El Niño and the acceleration of global warming

Matthew MacEgan

New temperature records have been set in the early months of 2016, according to data compiled by NASA. A driver behind what one researcher referred to as “extraordinary” temperatures has been the presence of an abnormally long El Niño. At the same time, research over the last several years has shown how El Niño and its cool-water counterpart, La Niña, have been affected and made more extreme by human-induced climate change.

El Niño and La Niña are phases of what scientists call the “El Niño Southern Oscillation,” a cycle of alternating warm and cold temperatures in the central and eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean that research suggests has been happening for at least 100,000 years. The changes in ocean temperatures produce significant shifts in air pressure over whole regions of the globe, inducing powerful weather patterns that have proven devastating for human habitation in many parts of the world.

The abnormally warm ocean waters caused by El Nino induce much more extreme weather patterns than normal, including droughts, cyclones and floods.

The most recent El Niño, which just recently came to a close after lasting two years, has been referred to as the strongest in two decades. It has been held responsible for record flooding in Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Brazil, as well as flooding and landslides in Ethiopia, which killed more than 100 people. It has been thought to have directly caused droughts in South Africa, Thailand, and Venezuela, affecting millions of people and, in the latter case, resulted in electricity rationing. It has also been blamed for the intensity of Tropical Cyclone Winston, which destroyed parts of Fiji in February, as well as having enhanced the Pacific cyclone season generally.

The continuing wildfires in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada are also in part attributed to the hot and dry conditions brought about by the current El Niño cycle. Moreover, while specific fires cannot be directly linked to global warming, higher temperatures in general mean less snowpack during winter, allowing for more frequent and intense wildfires.

Though El Niño is a natural phenomenon, in recent years many researchers have shown that its intensity has been exacerbated by global warming. An article published in Nature in January of 2014, for example, presents evidence that the increased frequency of “extreme” El Niño occurrences, such as the one which just closed, is largely due to surface water warming more quickly in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The authors state, “We should expect more occurrences of devastating weather events, which will have pronounced implications for twenty-first century climate.”

Two years later, new data are supporting their predictions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently reported that April marks the seventh consecutive month of average global temperatures being at least 1 degree Celsius above the 20th-century average. In addition, NASA’s land-ocean temperature index shows that the last seven months saw about a 30 percent increase in sea surface temperature over the same months one year earlier.

Other metrics show the same warming. Measurements taken in January indicate that on a single day the northern hemisphere reached 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial average, a result that has only a one hundredth of one percent chance of happening without human-induced climate change. Data from the North Pole in December show temperatures above freezing, more than 30 degrees Celsius above average. Mark Serreze, who is the director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, stated, “I’ve been studying Arctic climate for 35 years and have never seen anything like this before.”

The consequences to the environment and human life are not limited to more severe storms. A recent update from NOAA shows that both El Niño and global warming are resulting in the longest global coral die-off on record, which will likely extend well into 2017. The event is referred to as “global coral bleaching,” the result of disease and heat stress caused by high ocean temperatures. NOAA reports indicate that some areas have already seen bleaching two years in a row, which means that the coral have no time to recover from their ailments. The potential cost to human well-being is high: 500 million people depend upon reefs for food and to protect coastlines from storms and erosion. Coral reefs contribute approximately $30 billion to the world economy each year.

While some attribute the recent heat events to El Niño alone, others state that this only accounts for a small amount of the anomalous warmth. Michael Mann, the director of Penn State Earth System Science Center, stated, “We would have set an all-time global temperature record even without any help from El Niño.”

This was echoed by Jeff Knight, from the Met Office Hadley Centre, stated that while additional heat from a big El Niño does contribute to the conditions, this contribution is relatively small. He stated earlier this year that “the bottom line is that the contributions of the current El Niño and wind patterns to the very warm conditions globally over the last couple of months are relatively small compared to the anthropogenically [human] driven increase in global temperature since pre-industrial times.” Put another way, global warming is the more fundamental problem that must be overcome.

New Zealand government, opposition housing policies grossly inadequate

Tom Peters

Over the past fortnight there have been reports nearly every day on New Zealand’s housing affordability crisis, fuelled by out-of-control property speculation.

Government figures show rents for three-bedroom houses in Auckland have increased 25 percent in five years. According to Trade Me Property, the median weekly rent in the country’s largest city is now at a record $520. This is roughly equivalent to the income of a full-time worker on the minimum wage after tax.

As temperatures plummet throughout the country, thousands of people, including families with young children, are living in appalling conditions in overcrowded or insecure accommodation, along with garages and cars.

There is widespread anger in the working class over the National Party government's utter failure to address the crisis and its plan to privatise thousands of state houses. According to a Newshub/Reid Research poll published on May 24, 76 percent of people believe not enough is being done to control the housing market. Despite this, Prime Minister John Key has repeatedly denied the existence of a crisis.

The government’s budget, announced on May 26, confirmed it would fund “community” organisations (which can include investors, charities and Maori tribal-owned businesses) to provide just 750 additional “social housing” rental properties, mostly in Auckland. Nationwide there are 4,500 people on Housing New Zealand's waiting list, who have been deemed eligible for public housing because they cannot afford market rents. This represents only a fraction of the need: the estimated housing shortage in Auckland alone is 30,000-40,000 properties.

The government also announced a policy of cash grants, of up to $5,000, for homeless people to move out of Auckland to vacant state houses in regional towns, many of which have even higher unemployment and poverty.

