come from the ranks of the mediocrities, if not the dregs, of the legal profession.  There are some very distinguished lawyers who ascend the bench, but they are way outnumbered by the mediocrities.  Many judges are incredibly lazy, regarding their position as a kind of benign retirement from the rigors of law practice.  Some are corrupt, although exchanges of cash are rare these days.  The current currency of corruption is the exchange of favors and influence.  Judges look more favorably on certain lawyers, law firms, and clients.”

Judges cannot and should not demand independence if they cannot exercise that independence fairly and equally to all the litigants who appear before them, without toying the status quo line. For many this issue does not factor into the discussion about the independence and autonomy of the judiciary. Fuller discussion is for another day on this.

The issue of the independence and autonomy of the judiciary has been given a sustained, deep and undivided attention and cultivation by Former Chief Justice Ernest Sakala. It is to his Masters of Laws (LL.M.) thesis (1999) at the University of Zambia, Faculty of Law, entitled Autonomy and Independence of the Judiciary in Zambia:  Realities and Challenges that I now turn to, to show and connect that what the new and current Chief justice Mambilima has stated, has been stated fully before. The thesis is 329 pages long.  While many judges and scholars have written judgements and articles on the independence of the judiciary, they have only touched on the subject.  Writing a whole LL.M. thesis on this subject is a whole different kettle of fish. 

Judgments and articles are not given the thorough critique and makeover as an LL.M. thesis is given by a committee of zealous supervisors.  An LL.M. thesis concentrates your mind.  This evaluation is based partly on my own experience of writing an LL.M. thesis.   For an LL.M. thesis, one has to canvass a mountain of literature before distillation and acceptance.  In this particular case, because it was written by a sitting Supreme Court Justice, a high quality product was expected.

The fact that this thesis was written by a sitting judge of the highest court in the land (the Supreme Court of Zambia) who had many years of experience in judging and judicial writing of decisions under his belt, coupled with extensive experience on the job, of being a judge subject to actual or potential interference with his autonomy and independence by the executive and the legislative branches of the government, as well as the media and the legal profession (lawyers), in a poverty stricken country like Zambia, gives the thesis much unprecedented credence.  In theory at least. Because it was also aimed at influencing the maintenance of autonomy and independence of the judiciary in Zambia in the future, it had the feel of completeness and poignancy. But the lamented subject has perhaps worsened.

Justice Sakala talks about the corruption and potential corruption, the judiciary in Zambia could be subjected to given the poor working conditions there are.  There would be allure for accepting bribes and payouts.  Justice Chibesakunda alluded to this fact.

The politicians and the media are also viciously attacking various judges in an attempt to influence them.  Justice not only has to be done, it also has to be seen to be done. 

Justice Sakala’s thesis (also adumbrated by Justice Mambilima) is that the kernel of judicial autonomy and independence is how the judges themselves as a group and individually, uphold, defend and fight for this autonomy and independence on and off the bench.  And on a daily basis.  There is no holiday.  It is not sufficient to sit back and relax on account that autonomy and independence are provided for in the constitution and other statutes and that the executive and legislature claim on a daily basis that autonomy and independence of the judiciary are guaranteed in Zambia. What is on paper and what escapes people’s lips is quite different from the lived experience. 

All other things being equal, “individual judges are the main actors in ensuring judicial independence … [because] independence of the judiciary is not dependent on constitutional provisions which can easily be ignored but on the attitude of individual judges themselves asserting their own independence, particularly in politically sensitive cases.” (p. 314).

Justice Sakala states that “inadequate physical facilities have continued to erode and frustrate the autonomy and independence of the courts as well as public confidence in them” (p. 312).  Any talk of autonomy and independence of the judiciary is hollow if it does not address the conditions of service of the judges.  As Justice Sakala says, “judges operate under very trying circumstances and under an environment of hunger, poverty and corruption, the pressures on them are high” (p. 317), thereby contextualizing the pretexts for autonomy and independence of the judicial in socio-economic conditions rather than suspending them in only political terms as is prevalent in Western countries where socio-economic conditions are positive and rarely impinge on judicial independence stricto sensu.  Justice Sakala’s call has not been heeded to since 1999.

 There is another side of the coin.  Some people have claimed that salary awards to the judges can be an act of interference with their independence as they will be predisposed to rule in favour of the government.   This however is a whole different debate. The harbingers of this debate state that the previous governments had done precisely the same and probably resulted in the scuttling of cases then pending against the President and the government.

Justice Sakala does a good historical survey of the autonomy and independence of the judiciary.  There was no autonomy and independence of the judiciary under colonialism. 

Zambia has generally demonstrated a measure of judicial independence over the years.  There have been threats and attempts to curtail judicial independence.  “If judges are truly independent,” Justice Sakala says, “they will often be required to announce unpopular judgements either in favour of the right of the individuals or in favour to the executive.” (p. 315). This has happened many times in Zambia. “What is of importance is that the judgments be well reasoned and expressed so that they are respected and acceptable not only to lawyers but also to the loosing litigants” (pp. 315/316).  The germination of multiparty democracy in Zambia ensured that judicial independence and autonomy will be maintained.  The ratification of judicial appointments by parliament after their selection by the Judicial Service Commission with the involvement of the legal profession is a further step attesting to a measure of the permanence of judicial autonomy and independence. 

Improvement of the conditions of service would be an added cushion.  I would add here that the constitutionalization of the jury system would also solidify the autonomy and independence of the judiciary.  The jury system was developed to act as a bulwark against statecraft.  More on this another day.

Zambia is fortunate to have Chief Justice Mambilima at the helm of the judiciary.  From her remarks at the LAZ Congress, she will fight for the imperatives of judicial independence and autonomy and the rest of the jurists shall follow.

Malaria in Africa:The Struggle Continues

Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko

Commitments made at the 2000 Abuja Summit on malaria strengthened leadership to achieve concrete control targets. AIDS Watch Africa (AWA) established in 2001 and the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), launched in 2009, unites the Heads of State and Government of African countries, harnessing their collective will to strengthen Malaria elimination through taking leadership to mobilise the resources needed to address malaria in an effective, sustainable and accountable manner.

The progress in responding to malaria in Africa includes a 54% decline in malaria mortality rates and a reduction of malaria mortality rates among children by 58% since 2000. Increased political commitment and increased funding have helped to reduce malaria incidence by 34% in Africa. In spite of these tremendous results however, Africa continues to account for 82% of malaria cases and 90% of malaria deaths worldwide.

The Abuja 2000 malaria targets and the Millennium Development Goals malaria related targets remain an unfinished business. As the world rethinks and fine-tunes the new framework of sustainable development goals that will supersede the current development goals Africa should remain at the forefront of the thought leadership to fast track its development aspirations.

The review of the Abuja Call this year recommended its extension to 2030 in line with the 2013 Abuja Declaration which outlines key actions to defeat malaria. Africa has already demonstrated this deep reflection and pace setting through the African Common Position on the Post 2015 Development Agenda and the reengineering of Africa’s health priorities in the context of a new health architecture better prepared for disease surveillance and response.

Africa remains the continent most heavily affected by malaria, with particularly severe effects on maternal and child health. While malaria was eradicated from most places on the globe, it remains a major killer on the continent. With the science and medical advancements available to eliminate this disease this is unacceptable. An estimated 80% of the world’s malaria cases and 90% of malaria-related deaths occur in sub- Saharan Africa, and in children aged under 5 years, who account for 78% of all deaths. Children under 5 years and pregnant women are the most vulnerable populations who bear an outsized burden of this disease’s deadly toll.

To address malaria there is need to ensure that sufficient resources are guaranteed to mount an effective response. There were exponential increases in funding and implementation for malaria control programmes over the past decade. International disbursements for malaria control significantly increased, rising from less than US$ 0.5 per case (US$ 100 million total spend) in 2000 to more than US$ 8 per case in 2012 (US$ 1.84 billion total spend). These increased funds were focused on Africa. This investment substantially improved the outlook for Malaria control in Africa. Today more households than ever own at least one insecticide-treated bed net (ITN).

According to the current statistics, over half (US$2.8 billion) of the estimated annual global resource requirement is still unfunded which threatens to slow down progress as high-burden African countries are unable to replace expiring long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLNs). There is a greater need to ensure that African countries continue to step up efforts for domestic financing for health to ensure sustainability in alignment with the African Union Roadmap for Shared Responsibility and Global Solidarity for AIDS, TB and Malaria Response.

Why do we need a big push to defeat Malaria? We need the big push for two reasons (1) existing funding gaps for malaria which are estimated at approximately US$972 million in 2015 threaten to reverse the gains already achieved in the past decade and (2) malaria causes out-of-pocket expenditure for households and loss of productivity to the economy resulting in massive losses to economic growth, with an estimated cost of US$ 12 billion each year in lost productivity in Africa alone.

The African Union Commission’s strategic plan (2014-2017), 2013 Abuja Declaration, the AU Roadmap and the African Union Common Position on the Post 2015 Development Agenda all provide a solid framework to ensure ownership including increased domestic financing while still taking into account the fundamental importance of development cooperation and global solidarity.

New data suggests that for every US $1 invested in malaria in Africa, an estimated US $40 Gross Domestic Product is generated in return. But recent economic crises have left an estimated annual funding gap of US $1 billion in 2015 in Africa alone. This is a real threat that can unravel the gains made against this preventable and treatable disease. As much of the continent expands at unprecedented rates, enormous leadership and political will continue to play an increasingly critical role through domestic financing as the continent works to overcome pressing health challenges into a more prosperous and sustainable future.

The 2015 continental World Malaria Day will be celebrated under the global theme “Invest in the future: defeat malaria” to emphasise the centrality of continued investment in health systems and community systems. The theme resonates with the Abuja Declarations and AU Roadmap for Shared Responsibility and Global Solidarity to accelerate innovative domestic financing and to ensure sustained and predictable funding.

As much of the continent expands at unprecedented rates, enormous leadership and political will continue to play an increasingly critical role through both international and domestic financing as the continent works to overcome pressing global health challenges, like malaria, and into a more prosperous and sustainable future.

Let me take this opportunity to thank various development partners who continue to support the continental malaria response. These include The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, USAID, DFID and various UN agencies.

No one can deliver on Africa’s development better than Africa itself. We have what it takes to end Malaria. The time for action is NOW!

German child care workers vote for strike action

Verena Nees

The fifth round of negotiations failed last Tuesday in the wage conflict involving 240,000 child care workers and social pedagogical staff in municipal child day care centres and institutions for young people. GEW and Verdi, the two trade unions involved, subsequently cancelled the sixth round planned for May 11-12 and called on their members to hold an authorisation vote for an unlimited strike.

Over recent weeks, tens of thousands of child care workers and pedagogical staff have shown their readiness to fight in a series of one-day warning strikes and protests. On Monday, 12,000 workers gathered in Stuttgart. They are demanding that their jobs be categorised in a higher grouping, which would mean a greater value would be placed on their work. According to the trade unions, this would equate to a wage increase of 10 percent.

In spite of the increased difficulties facing parents on strike days to accommodate their children, most have shown their solidarity with the child care workers’ struggle.

According to the association of municipal employers’ organisations (VKA), the higher classification would result in additional costs of €1.2 billion. This would not be manageable for the municipalities, it stated, and it is already threatening to offload these additional costs onto parents by increasing kindergarten charges.

In the fifth round of talks, only minor improvements for certain groups of carers were offered, for example to those involved in inclusion programmes for children with disabilities, or language support, or for the heads of larger kindergartens. This offer, aimed at dividing child care workers into different groups, is a zero-sum game, since the funding for language support came through cuts to the financing of the integration of migrant children and those with disabilities into regular kindergartens.

Child care employees have been confronted with continuous cost-cutting programmes and a massive increase in the demands placed upon them for years. Kindergartens are chronically understaffed, group sizes far too large, and child-carers, in spite of tremendous efforts, are hardly in a position to provide each child with the best pedagogical care.

In a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a ratio of carers to children of 1 to 3 for children below three years of age was recommended, and not greater than 1 to 7.5 for children over age three. According to the foundation, achieving this ratio would require the hiring of an estimated additional 120,000 child care workers nationwide.