Writing in the New Zealand Herald on May 21, Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett feigned sympathy for the growing numbers of homeless people in Auckland and elsewhere, but asserted that “we have finite resources” and it was “challenging and expensive to house more and more people on the taxpayer dollar.” This comes from a government that has delivered billions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the rich and plans to spend $11 billion over 10 years on new military hardware to assist the country’s integration into US war preparations against China.

The opposition Labour and Green parties have criticised the government over the housing shortage. Their own proposals, however, would do nothing to address the crisis. Like National, Labour and the Greens are pro-business parties committed to maintaining the ability of wealthy investors, landlords, and the banks, to profit from the housing bubble.

Policies such as forcing landlords to charge affordable rents, and constructing tens of thousands of quality public houses, have been rejected out-of-hand by the entire political establishment.

In his recent Herald column, Labour leader Andrew Little repeated Labour’s xenophobic scapegoating of “foreign speculators.” Labour and the Greens, along with the anti-immigrant New Zealand First Party and the Maori nationalist Mana Party, have called for foreigners to be banned from buying houses, even though they make up only about 3 percent of all purchases.

The calls for a ban are an attempt to divert anger over the social crisis in a reactionary direction. The repeated attempts to pin the blame on Chinese buyers in particular are aimed at aligning the country with the US military encirclement and reckless provocations against China.

Labour has also called for the expansion of Auckland’s city limits, supposedly to increase the housing supply and improve affordability. In fact, this proposal is designed to boost the profits of property developers by removing restrictions on where they can build. It received support from the National government and the far-right ACT Party.

The Labour Party's other main policy is its “Kiwibuild” scheme, which housing spokesman Phil Twyford has described as “a massive state-backed building program of affordable housing.” In reality, the plan involves the construction of 10,000 homes per year, in partnership with private companies, which would be sold for profit at unaffordable market rates.

On May 19, the Greens announced a “Homes Not Cars” policy that would temporarily abolish the annual dividend of approximately $200 million paid by Housing New Zealand (HNZ) to the government, freeing up money for the state-owned corporation to build more houses. Co-leader Metiria Turei said: “The Government has the power and the money to ensure every New Zealander lives in a warm, safe, dry home—it just lacks the will.”

The policy, however, would only fund an estimated 450 new state houses—that is, about one tenth of the HNZ waiting list.

The most recent detailed study on homelessness, published in 2013 by Otago University, estimated that 34,000 people suffered from “severe housing deprivation.” This included families living in vehicles, sheds, garages, boarding houses or in severely overcrowded conditions. Assuming an average of three people in each state house, the Greens' policy would accommodate less than 4 percent of those in need.

The 2013 study was based on data from 2006. Since then the crisis has become much worse due to the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, which destroyed thousands of homes, and sky-rocketing house price inflation in Auckland and elsewhere.

The miserable so-called “solutions” put forward by Labour and the Greens demonstrate that these parties have no real differences with the government's austerity agenda, designed to make the working class bear the burden of the economic crisis.

Notwithstanding their demagogic criticism of funding cuts, the opposition parties have pledged to keep a tight lid on public spending if they win next year’s election. Earlier this year the Greens proposed a new unit within Treasury that would calculate the cost of each party's election promises, in order to promote fiscal restraint. The idea was warmly endorsed by the corporate media and the pro-National Party Kiwiblog site.

Neither party has promised to reverse National's tax cuts for corporations and the rich, or its increase to the regressive Goods and Services Tax in 2010. Far from opposing the allocation of billions of dollars to the military, Labour has attacked the government for not spending enough, calling for a stronger navy.

India: Congress Party and Stalinists suffer debacle in state elections

Arun Kumar

The Congress Party, the Indian bourgeoisie’s traditional party of government, and the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its Left Front suffered major reversals in the state assembly elections held this spring in four states with a combined population of 225 million.

The Congress Party was ousted from power in Kerala in the south and Assam in the northeast, leaving it the governing party in just six of India’s 29 states. The Stalinists were routed in West Bengal, the state that for decades constituted their principal electoral bastion, and failed to retain a single of their 22 seats in the Tamil Nadu assembly.

The Congress, which led India’s national government from 2004 to 2014, has been discredited among workers and rural toilers because of its pro-investor economic “reforms,” which have produced mounting economic insecurity and social inequality, and its pursuit of a global military-strategic partnership with US imperialism.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and its Left Front allies—including the older, but smaller Communist Party of India (CPI)—propped up the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from May 2004 through June 2008, helping it to implement socially incendiary neo-liberal reforms.

The “Left” governments that held office in West Bengal and Kerala until their defeat in the last round of state elections, held in 2011, pursued what the CPM itself described as “pro-investor” policies. In West Bengal this included banning strikes in IT and IT-enabled industries and using police and goon violence to suppress peasant opposition to the expropriation of land for big business projects.

In the latest West Bengal state election, the CPM forged an unprecedented electoral alliance with the big business Congress Party and touted the prospect of a Left-Congress state government. CPM leaders, including former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, appeared on platforms and held joint election rallies with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, her son and heir apparent.

In Tamil Nadu, the CPM and CPI contested the elections as part the of People’s Welfare Front—an alliance of right-wing, regionalist and casteist parties, including the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) and Desiya Mutmoku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK).

The Stalinists’ right-wing politics enabled various reactionary big business parties to rally support through a combination of populist promises and communalist, regionalist and casteist appeals.

This included the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which in alliance with two regionalist parties—the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bodo People’s Front—won 89 of the 126 seats in the Assam state assembly.