The GEW’s reports reflect the reality, suggesting that one carer has to look after 15 children in the three-to-six-years-of-age group and approximately nine children in the under-three age group. At times of sickness, or when colleagues take holidays, carers can be left to take care of groups of 20 three-to-six-year-olds. This is particularly so in the east of the country, where a well-established child care system was destroyed 25 years ago after the collapse of the GDR.

In addition, extra responsibilities for child care staff were adopted following the expansion in 2005 of child care places for children under age three. For example, staff are obligated to produce documentation on the development of each child and hold consultations with parents.

Despite having studied for five years and carrying out demanding work, child care workers are paid much less than primary school teachers, with wages stagnating at 1991 levels. Most only have part-time contracts and, after physically draining work, have only around €1,000 in their pockets at the end of the month. According to figures from GEW, only around half of all child care workers have a full-time contract, allowing them to obtain the wages reported in the media of €2,500 per month. Depending on family circumstances, this often amounts to net pay of not much more than €1,500.

Along with kindergartens, municipal social and child care also includes medical child care, workplaces for the disabled, day care centres for adults, care homes and child and young people’s psychotherapy. To date, the strikes have been concentrated in the 17,500 publicly run kindergartens. However, more than 35,000 facilities operate nationwide, run by private and church organisations, such as Caritas or workers’ welfare, employing around 500,000 people. These institutions are not involved in the wage dispute, and most workers employed by them are paid even less.

Child care workers do not only confront the municipal employers’ association. Their justified demand for a re-evaluation of their work with children and young people is in direct opposition to the entire policy of the ruling elite, which is aimed at enriching a tiny minority at the expense of working people and their families. The increased tax intake at the federal and state levels is being used to expand the security apparatus and build up the military and police, not for socially important services such as child care, education, health care or public transport.

The trade unions are also not on the side of child care workers and social pedagogues. The low wages in the sector are linked to the TVÖ collective agreement concluded by Verdi in 2005 for public sector workers, which contained a number of reductions compared to the previous arrangement. For example, if workers change jobs, they lose their old classification and thereby any recognition of their professional experience. This has led to repeated expressions of anger in the trade union discussion forums.

Verdi has also signed off on job cuts at the state and municipal level. The union’s call now for strikes is above all aimed at serving their own interests. Verdi is attempting to counter the loss of members over recent years and to maintain its position as negotiator at the federal and state level, on which their well-paid jobs on company boards depend. The trade unions firmly reject a joint struggle of all workers employed in essential social services, including workers in child care, the postal service and transport, as well as teachers and nurses.

Surveillance law lays basis for political police in France

Anthony Torres

The National Assembly is currently debating a digital surveillance bill, scheduled for a vote on May 5, which would legalize mass spying and data retention practices by French intelligence agencies.

The bill would give intelligence services access to data held by telecommunications firms, social networking sites such as Facebook, and Internet service providers. Agents could install “black boxes” in all these locations to automatically gather data, even if they do not have any precise target for surveillance. Intelligence services will also have the capacity to spy on all cell phone calls close to their installations and also to electronically trace any person’s physical location.

The bill claims its aims are “the prevention of organized crime,” “essential foreign policy interests,” and even “vital economic and scientific interests.”

“Our country is the last Western democracy which has not given itself a legal framework overseeing the practices of the intelligence services,” said Jean-Jacques Urvoas, the PS deputy and president of the legislative committee at the Assembly that drafted the bill.

The central purpose of the bill, however, is to protect and massively expand illegal mass spying on the population of France and of the world. Mass spying has been undertaken by France and all the other imperialist powers well before the law was drafted, as revealed by Edward Snowden. The right-wing newspaper Le Figaro bluntly wrote that the bill’s purpose was to “legalize currently illegal practices by intelligence agents, so as to protect them.”

The bill takes the power for mass surveillance from the judiciary and hands it over directly to the executive, with targets selected either by the prime minister or by an official he has delegated for this purpose. The bill specifies that control of surveillance practices will rest with a National Control Commission (CNCTR) composed of two deputies, two senators, two judges, and a “person selected for knowledge of electronic communication.”

The Socialist Party’s (PS) bill was drafted ostensibly in response to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo weekly in January. Since then, sections of the army, the intelligence and the police forces have reportedly intensified pressure to legitimize mass spying on electronic data.

After the adoption of military and anti-terrorist bills, expanding the intelligence agencies’ powers, President François Hollande is making a major step forward in erecting the infrastructure of a police state. While claiming they are fighting Islamist terrorism, which NATO and French imperialism cynically uses as proxy forces for wars in Libya and Syria, he is attacking democratic rights and targeting all opposition to the ruling class’s reactionary agenda of austerity and war.

Speaking for the French state and as a defender of the surveillance law, conservative deputy Alain Marsaud, a former judge and anti-terrorist official at the Paris prosecutor’s office in the 1980s, sharply warned of enormous dangers posed by the law.

“This law does not guarantee enough control,” he said. “The capacity for intrusion it gives is enormous. Our life will not be the same before and after, because everything we say will be watched. Today, this power rests with Prime Minister Manuel Valls. I do not doubt that he will use it well. But the law will last and fall into other hands. This law can permit the installation of a political police the likes of which we have never seen.”

French democracy is already in a deep crisis, and the confidence that Marsaud claims to place in the democratic sentiments of Valls and of the PS is entirely misplaced. As it imposes policies of war and austerity that have no popular support, the PS is desperately afraid of an eruption of social struggles in the working class that could overwhelm the union bureaucracies and the PS’ pseudo-left political satellites.

It is above all against this risk that French intelligence, which already has a long tradition of spying aimed at internal targets designed to monitor and suppress social opposition, is laying the basis of a police state.

Le Monde briefly referred in an article on the law to the historical precedents and dangers posed by the exorbitant powers to be granted to the security services. It warned, “‘To prevent the abuse of power,’ wrote Montesquieu, ‘government must be disposed so that power is counterbalanced by power.’ The Fourth Republic did not take that into account during the Algerian war, and it died as a result.”

The reference to the fall of France’s Fourth Republic in 1958 points to the social and political content of the current push to reinforce intelligence powers. In ruling circles, discussions are being held about periods of history when sections of the French army intervened to suspend legality and to torture and assassinate opponents of the policies of French imperialism.

The Fourth Republic fell after a coup d’etat that brought General Charles de Gaulle to power in the middle of the Algerian war for independence against France. The coup rested on an alliance between the defenders of France’s colonial empire, veterans’ associations, and far-right circles inside the army. They planned to capture Lyon and arms factories in nearby St Etienne, and organize a mass landing in France of French colonists from Algeria, overseen and directed by right-wing parachute regiments.

In the event, the social-democratic government of Guy Mollet decided to cede power to De Gaulle shortly after the first operations of the projected coup were launched. At the time, intelligence services and parachute regiments were arresting, torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of Algerians and also French citizens opposed to French rule in Algeria.

Parachutists arrested and tortured Henri Alleg, who was subsequently condemned to 10 years in prison, and Maurice Audin, who died during his interrogation, in 1957. Both were members of the Algerian Communist Party.

The current law being advanced by Hollande and Valls, appealing to the political descendants of these murderous forces, is a warning to the working class. The French security services are now arming themselves with a surveillance apparatus that the parachutists in Algiers, or the Milice of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime, could not even have dreamed of.

Syriza-led government prepares new austerity measures against Greek workers

Christoph Dreier

The Syriza-led government is preparing to launch new attacks on the Greek working class just three months after the election that brought it to power. On Monday, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the pseudo-left party, announced wide-ranging concessions to the so-called “troika” (European Union, International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank).

Last Friday, the Greek parliament agreed to raid public-sector reserves to help meet the country’s loan obligations to the international banks.

After euro zone finance ministers ruled out any concessions to the Greek government last Friday, publicly humiliating Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, Tsipras called an emergency meeting to restructure his government’s negotiating team and draft new austerity measures.

The negotiations are to be led by a new committee headed by Deputy Finance Minister Euklides Tsakalotos. Although Varoufakis continues formally to be in charge of talks with the EU, he has in reality been pushed into the background.

Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) sent a clear signal to Greece’s creditors by naming Giorgos Chouliarakis as chief negotiator. Chouliarakis participated in talks with the previous government, headed by the conservative New Democracy party. He is looked upon as a reliable partner of the troika. He replaces Nikos Theocharakis, a close confidante of Varoufakis.

The changes in personnel were combined with significant political decisions. Tsipras has apparently decided to breach the last remaining “red line” previously announced by his government in order to reach a deal with the troika.

According to Greek TV broadcaster Mega Channel, Tsipras has declared his readiness to restrict early retirement, cut pensions and partially increase VAT. The prime minister has also reportedly decided to postpone an increase in the minimum wage and suspend plans to overturn the previous government’s labor market “reforms.”

All of these measures will further worsen already catastrophic social conditions in the country. The announced pension cuts will hit the poorest of the poor, including entire families living on a single pension. The retention of the €586 monthly minimum wage, a reduction imposed in previous rounds of austerity measures, will further impoverish broad layers of the working class.

According to the Kathimerini newspaper, the Syriza government has begun freezing the bank accounts of those with outstanding tax debts. It is not only rich tax avoiders who are being affected, but also average earners with debts of as little as €200. The precise figures involved are currently unclear.

Syriza is implementing these antisocial measures under conditions where the country’s economy has been devastated by previous cuts. The ESEE trade association reported that in the first three months of this year, 5,341 companies were forced to close down. EU Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told Handelsblatt that the commission would downwardly revise its economic prognosis for the Greek economy in 2015.

On Sunday, in addition to meeting with his ministers, Tsipras telephoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss his course of action. The two heads of government agreed to remain in direct contact during talks between Athens and the EU on Greece’s debt. Last Thursday, Merkel bluntly declared that Greece had to adopt the additional austerity measures, anti-working class labor market “reforms,” privatizations and other actions demanded by the EU in order to get additional funds.

Other EU officials delivered a similar message. Although Varoufakis had already made major concessions to the troika, they continued to insist on deeper cuts, insisting that Athens’s proposals to date were not sufficiently concrete.

On the fringe of Friday’s EU finance ministers’ meeting, a Greek exit from the euro zone was discussed. Slovenian Finance Minister Dusan Mramor reportedly suggested to Varoufakis behind closed doors that he should prepare for a “Plan B.” Although French Finance Minister Michel Sapin ruled out a Grexit, his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schäuble, refused to exclude such a scenario.

“If a responsible member of the euro group or someone else with responsibility answers ‘yes’ to the question of a Grexit, we all know what would happen,” he said with reference to possible turbulence on the financial markets. “And if they answer ‘no,’ then we know they will not be believed.”

Syriza has repeatedly declared since its election victory in January that it accepts the EU’s debt regime. It has issued assurances that it will repay every cent of its loans from the IMF, the EU and the banks. It hoped on the basis of such assurances to obtain some room to maneuver in negotiations with European governments and the IMF.

But the EU, operating as the agent of finance capital, has contemptuously refused to make any concessions. The European ruling class had taken the measure of the pseudo-left party and its leader, Tsipras, recognizing them to be the representatives not of the insurgent Greek masses, but of the bankrupt Greek bourgeoisie.

The inevitable result is Syriza’s decision to directly take on the task of imposing new attacks on Greek workers. During its brief time in office, Syriza has already transferred over €2 billion in loan payments to the IMF, which, as part of the troika, nevertheless continues to block further assistance.

Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, in an interview Monday with Spiegel Online, restated the government’s pledge to pay off the banks, saying, “We will pay back our debts to the last euro. We must maintain a balanced budget and gradually reduce our debt.”

Pavlopoulos is a member of the conservative New Democracy and was elected to the position of president in February with the votes of Syriza deputies.

After funneling billions in debt payments to the IMF, the Greek government may be unable to pay the wages of public-service workers. According to reports, it will fall short to the tune of €1.5 billion by the end of the month. The IMF is scheduled to loan the country another €200 million on 6 May.

In response to this situation, the Greek parliament passed an order Friday compelling public corporations and municipalities to transfer their cash reserves to the Greek state. The decree will affect some 1,400 public institutions and authorities. These include universities, hospitals, care organizations and administrative services.

With this order, the Syriza-led government has put all areas of public life in hock to the banks. If the EU and IMF delay payment of the last bailout tranche of €7.2 billion, not only the government, but all public services will fall into bankruptcy.