Under Narendra Modi, the BJP has formed India’s national government for the past two years. Following on from the Congress, the BJP has intensified the push for “pro-investor” reforms and dramatically enhanced military-strategic ties with the US and its principal Indo-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

In early April, the Modi government announced the impending signing of an agreement that will allow the US military to use Indian bases and ports for repair and resupply. While the Stalinists’ claim to oppose this agreement and India’s integration into Washington’s plans to wage war on China, they raised neither in their election campaigning.

In West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the two biggest of the four states that went to the polls this spring, the respective ruling regional parties—the West Bengal-based Trinamul Congress (TMC) and the Tamil Nadu-based All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)—won reelection.

A right-wing split-off from the Congress and one-time BJP ally, the TMC was a largely discredited force until it was able, with Maoist support, to exploit popular anger with the Left Front over its pro-big business land expropriation program in 2007-08. In the 2011 West Bengal elections, the TMC was the senior partner in an electoral alliance with the Congress that swept the polls, ending 34 consecutive years of CPM-led government.

In this year’s election, running alone, the TMC increased its seat tally by 27, winning 211 of the 295 West Bengal assembly seats. One reason for this was the rallying of a sizeable chunk of BJP supporters behind the TMC.

But the most striking feature of the election was the continuing decline of the Left Front, which saw its strength in the state assembly nearly cut in half, from 60 to 32, and its popular vote fall to 25.9 percent from 29.9 percent in 2011.

The CPM campaign was explicitly right-wing, featuring its alliance with the Congress Party, on the one hand, and claims that a Left-led government would be better able to attract investment to West Bengal on the other.

The electorate rewarded the CPM with its lowest-ever seat total. Indeed, the Congress, which increased its seat tally by two to 44, is now the second-largest party in the West Bengal assembly and is expected to claim the status of Official Opposition, although it won just 12.3 percent of the popular vote.

The West Bengal CPM leadership has publicly lamented that the Congress could not “transfer” its votes to the Left, in accordance with the public alliance between the CPM and Congress. “Our workers,” CPM Politburo Member M.D Salim told NDTV, “worked wholeheartedly for the alliance and the Congress benefited. However the Congress votes could not be transferred to us.”

Nonetheless, the West Bengal CPM leadership has indicated it wants the alliance with the Congress to continue at least through the 2019 national elections. Some are even arguing for a national CPM-Congress electoral bloc.

In Tamil Nadu the ruling AIADMK won 134 seats, 36 more than its principal rival, the DMK. During the campaign the AIADMK and DMK cynically traded promises of small subsidies and handouts for voters, while reassuring the ruling elite that they would continue to pursue pro-big business policies that condemn that vast majority to crushing poverty.

The Stalinists, who have previously alternated between supporting one or the other of these parties on the grounds they could be pressured to pursue “pro-people” policies, could not and would not mount any challenge to their posturing. The Stalinist supported People’s Welfare Front failed to win a single seat, its projected chief ministerial candidate, DMDK leader Vijayakanth, losing his deposit.

In the neighbouring small Union Territory, the former French colonial enclave of Puducherry (Pondicherry), the Congress won its sole election victory. Running in an alliance with the DMK, the Congress won government, routing a Congress-breakaway party, the NR Congress.

In Kerala, India’s 13th largest state, the CPM-led Left Democratic Front ousted the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) after one term in office.

The result was not unexpected given the unpopularity of the Congress nationally, the right-wing polices pursued by Kerala’s Congress-led government and the wave of corruption scandals in which it was engulfed.

Attempting to cover up the debacle it had suffered in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, respectively India’s fourth and sixth most populous states, the CPM Politburo issued a statement that hailed the outcome of the Kerala state election as an “historic” victory for India’s workers and toilers.

It is nothing of the sort. While the electoral outcome was different, the CPM campaign in Kerala was politically of a one with that in West Bengal, with the Stalinists pledging to pursue pro-investor policies and allying with various Congress split-offs.

Speaking to BusinessLine during his pre-poll “Nava (New) Kerala March,” state CPM leader and now Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan promised that a Left Democratic Front would spare no effort at improving conditions for business. Decrying his party’s traditional “negativity towards” business, he vowed, “This needs to change. A new paradigm should be evolved wherein an investor is welcomed with open arms.”

A wave of summary executions following the Philippine election

Dante Pastrana

Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, the head of death squads in Davao City in the Southern Philippines where he has been the long-time mayor, vowed during his campaign to kill and dump over a hundred thousand alleged criminals in Manila Bay within six months of his election. Less than a month before his presidential inauguration, police and vigilantes have already launched a murderous campaign against alleged criminals throughout the country.

Duterte announced on May 31 that he would be paying bounties for every person killed who was alleged to be in the drug trade. He also announced the value which he would assign to every human life taken, promising up to 3 million pesos ($US64,000) for every “drug lord,” 2 million for those deemed to be in charge of distribution, 1 million for “syndicate members,” and 50,000 for “ordinary” drug peddlers.

Duterte further stated that he would begin making payments for those killed prior to taking office, stating that he had enough money left in his campaign funds to pay for “100 persons dead.” He explicitly included in his bounty offer a reward for lives of inmates within the prison system who were alleged to be dealing drugs.

Since his election, a wave of executions of alleged criminals carried out both by vigilantes and the police has swept the country.