The order was passed with the votes of all of the deputies from both governing parties (Syriza and its right-wing coalition partner, the Independent Greeks) who were present. The vote carried great symbolic significance, since all Syriza representatives gave their backing to the government’s policy of social attacks, including the so-called “left-wing” led by Panagiotis Lafazanis.

China invests $46 billion in strategic Pakistan-China Economic Corridor

Athiyan Silva

On April 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan with investors, bankers and businessmen to launch the Pakistan-China Economic Corridor project. This project would allow China to transport energy resources such as petroleum from Middle Eastern countries to China via a land route through Pakistan.

The deal is particularly significant amid the escalating military tensions unleashed by the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia,” designed to isolate and contain China. It would allow China to largely circumvent the threat of a blockade of Chinese energy imports from the Middle East by US and allied navies. China, the world’s biggest oil importer, imports 60 percent of its oil from the Middle East and transports 80 percent of that through the Indian Ocean, the Strait of Malacca, and the South and East China Seas.

China signed 51 Memorandums of Understanding with Pakistan worth $46 billion as part of this project. These are to be financed by Chinese banks such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, Exim Bank of China, and China Development Bank Corporation.

As Pakistan’s biggest arms supplier, China is also supplying eight diesel-powered Yuan class attack submarines of Type 039A or Type 041 to Pakistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistan National Security Committee have approved the deal, part of a broader effort to modernize Pakistan’s submarine fleet and give it nuclear-missile capability.

The corridor project consists of oil storage facilities at the Pakistani port of Gwadar and a 3,000 km network of pipelines, railways, and motorways from Gwadar, through Pakistan, and directly across the mountainous Pakistani-Chinese border to Kashgar in western China. It also entails technical cooperation on air transport, rail infrastructure, wind and hydro power, and fiber optic communications.

Gwadar is strategically located on the Arabian Sea coast of Baluchistan, one of Pakistan’s poorest and most volatile provinces, near the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the Strait of Hormuz. Oil exports from the Persian Gulf, amounting to approximately forty percent of the world’s internationally traded oil, must pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Under the terms of the deal, Gwadar port has been handed over to China for 40 years starting this year, as the Chinese Harbor Engineering Company begins construction work.

Kashgar is one of the major cities in the Xinjiang Uyghur region of northwestern China. The inland area is also much poorer than the bustling export centers of China’s Pacific coast and faces rising ethnic tensions between Uyghurs and Han Chinese, who make up the majority of China’s population. The Chinese government has repeatedly stated that it views economic growth in Xinjiang as a political priority.

The proposed economic corridor would thus open up new trade routes that cut 16,000 kilometers from the distance traveled by goods traded between China and the Middle East.

The deal also points, however, to contradictions at the heart of global capitalism: attempts to economically develop Central Asia escalate the military tensions between the imperialist and regional powers. Though billions of people living in these underdeveloped areas still endure stark poverty and social backwardness, they already face the threat of conflict between nuclear-armed powers including Pakistan, India and China, not to mention the United States.

These tensions are driven above all by American imperialism’s aggressive “pivot to Asia” to encircle China with an alliance including India, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore. Threats that US, European and Asian navies could jointly organize a blockade of Chinese oil supplies in the Indian and Pacific oceans are a major part of this agenda.

The Chinese-Pakistani deal is a political blow to Washington, which is largely withdrawing its occupation forces from neighboring Afghanistan and is deeply unpopular in the region. Since 2004, thousands of innocent people have died in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, including 330 attacks so far under Obama. UN officials, Pakistani courts and human rights groups such as Amnesty International have declared these drone murders illegal, but the CIA has proceeded anyway, trampling over the widespread popular opposition in Pakistan.

Beijing’s industrial investment in Pakistan contrasts with the destructive role of US imperialism, which despite its vastly superior financial resources has focused its energies on bombing and terrorizing the region’s population.

China’s $46 billion investment is almost three times the total foreign direct investment that Pakistan has received during the last 7 years and far exceeds US spending in Pakistan. Washington has reportedly given $31 billion to Pakistan since 2002, with two-thirds of that funding devoted to the “war on terror.”

On April 19th, the New York Times reported, “That effort was a ‘dramatic failure’ because the resources were scattered too thinly, and had no practical or strategic impact, said David S. Sedney, a former senior official at the Pentagon responsible for Pakistan during that period.”

Other regional powers—above all Pakistan’s traditional rival, India, which also fought a war with China in 1962—are also carefully monitoring the military implications of the latest China-Pakistan deal and preparing strategies to counter it.

The day before Xi visited Pakistan, Indian navy chief Admiral Robin Dhowan, in an interview with the Hindustan Times, warned that “the navy is ready for any eventuality and is keeping the Indian Ocean under tight surveillance. We have our eyes firmly set on waters of interest around us. The navy is a multi-dimensional combat force and we are looking at all aspects related to sea control and sea denial amid the unfolding developments in the region.”

Earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited France and negotiated the purchase of dozens of Rafale fighter jets to modernize the Indian air force, as well as six EPR nuclear reactors.

As they move ahead with the deal, the Chinese and Pakistani regimes also face the social and ethnic conflicts inside Baluchistan that decades of bourgeois rule in Pakistan have only intensified.

President Xi Jinping met with Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and heads of armed forces to discuss defense and security of the project. Pakistani officials, including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, agreed to deploy a new special division totaling 10,000 Pakistani troops to protect Chinese construction workers in Pakistan. Xi also met with the leaders of different political parties in Islamabad to discuss the project.

On April 11, 20 Sindhi and Punjabi construction workers were killed near Turbat in Baluchistan. The separatist Baloch Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the attack.

South China Sea disputes dominate ASEAN summit

Peter Symonds

The summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which concluded yesterday in Malaysia, was dominated by rising tensions in the South China Sea fuelled by territorial disputes with China.

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert De Rosario set the stage over the weekend by accusing “our northern neighbour”—obviously China—of ignoring “all our words of caution” and “clearly and quickly advancing with its massive [land] reclamation” in the South China Sea. “It is poised to consolidate de facto control of the South China Sea,” he declared.

The alarmist warning underscores the role of the Philippine government of President Benigno Aquino as the most aggressive advocate among ASEAN members for the US “pivot to Asia”—which aims to undermine Beijing’s influence and encircle China militarily throughout the region.

De Rosario was echoing the drumbeat from Washington warning that China’s land reclamation on disputed islands under its administration constitute a military threat. Speaking in Australia last month, Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific fleet, accused China of building artificial islands to establish military facilities. “China is creating a great wall of sand with dredges and bulldozers,” he said.

De Rosario told the ASEAN summit that China’s moves would “undermine ASEAN’s very centrality, solidarity and credibility” unless the organisation responded. He appealed for ASEAN members to demand an immediate halt to China’s “destabilising activities” and to “show the world that it [ASEAN] has the resolve to act in the common interest.”

Four ASEAN countries—the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei—have disputes with China over portions of the Paracel and Spratly island groups in the South China Sea. Indonesia does not formally have a territorial dispute with China but sections of the ruling elite, particularly of the military, have been pressing for the government to more aggressively assert Indonesia’s claims to waters around the Natuna islands.

These festering regional disputes have led to violent clashes in the past. However, in mid-2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exploited an ASEAN summit to provocatively assert the US “national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the waters. The diplomatic ploy was aimed at driving a wedge into ASEAN and encouraging countries like Vietnam and the Philippines to more aggressively assert their claims against China.

For the first time in its 45-year history, the ASEAN summit in mid-2012 ended without a final joint communiqué amid bitter feuding between Cambodia, which has close ties to China, and the Philippines and Vietnam. The Obama administration has added further fuel to the flames by encouraging and assisting Manila to challenge China’s claims in the International Tribunal on the Law on the Sea. China has rejected the court’s jurisdiction.

At yesterday’s ASEAN summit, there were clearly differences over the issue among member states, many of which rely heavily on China economically. In his address yesterday as leader of the host nation, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak appealed for ASEAN to address “developments” in the South China Sea in “proactive, but also in a positive and constructive way.”

Underscoring the Malaysian government’s attempts to avoid a confrontation with China, Najib promoted the “Declaration on the Global Movement of Moderates,” which was adopted by the summit. This cosmetic move, billed as “ASEAN’s contribution to global peace and security,” will do nothing to halt the deepening tensions in the South China Sea, which are driven primarily by Washington.

Speaking on Monday night, Philippine President Aquino urged ASEAN members to speak as one against China’s “aggressive action” in the South China Sea. “All our efforts at regional community building aim to promote and protect the future wellbeing of our peoples, and this can only be done in a secure and stable environment.”

While ASEAN did not embrace the demands of the Philippines in full, the final statement, as reported by Agence France Presse, did take a more hard-line stand. After noting the “serious” concerns expressed by some leaders, it warned that China’s land reclamation had “eroded trust and confidence and may undermine peace, security and stability.”

The statement, however, stopped short of calling on China to immediately halt its activities. In a conciliatory tone, Najib added: “We hope to be able to influence China that it is also to their interest not to be seen as confronting ASEAN and that any attempt to destabilise this region will not benefit China either.”

At a media briefing on Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei reiterated that his country’s reclamation and construction works were within Chinese sovereignty. In a pointed jab at the Philippines and the US, he continued: “The Chinese side is firmly opposed to the loaded criticisms of China made by some countries and the hijacking of the China-ASEAN relationship for their own selfish gains.”

While Philippine President Aquino was accusing China of “aggression,” the Philippine and US militaries were engaged in their annual Balikatan war games. Double the size of last year’s joint manoeuvres, US Brigadier General Christopher Mahoney boasted: “Overall assessment of the exercise is way in the success category. We’ve got 11,500 plus people out here, we’ve got more than 75 aircraft, thousands of marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors.”

Mahoney declared that the Philippine and US forces were teaming up anew to hone their lethal military skills, which was the core elements of the profession of arms.

Over the weekend, Philippine Armed Forces chief of staff Gregorio Catapang announced to the local press that he and US Pacific Command chief Admiral Samuel Locklear had agreed on eight Philippine bases that would be opened up to US forces under the far reaching Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement signed between the two countries last year.

Most significant was the inclusion of two military bases on the island of Palawan, which is directly adjacent to the South China Sea. These are the Antonio Bautista Air Base and the Naval Station Carlito Cunanan giving US forces rapid access to the disputed islets and reefs. On the pretext of countering China’s militarisation of the South China Sea, the US is engaged in a systematic military build-up throughout the region in preparation for war against China.

US deploys new “military assets” to Nepal as death toll from earthquake grows

Thomas Gaist

More than 3,900 people have been confirmed killed and 6,500 wounded by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal Saturday, according to local authorities. At least 12 aftershocks rocked the country over the weekend.

Huge lines continue to form in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu, with residents desperate for access to basic consumer goods. Large areas of the oldest parts of the capital city were destroyed. Thousands fled the capital on Monday, according to Reuters.

The US has seized upon the tragedy to deploy additional “military assets” to the country, bringing the total officially acknowledged US deployment in Nepal to 160 troops, according to the Pentagon. At least two US Defense Department transport planes landed in Nepal Monday, reportedly containing various specialized military units, including at least 70 US Air Force members.

Two teams of US commandos were already present on the ground prior to the quake as part of joint US-Nepal operations begun in mid-2014, the Pentagon said. These forces have been placed on high alert by the US military’s Pacific Command in response to the quake.

In contrast to the rapid deployment of military resources, the financial response of the major powers to the disaster has been minimal, with initial reports indicating that Britain and Norway will contribute paltry aid packages worth some $5 million each.

The destructive impact of the quake has been magnified by the absence of social infrastructure and adherence to adequate safety and construction standards. This is a product of the rampant corruption within Nepal's national elite and Maoist-led coalition government, which is subservient to business interests and foreign capital.

As part of their integration into the Nepali political establishment, factions of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) have enforced the dictates of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, including a pro-corporate restructuring of the economy and tax breaks for foreign investors. Forces affiliated with the CPN have supported the banning of strikes and the creation of special cheap labor zones for foreign firms. In return, thousands of former guerrillas were integrated into the establishment in Kathmandu.

After the 2008 election, which saw the Maoists make substantial gains in the legislature, CPN leader Baburam Bhattarai told the Nepal Times: “Once the Maoists come to power, the investment climate will be even more favorable. There shouldn’t be any unnecessary misunderstanding about that.”