On May 19, vigilantes executed an alleged drug pusher in Bulacan province on the island of Luzon. According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the vigilantes abducted Ramonito Nicolas Mendoza immediately following his court hearing on drug charges and release on bail. Mendoza’s dead body, riddled with bullets, was later found with his hands and feet hogtied, his head wrapped with packaging tape and a sign on his neck stating “Huwag akong tularan. Drug Pusher Ako.” (Don’t be like me. I’m a drug pusher).

On May 25, according to the South China Morning Post, five motorcycle-riding gunmen shot dead three alleged petty thieves in Davao city.

“Police records show these men were pickpockets and burgled cars,” the city’s police spokeswoman, Senior Inspector Milgrace Driz, told the newspaper. She then added the well-worn rationale of the city’s police for such assassinations, claiming that they were “due to gang warfare” and insisting that the Davao Death Squads were a “myth.”

“They don’t exist, it is only you journalists who say they exist,” she said. Duterte himself has repeatedly acknowledged the existence of these death squads, as well as his direct oversight of them.

Three days later, unknown gunmen shot and killed two other suspected drug dealers in the same city. One victim, attacked at an Internet shop on Wednesday, had been out on bail on a drug-related offence.

The police have not been far behind in racking up kills. Two suspected illegal drug traders died in a shootout with police during a sting operation in Biñan City, in the province of Laguna on Luzon, in the early morning of May 20.

On May 26, police in Bulacan killed four alleged drug dealers in a gun battle in the town of Norzagaray town. The next day, another four drug suspects were killed after allegedly trading shots with the police in General Santos City on Mindanao Island.

Over the weekend, police shot and fatally wounded Rowen Secretaria and three others in a shootout at Banacon Island, 33 kilometres from Cebu city, the second largest city in the country. The police accused Secretaria of ranking “third among the top drug personalities in Cebu City.”

The police killings follow the explicit instruction of Duterte’s new national head of the police, Superintendant Ronald de la Rosa. Speaking to the press last month, de la Rosa exhorted his men to “shoot-to-kill if the criminal fights back or is armed.” When asked by reporters what police should do if the criminals did not fight back, de la Rosa responded, “Make them fight back.” He thus publicly green-lighted extra-judicial killings on the pretext of resisting arrest.

This spate of killings is unfolding as the entire Philippine political establishment is rapidly shifting to the far-right. From city mayors to congress, under the banner of an “all-out war against crime, drugs and corruption,” the pretence of adhering to democratic rights and due process is being discarded.

In Tanauan city, the newly-elected mayor twice forced suspected drug pushers to parade through the streets in a so-called “Walk of Shame” with signs on their chests stating “Ako’y Pusher, Huwag tularan” (I’m a drug pusher, Don’t be like me.). The local police have admitted formal charges have yet to be filed as their investigations have not been completed.

In Cebu City, days after gaining the mayoralty, Tomas Osmeña announced a $US1,000 dollar bounty to the police for every suspected “drug lord” or petty criminal killed or wounded. “It can be their extra source of livelihood,” Osmeña told the Cebu media.

Last week, the mayor-elect awarded the bounty to a police team for killing Teodoro Cabriana, suspected of drug pushing, after he allegedly tried to shoot it out with the police. The previous week, Osmeña handed over a bounty to an off-duty policeman for shooting and wounding two suspected robbers alleged to have held up a public utility Jeepney.

Underscoring his murderous intent, the mayor-elect handed out only $US427 dollars, explaining that the suspects “were injured and were not shot dead.”

In the Philippine congress, with even nominal opposition to Duterte expected to be just 20 congressional representatives out of 300, a repressive legislative agenda of “all-out war against crime, drugs and corruption,” including the return of the death penalty and the reduction of the age of criminality, will be rapidly advanced under the guise of a national crisis of drug addiction and drug-related crimes.

Even more ominously, Duterte announced plans to add two divisions to the military, recruit 3,000 new police and to organize and arm militias down at the barangay level, the smallest local government unit.

Justice in the Philippines, designed under US colonial rule, has always been a repressive and corrupt affair. There is no trial by jury. The state security forces, in general, and the police in particular, are brutal, corrupt and have a well-earned reputation of torturing suspects and conducting extra-judicial executions.

Moreover, according to Human Rights Watch, between 85 and 90 percent of the more than 94,000 inmates in the penal system are still awaiting or undergoing trial. The Philippines is the Southeast Asian country with the highest number of pre-trial and remand detainees and the second highest in all of Asia.

Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs” is aimed at the working class. The main victims of drug addiction in the Philippines are workers, the poor and the youth, who have also been the main victims of Duterte’s death squads in Davao.

The summary executions across the country which Duterte is calling for and rewarding, and which have already commenced, are intended to dramatically increase repression in the face of a mounting social crisis and to prepare to brutally crackdown on any resistance from the working class.

Turkey seeks increased presidential powers amid rising social tension

Jean Shaoul

Fierce clashes broke out between armed police and a few hundred demonstrators commemorating the third anniversary of the May 31 Gezi protests this week.

Beginning Monday, hundreds of armed police, as well as riot control vehicles and water cannon, were deployed to Taksim Square to bar people from entering the square. Police fired tear gas and detained more than a dozen activists. In a separate incident, police detained 16 activists at the offices of the city’s architects’ chamber near the Yildiz Palace.

The heavy-handed response to a small demonstration testifies to the extraordinarily tense social relations in Turkey. Since 2013, the authorities, particularly President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, have used every opportunity to demonise the Gezi protests—and any other protest movement--as an attempted coup orchestrated by Turkey’s domestic and foreign enemies, with Washington’s backing.