The earthquake has greatly intensified the economic crisis in the country and is laying bare the conditions of mass poverty that are the correlate of the booming profit-making conditions touted by the CPN. Some 1.5 million Nepalis are reportedly in need of food assistance, and a growing section of the population lacks access to drinking water. Half of the population does not have access to modern sewage disposal.

Reports continue to emerge from the countryside of villages largely or entirely destroyed by massive landslides. In the cities, large numbers are still sleeping outside for fear that aftershocks will produce further structural collapses.

Amidst the wreckage and desperation gripping the vast majority of impoverished country, the US military forces inside Nepal, which include US Special Forces’ “Green Beret” commandos, will focus their efforts on retrieving tourists stranded on popular hiking trails in the Himalayas, according to Pentagon sources cited by the Washington Times .

The US will seek to exploit the catastrophe to advance its geo-strategic interests in South Asia. Nepal plays an important role because it borders both China and India. The US is working to bring India into its overall “pivot to Asia” aimed at encircling and containing China.

"Disaster response and humanitarian assistance also plays a key role in soft-power projection,” noted a Foreign Policy analysis posted Monday. “Faced with the prospect of ever-greater natural disasters, the US Defense Department is focusing more on its ability to carry out humanitarian assistance and disaster response missions, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The experience of the Philippines in the wake of the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan is instructive in this regard. Having formally closed all US military bases in 1992, the archipelago has seen massive new deployments of US personnel in recent years, including scores of US war ships and tens of thousands of US troops. The typhoon was used as an opportunity to expand these operations.

The Philippines and its territorial waters increasingly resemble a militarized training ground for US-led forces massing in preparation for war with China. Joint US-Philippine war games staged this month simulated assaults against island forts modeled on facilities recently set up by China in contested portions of the South China Sea.

China has recently stepped up its involvement in Nepal’s economy, including plans for a Chinese firm to build a $1.5 billion hydroelectric facility that was approved this month.

US-Chinese political conflicts over Nepal are already finding indirect expression in the form of the large-scale involvement of US-allied Indian forces, which began in the immediate aftermath of the quake. Hundreds of Indian soldiers and dozens of Indian military aircraft have deployed to Nepal for Operation Maitri, described by Foreign Policy as “one of the largest relief efforts ever mounted by India on foreign soil.”

India’s escalated presence in Nepal is undoubtedly the subject of joint planning and dialogue with the highest levels of the US government. Such “humanitarian” missions have been promoted for years as a main benefit of the US-Indian “global strategic partnership.” Washington has increasingly sought to develop “strategic partnerships” with New Delhi on the basis of such interventions as a means of consolidating support within India’s military and political establishment for the “pivot to Asia.”

Canada’s military, which is conducting operations in the region in close coordination with the US, also deployed a special forces urban operations team attached to the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) to Nepal Sunday. Canada stepped up its intervention in South Asia this month with the signing of a new agreement to export Canadian uranium to India in support of the latter’s nuclear weapons program.

Obama gave CIA free rein for drone assassinations in Pakistan

Bill Van Auken

The killing of US and Italian aid workers Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto in a January 2015 drone strike stemmed, at least in part, from a secret order by President Barack Obama exempting the Central Intelligence Agency drone war in Pakistan from restrictions supposedly imposed on drone attacks in other countries.

According to current and former US officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal Monday, the administration tightened the rules governing drone warfare in 2013, but issued a secret waiver allowing the CIA an essentially free rein in carrying out its murderous campaign in northwestern Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, near the Afghan border.

President Obama made an extraordinary public admission of US responsibility for the killing of the two Western hostages in a White House announcement last Thursday. In the course of his remarks--which he cynically boasted were proof of an “American democracy, committed to openness”--Obama stated that the deadly operation last January had been “fully consistent with the guidelines under which we conduct counter-terrorism efforts in the region.”

What he left concealed was the fact that the guidelines for “the region” were at odds with the formal rules existing everywhere else.

The US president outlined these rules in a speech delivered at the National Defense University in May 2013, insisting that drone strikes would be ordered only against alleged “terrorists” posing “a continuing and imminent threat to the American people,” and only under conditions of “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.”

These purported restrictions were made public as part of the administration’s effort to lend a veneer of legality to a state assassination program that is in flagrant violation of both international law and the US Constitution. The American president arrogated to himself the power to order the killing of anyone- including American citizens- without charges, much less trials. In his speech, Obama acknowledged that he authorized the killing of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a subsequent US drone strike.

The reality is that the supposed restrictions have been observed nowhere in the world. In Somalia and Yemen, just as in Pakistan, strikes have claimed the lives of numerous civilians, while the targets selected for remote-control murder posed no “imminent threat” to the US.

In Pakistan, however, the CIA’s covert drone program was relieved of even the pretense of observing such constraints. Initially, the rationale was the need to eliminate forces opposed to the US occupation of Afghanistan, which was supposed to end last year. Now, with the occupation extended, the unfettered drone warfare is continuing.

Not only is the CIA under no obligation to ascertain that the targets pose an “imminent threat” to the American people, it does not have to identify them at all, carrying out “signature strikes” in which behavior observed from an altitude of 50,000 feet-- military aged men traveling in a convoy or carrying weapons, for example-- is sufficient reason to take human lives with Hellfire missiles.

The deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto were the result of such a “signature” attack. While the CIA concluded that someone at the compound where they were held was an Al Qaeda leader, they did know the identity of the person they were trying to kill.

Such strikes have taken a massive toll in human life. According to a recent study by the British-based human rights group Reprieve, US drone missile strikes aimed at killing 41 supposed terrorists took the lives of a total of 1,147 men, women and children. In the attempt to assassinate one Pakistani militant, Baitullah Mehsud, the CIA carried out seven separate strikes, killing a total of 164 people.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has tallied 383 drone strikes against Pakistan alone between 2004 and the beginning of 2015, killing and maiming thousands of civilians.

Yet Thursday’s apology for the deaths of two Westerners was the closest the Obama administration has ever come to acknowledging civilian casualties inflicted by the CIA drone war. In his “democratic” and “open” announcement last Thursday, Obama stated only that “a US counter-terrorism operation… in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region accidentally killed Warren and Giovanni.” No mention was made of the agency responsible, the CIA, or the weapon used- a drone.