Thus far, Erdogan’s government has focused repressive measures on supporters of the opposition Gulenist movement founded by US exile Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

While Gulen is a convenient scapegoat, the AKP government’s increasing repression is fundamentally driven by fear of working class opposition to the deeply unpopular domestic and foreign policies implemented by Ankara in response to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Erdogan is seeking to side-line his political rivals, most recently the former president and co-founder of the AKP Abdullah Gul, and his former foreign minister and handpicked prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whom he has replaced with the loyalist Binali Yildirim.

Erdogan is developing closer relations with the military, which he long viewed as a threat to his rule. Since 2007, the Erdogan government has tried hundreds of current and former military officials on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, when military leaders threatened to intervene if Turkey’s secular character was diluted by the Islamist AKP.

Last month, Erdogan invited Turkey’s top general to his daughter’s wedding, evoking a storm of criticism in the opposition press and on social media. In April, a court overturned the convictions of 275 people in the 2008 case, including those of top generals.

The government is to introduce a constitutional amendment to parliament to allow Erdogan to become a “party affiliated” president, enabling him to resume his leadership of the AKP, which he was obliged to give up on assuming the presidency, a largely ceremonial position, in August 2014. This will enable him to more directly control the AKP and the government. It forms one of a series of changes that Erdogan is determined to force through in order to create a more dictatorial presidential system. Other constitutional amendments are to be introduced that will consolidate his position as an executive president.

This follows the passage of a sweeping anti-terrorism law that enables people who merely express opinions to be investigated or tried on the grounds of aiding terrorism. Erdogan is using the anti-terrorism law to eliminate opposition politicians and journalists, targeting those critical of the army’s brutal crackdown on the Kurds, and operations aimed at toppling the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Anti-terror statutes are also being employed for repression against ethnic Kurds, aimed at preventing the establishment of an autonomous Syrian Kurdish entity on Turkey’s borders, an objective which Ankara has pursued through backing Islamist forces such as ISIS and the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra.

Erdogan’s aggressive Syrian policy has already brought Ankara to the brink of war with Russia, after the Turkish military provocatively downed a Russian fighter jet for allegedly straying into Turkish airspace. Moscow has retaliated by cutting its commercial links with Ankara, leading to a dramatic fall in investment, trade and tourism that has reverberated throughout the economy and accelerated the decline of the Turkish lira. So bad is the situation on Turkey’s south coast that Antalya has placed large colour brochures in the travel sections of foreign newspapers to bring tourists to its shores.

Last month, the Turkish parliament agreed to the AKP’s demand to lift the immunity of a quarter of its deputies, predominantly members of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), ostensibly for aiding and abetting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The government is waging war at a far greater level of intensity than that of the 1990s war. It has locked down towns, devastated cities, including much of the historic old city of Diyarbakir, capital of the largely Kurdish province, which contains UNESCO world heritage sites, displaced more than 350,000 civilians and killed more than 1,000 people. The entire region, already the poorest in Turkey, home to waves of refugees from Syria and prey to ISIS bombings, faces an economic disaster.

HDP legislators can now be brought before the courts and lose their mandate if convicted. In this way, Erdogan could establish the two-thirds parliamentary majority he requires to legitimise the presidential dictatorship, which is already functioning in practice, constitutionally.

The Turkish press has been brought to heel with the AKP-led drive for dictatorship. The only news media widely available are those that toe the government line. To step outside the boundaries of what the government deems acceptable means imprisonment.

Erdogan, who served a jail term in 1999 for reciting, while mayor of Istanbul, a nationalist and Islamist poem that was deemed guilty of “inciting violence and religious or racial hatred,” is now imposing similar treatment on those who dare to criticise him.

The Turkish authorities have jailed two leading journalists, Can Dündar and Erdem Gül of the Cumhuriet newspaper, for “disclosing state secrets” and aiding “an armed terrorist group”, after they showed pictures of the security forces handing over weapons to ISIS and other Islamist groups. They have raided the weekly news magazine Nokta, opened a case against Hurriyet’seditor-in-chief Sedat Ergin for insulting the president, and appointed state-trustees to run the Koza İpek Media Group, Zaman newspaper and Cihan News Agency. Numerous foreign journalists have been deported, usually on the grounds of aiding the PKK.

At the end of 2015, more than 100 journalists remained either imprisoned or on trial, mostly for “national security” offences, making Turkey the fifth worst jailer of journalists globally in 2015.

Around 2,000 journalists and ordinary citizens have been prosecuted for insulting Erdogan since he became president, the latest being Merve Buyuksarac, a former Miss Turkey, who was given a year-long suspended sentence for reposting a satirical poem insulting the president on social media. Barış İnce, former editor of the leftist daily Birgün, which faces another 40 similar investigations, was given a 21-month prison term for “insulting” the president.

UK firms use new regulations to cut pay and conditions

Danny Richardson

In October 2015, the hourly adult rate of the UK’s National Minimum Wage (NMW) rose from £6.50 to £6.70. From April this year, all workers aged 25 were legally entitled to at least £7.20 per hour under a new National Living Wage (NLW).

Despite being handed a £15 billion cut in corporation tax in Conservative Chancellor George Osborne’s budget to fund NLW and NMW pay increases, many firms are in fact cutting other workers’ pay rates and terms and conditions supposedly to offset the cost.

Supermarket chain Waitrose responded to the legislation by ending the payment of Sunday and overtime rates for new shop workers. Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, reduced Sunday rates from double time to time and a half, while Morrisons cut Sunday pay rates. Retail chains B&Q and Wilko cut Sunday and overtime pay.