This was no accident. According to the Journal report, whether or not to acknowledge the CIA’s role was the subject of a dispute within the administration, with the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department insisting that such an admission would threaten the continuation of the CIA program and provoke a conflict with the Pakistani government.

Others-- the Journal names Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Powers and the director of national intelligence, James Clapper-- insisted that disclosing the CIA’s role was necessary if the administration was to maintain the pretense of “transparency” that Obama promised in his speech two years ago.

The decisive argument, according to the Journal’s account, was that of the US Attorney General’s office, which “warned Mr. Obama that publicly disclosing the CIA's role in this case would undermine the administration's standing in a series of pending lawsuits challenging its legality.”

Among these cases is that of Kareem Khan, whose 17-year-old son, Zahinullah Khan, died instantly, along with his uncle Asif Iqbal and another man identified as Khaliq Dad, a stonemason, when a Hellfire missile fired by a CIA drone tore through their home in the North Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan in 2009. The family had no involvement with Al Qaeda or any other militant group.

A senior judge in Pakistan last month ordered the opening of a criminal case in connection with the drone killings against former CIA Islamabad Station Chief Jonathan Bank and ex-CIA legal counsel John Rizzo. The charges are murder, conspiracy, terrorism and waging war against Pakistan.

The case could also set the stage for a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit against the CIA and the US government by the relatives of the many more Pakistani civilians reportedly killed in drone strikes.

The drone strikes constitute war crimes under international law, which bars the arbitrary deprivation of human life and extrajudicial executions. The role of the CIA, which under international law is not a legal combatant, but rather a kind of state-run Murder, Inc., itself makes these strikes criminal.

For all of these reasons, the Obama administration is compelled to maintain a veil of secrecy over its drone assassination program.

Population By Religions In Times To Come

Ram Puniyani

The PEW Research Center has released a report (2nd April 2015); which gives the projections of populations in times to come. It says that in India the population of Hindus will fall down from present 79.5 % to 76.7% and the Muslim population will rise up to 18% by 2050. The population of Indian Muslims will overtake the population of Muslims in Indonesia and Pakistan. Disturbed by these projections Sadhvi Prachi advised that Hindu women should produce 40 children each while Sakshi Maharaj, BJP member of Parliament advised four children each for Hindu women. Time and over again many a leader from Right wing Hindu formations have been advising the Hindu women to serve the ‘nation’ by producing more children, and interestingly the celibate ones’ amongst these advisers are more vociferous on these matters!

Given that these projections may be close to the reality, how do we explain the rise of Muslim population in India, is it due to Islam? If it is due to Islam than logically the countries ahead of India (Pakistan and Indonesia) should keep the same pace and remain ahead of India as far as population of Muslims is concerned. How come the number of Muslims in India will overtake the number in other countries, if Islam is the reason? Simply this totally smashes the argument of religion being the determining factor in matters related to population growth. Within India itself; one obverses that there are serious regional differences between areas like Malabar Coast of Kerala and the UP-Bihar region. Even in the strife torn Kashmir valley one noted in earlier decades that the percentage of increase of Hindu population was more than that of the Muslims in the valley.

The second argument is that Muslims don’t take to family planning as their religion prohibits them. In his book 'Family planning and legacy of Islam' Islamic scholar A R Omran of Cairo dispels the myth that Islam is inherently against family planning, as per him there is no text in Koran prohibiting prevention of pregnancy. In Islamic countries like Turkey and Indonesia family planning methods are quite popular. In Turkey for example 63% of the population in the reproductive age group uses contraception and in Indonesia the figure is 48%. In India the number of Muslim couples in the child bearing age practicing family planning in 1970 was 9% (Hindus 14%) and in 1980, 22.5% (Hindus 36.1%) (Operation Research Group: Baroda 1981) Thus the number of additional Muslims taking to family planning is keeping pace with the number of Hindus doing the same.

Dr Rakesh Basant, an economist with IIM Ahmadabad and a member of the Sachar committee, points out that at present "there is (only) a 0.7-point difference between the Muslim and the average fertility rates. While the average fertility rate is 2.9, for Muslims it is 3.6." He emphasizes that 37 per cent of Muslims use contraceptives against a national average of 48 per cent. Therefore, contraceptive usage is about 10 percentage points lower among Muslims than the average. However, there are significant regional variations. The report observes, contraceptive usage goes up with education and development and all communities benefit from such changes.

So where do we look for answer to this puzzle of Muslim population rising more than that of Hindus in India? Just let’s have a look at the regional differences in the population growth of Hindus in India. Here the gross observation is that in the more literate Southern states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala the rise in the percentage of even the Hindu population is less than the percentage rise of Hindu population in the northern states like UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. As far as the figures in India are concerned large number of Muslims lives in the ghetto like situations or in the outskirts of cities, and is on the lower side of the income profile. As the much discussed Sachar committee report points out the marginalization of Muslim minorities in employment and major business opportunities has led them to a condition of economic downslide or stagnation at best, not keeping pace with the overall economic growth which the country has witnessed.

This lack of equity has worsened due to the communal violence, which has led to their insecurity and ghettoisation. These two phenomenons have made them vulnerable and they have become more susceptible to the influence of conservative maulanas advising against the family planning etc.

The large section of Indian Muslims are coming from the background of untouchable Shudras, whose economic starting point has been very low, this added on by the lack of affirmative action for them and the physical insecurity has led to the present situation where the less educated men and women from this community tend to have more number of children. In contrast the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan has declined for very different reasons, the major decline being due to the mass migration away from Pakistan and Bangla Desh in the aftermath of partition. There percentage is very small, though they also face similar persecution in those countries, the comparisons are difficult. Interestingly in South Asia, the communal problem does persist, and religious majority in India suffers as minority in Pakistan and Bangla Desh.

At personal note while I was working in IIT Mumbai for long years, I could see that the number of children per family is more as you go down from the professors to the peons and sweepers. Also roughly those living in Mumbai slums have higher number of children, irrespective of their religion. The situations in different countries in sub continent are not comparable on many counts. What is needed is an empathetic attitude to the deprived communities, going beyond the obvious and to solve the problem in right earnest.