Many of the attacks on wages and conditions began within the UK food industry, which is heavily reliant on the use of agency workers as cheap labour. Agency workers are not entitled to the same pay and conditions as full-time workers.

This has only been possible through agreements with the trade unions, notably the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) and the UK’s biggest union, Unite. These unions are involved in a number of disputes, including with the £1 billion-valued 2 Sisters Foods group, which is part of Boparan Holdings, valued at £3.5 billion and chaired by Labour Party Peer Charles Allan.

The unions claim the firm is reducing established enhancement pay to compensate for the cost in implementing the rise in the minimum wage. Enhancement pay is paid for work performed outside agreed normal hours and for working during weekends and holidays (commonly known as overtime). The unions say the loss of earnings to full-time workers far outstrips the cost to the company of applying the new wage regulations.

On May 19 and 20, 400 workers at the Pennine factory of 2 Sisters Foods in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, struck for 48 hours against proposed wage cuts. Some workers could lose up to £5,000 as part of plans to remove extra weekend pay and lieu days for working weekends and bank holidays.

Following the Pennine strike, a 2 Sisters spokesman said, “We are disappointed some colleagues have decided on industrial action, given the union leadership’s acceptance of our new terms in February.” The firm claims the BFAWU agreed to recommend the deal to their members.

At the 2 Sisters-owned RF Brookes factory at Rogerstone in Newport, Wales, 100 workers are to strike for 48 hours between June 2 and 4. They are protesting the removal of night shift allowance, having to work more bank holidays, proposed lower overtime rates and the fact that the lowest hourly rate is being increased for workers over 25 only—in line with the national living wage. Interviewed by the BBC, an RF Brookes worker said he would lose £2,800 a year and some of his colleagues would lose up to £5,000. RF Brookes employs 800 workers, of which 420 are in the BFAWU.

A spokesman for the 2 Sisters Food Group said, “To connect this to the living wage would be totally inaccurate and misleading. Negotiations are all part of standard annual talks we have with unions at all our sites over the UK—Rogerstone is no different.”

Unite is balloting its 440 members at the 2 Sisters Foods Pizza Factory in Nottingham regarding changes to agreed terms and conditions. In a May 24 statement, Andy Shaw, a Unite regional officer said, “Any attempts to cut workers overtime, holiday and weekend pay to offset the government’s new National Living Wage or to impose changes without negotiating with the workers union will be strenuously challenged by Unite... Unite submitted its pay claim back in September, seeking a modest 3.1 percent pay increase but rather than honour the annual pay anniversary the company has been refusing to negotiate.”

Unite wants the dispute brokered by the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS). ACAS is headed by former Trades Union Congress General Secretary Brendan Barber. During his tenure, he did not lift a finger to oppose agency workers being on lower pay and worse conditions than those on permanent contracts.

Unite’s claims that it will “strenuously” defend its members’ pay and conditions is contradicted by its record. Last year, a 2 Sisters poultry planning site in Llangefni, Anglesey Wales announced 270 job cuts as part of a plan to “simplify” its business. The company announced that compulsory redundancies were restricted to 14, and that 37 workers had taken voluntary redundancy. The bulk of the job losses were made by 170 agency workers not having their contracts renewed. The union involved was Unite, which the company refer to as “our colleagues.” With their collaboration, the firm said it had moved “to the proposed operating model which the business presented two months ago.”

The unions have allowed food industry companies, including 2 Sisters Food Groups, to take on workers at rates of pay and conditions well below the existing basic level. Established workers are now being pushed towards accepting inferior terms on the same level as the agency/temp workers. For agency workers, enhanced payments are nonexistent.

At the Hovis factory in Wigan in September 2013, the BFAWU agreed to allow management to bring in zero-hours workers, replacing permanent workers made redundant. In an attempt to claim a historic “victory”, the union claimed the agreement reached scrapped the company’s attempts to use the “Swedish derogation.” This is an opt-out used by employers to deny agency workers their rights under the Agency Workers Regulation, which grants comparative pay and leave entitlements after 12 weeks on an assignment. However, the provision did not apply to zero-hour “on call” contracts.

A BFAWU press release described the settlement as “satisfactory for all concerned,” saying that the union has “worked together with the company in order to minimise the use of agency labour at the Wigan site [which] will only be used where there is insufficient commitment by employees to work overtime and banked hours.”

This sellout laid the basis for further attacks on the workforce by management. In July 2015, 40 jobs were lost when one of the two bread lines was shut down. Later, in November, the second bread line was shut down, and 111 jobs threatened overall. The bread-making lines ended entirely in March this year, with crumpet making the only production remaining at the plant. In response, BFAWU regional secretary Geoff Atkinson said the plant had suffered a “managed decline and a scaling back of jobs and skills, resembling nothing more than the business equivalent of a death of a thousand cuts, which I fear may lead to the eventual total closure of the bakery.” He didn’t mention the role of his union in this process.

More than 2,500 refugees drowned in Mediterranean so far this year

Martin Kreickenbaum

The mass deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea has reached a new, grim record over the first five months of 2016. According to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR), at least 2,510 refugees drowned between January and May during their attempts to cross to Europe. The European governments and European Union bear full responsibility for turning the Mediterranean into a mass graveyard for refugees.

Credit: Italian Navy

By questioning the survivors of recent accidents, the UNHCR estimated the number of victims. According to this, 880 refugees lost their lives in the Mediterranean in the last week of May alone. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) even suggests there could have been more than a thousand drowned refugees.

Previous estimates put the number at 700 victims from three capsized boats, but refugees reported many more were confined in the holds of the boats. In addition, 47 refugees are missing after a lifeboat with at least 125 on board deflated and capsized.

“For so many deaths to have occurred just in a matter of days and months is shocking and shows just how truly perilous these journeys are,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. Compared to the same period last year, when 1,855 refugees lost their lives in the Mediterranean, the number of deaths has increased by 35 percent.

According to UNHCR figures, 203,981 refugees have been registered after successfully surviving the crossing to Europe to seek protection there. Of these, 46,714 came to Italy, about the same number as last year.

Particularly in the months January to March, the overwhelming majority came via Turkey through Greece. In the process, 376 people drowned. But since the so-called Balkan route has been closed by means of the dirty deal between the EU and Turkey to ruthlessly deport refugees, the numbers of deaths on the much longer and riskier route from Libya to Italy has risen dramatically.

“The North Africa-Italy route is dramatically more dangerous: 2,119 of the deaths reported so far this year are among people making this journey, making for odds of dying as high as one in 23,” explained UNHCR spokesman William Spindler.

In other words, out of every 100 refugees starting their journey in Africa, four die in the attempt. The Mediterranean, directly adjacent to the rich countries of Europe and a popular tourist destination, is thus by far the most dangerous sea route for refugees in the world. According to official estimates, at least 30,000 refugees have drowned there in the last fifteen years.

The EU has responded with indifference to the rapidly rising number of victims. When the refugee assistance organisation SeaWatch, which supports rescue efforts in the Mediterranean, recently published a picture of a volunteer holding a dead baby in his arms, it provoked no outrage about the European governments’ inhumane policy of sealing off Europe’s borders.

When in September 2015 the picture of the drowned Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi lying on a Turkish beach was prominent in the media, empty promises and hypocritical phrases of sympathy were heard from Berlin and Brussels. However, the latest refugee tragedies in the Mediterranean have been virtually ignored. “The mass deaths of refugees on Europe’s borders are being accepted as collateral damage,” wrote Spiegel Online.

The deaths in the Mediterranean are part of the logic of the EU’s refugee policy, calculated to act as a deterrent. When, on October 3, 2013, 366 refugees horrifically drowned off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, then Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta launched Operation Mare Nostrum. Originally intended as a mechanism to force boats back to the Libyan coast, it was unwillingly transformed into a sea rescue mission, since the rescue of people from shipwrecks is a central tenet of international law. Almost 150,000 refugees were thus saved from drowning.

But the rescue of refugees was an irritant for the EU, and above all for the German government. With the absurd argument that Mare Nostrum was encouraging more refugees to set off for Europe, German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere called a halt to it. Instead, on November 1, 2014 the EU adopted the much smaller Operation Triton, which was concentrated on a limited coastal area of sea, and led to the resumption of the mass deaths in the Mediterranean.

In early 2015 almost 1,500 refugees died within a few weeks, as the EU and its border protection agency Frontex looked on. “It is not enough to cry in front of the television in the evening when refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean, and hold a moment of silence in council the next morning,” EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said at the time. The EU’s response consisted in the militarisation of the Mediterranean.

Since then, two dozen warships from the European states have been patrolling the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy as part of Eunavfor Med (European Naval Force—Mediterranean) Sophia. But their goal is not the rescuing of shipwrecked passengers, but rather the combatting of smugglers, whose boats are to be captured and destroyed. The mission has just been extended for a further year and is to be stepped up along the Libyan coast.

In order to obtain a mandate from the UN, the Libyan puppet government of Fayez al-Sarraj imposed by the US and European powers has requested support in building up the coastguard and the combatting of the arms trade. In truth, the al-Sarraj government has no power in the North African country, and is merely in place to follow the orders of the western powers and sign off on a new NATO intervention.

Since the NATO war of 2011 to topple the Gaddafi government, Libya has been destroyed and is engaged in a bloody civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people were either slaughtered or driven from their homes. The countless refugees from African countries to the south were treated arbitrarily and are now confined to internment camps, where they have been tortured and abused.

Despite this, the EU is pushing for close cooperation with Libya to prevent refugees from travelling to Europe. “Now the task before us is to agree such a cooperation with Libya,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March, following the conclusion of the deportation agreement with Turkey.

The European Union has no qualms about working together with despotic regimes in Africa. The Eritrean government, which tramples human rights underfoot, received €200 million from the EU to detain refugees. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court in The Hague with genocide and crimes against humanity, has received technical equipment for border surveillance from the EU.

In addition, the EU is supporting the construction of refugee camps in Sudan. The regimes in Egypt and Morocco are also being provided by European arms concerns with border surveillance and military equipment. The goal of the EU’s policy is to prevent refugees from reaching the Mediterranean coastline at any price and to detain refugees in far off camps in Africa and Asia.

More than 14 million refugees are already confined to camps in Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Lebanon. They are victims twice over of the criminal policies of the imperialist powers. The top ten list of countries with the highest number of refugees is practically identical with a list of the countries that have been the victim of a military intervention, proxy war or orchestrated regime change operation which have been initiated over the last twenty years by the US and its European allies.

The list includes Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Iraq. More than 60 million people around the world are refugees, and half of these are under 18.

In Africa, an additional factor driving hundreds of thousands to flee is the brutal neocolonial policy of the EU, which ruthlessly exploits the continent’s natural resources and completely destroys the standard of living of the populations by structural adjustment programmes and dictated trade regulations. These people place all their hopes in finding work in Europe.

But Europe hermetically seals itself off from the wave of refugees it has itself produced, and allows them to drown miserably in the Mediterranean, vegetate in huge refugee camps under outrageous conditions, and be shot on the Turkish-Syrian border, where the Turkish government has allegedly established automatic firing posts. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungreported, “intelligent” surveillance towers are involved, with heat-sensing cameras and machine guns, in the regions of Hatay, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Marden.

US death rate rose in 2015

Niles Niemuth

The death rate in the United States increased across the board last year for the first time since 2005 according to preliminary figures released this week by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The report provides yet another piece of information documenting the deep social distress which is fueling the growth of social opposition in the working class.

Earlier this year the CDC reported that life expectancy at birth for white Americans had fallen between 2013 and 2014 from 78.9 years to 78.8 years, after remaining flat between 2012 and 2013.

Not all Americans are being affected equally, with income and social class overwhelmingly determining the quality of an individual’s health and the length of their life. A report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April found that income was the most critical factor in longevity and that the life expectancy gap between the richest and poorest is widening.

Growing mortality rates for working people are not the outcome of accidental or unavoidable processes, but rather a social counterrevolution which has been consciously directed at dramatically lowering the living standards of the working class. The impact of the implementation of multi-tier wage structures, the elimination of employer-paid health care, the eradication of defined-benefit pensions and the slashing of retiree pension benefits is finding expression in these statistics.

Policymakers have been quite open about their desire to drive down the life expectancy of the working class and poor. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the leading architects of the Obama administration’s health care overhaul, has called for the rationing of health care based on income and has discouraged people from getting potentially life-saving medical screenings. On Tuesday, the day before the CDC’s figures were released, Emanuel called for raising the cost of prescription antibiotics, nominally in the name of halting over-prescription. “Low prices reduce the barrier to prescribing antibiotics, while high patient demand fosters overprescribing,” Emanuel declared.

In reality, Emanuel and his co-thinkers would be more than pleased if the rise in the death rate continued in the coming years and decades. While its full impact has yet to be felt, one of the unstated goals of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act is to reduce workers’ access to health care, reducing the life expectancy for all those who cannot afford to pay in order to pad the profits of health insurers and corporations.

Decades of deindustrialization and austerity, accompanied by a dramatic rise in economic inequality and associated social ills, are finding expression in the broadest of social indicators: mortality and life expectancy.

In its latest estimates, adjusted to account for an aging population, the CDC found that the death rate was 729.5 per 100,000 in 2015, up from 723.2 in 2014. The leading causes of death following heart disease were cancers, lung disease, accidents (including automobile crashes, falls, shootings and drug overdoses) and stroke.

The national mortality rate has declined significantly and almost continuously since 1940, when the rate was 1,785 per 100,000. Above all the growth in life expectancy was the outcome of fierce struggles waged by the working class in the first half of the 20th century for better wages; shorter working hours; company-paid pensions, to provide for them in old age; and health care, which gave them access to revolutionary new medicines and treatments. Workers also fought for the implementation of safety standards and regulations which dramatically decreased the number of people killed or sickened on the job.

Yearly increases in the overall mortality rate have been relatively rare: last year was only one of seven instances in the last 36 years in which the national rate ticked upwards.

According to the CDC, the rate was driven upwards last year by an increasing rate of death from Alzheimer’s, drug overdoses and suicides. At the same time, the rate of death from heart disease, the leading cause of mortality in the US, on the decline for decades, edged up slightly.

The suicide rate in the US increased from 12.7 in the third quarter of 2014 to 13.1 in the same quarter of 2015. The rate has increased more than 24 percent since 1999, with much of the increase coming since 2006. The biggest surge in the suicide rate has occurred among young girls between the ages of 10 and 14 and men between 45 and 64.

The rate of deaths from drug overdoses also increased substantially, from 14.1 in the second quarter of 2014 to 15.2 last year. A majority of drug overdose deaths were unintentional, and opioids, including prescription pain medication and heroin, accounted for an increasing share of these deaths. The number of opioid overdoses and deaths has exploded in the last few years, an ongoing epidemic impacting cities and counties in every part of the country.

The long-term reversal of the social gains made by the working class has only accelerated in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. President Obama has overseen one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the working class to the rich in world history.

Obama’s much-hailed economic recovery has seen 95 percent of all income gains go to the top 1 percent and all job growth over the last decade has come from people working as independent contractors, temps through contract agencies or on-call. Median household income has declined as workers have seen their wages and benefits stagnate or decline.

These are the objective social conditions which are driving the anger and discontent that has found an initial expression in the 2016 presidential primaries.

The fascistic and xenophobic Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has found support posing as an opponent of the political establishment and tapped into social anger over the decline of living standards, promising to “Make America Great Again.”

Under conditions where the leading Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is the favored candidate of Wall Street and the corporations that have immiserated the working class, millions of workers and young people have cast their ballot for Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders.

While the ultimate purpose of Sanders’ campaign is to direct workers and young people back into the Democratic Party, he has garnered substantial support because he promotes himself as a socialist and a staunch opponent of the “billionaire class” and the status quo which has contributed to the dramatic decline in living standards.

Growing opposition to the political establishment has been accompanied by the eruption of social struggles, including the recent strike by 39,000 communication workers at Verizon; mass protests against the poisoning of residents in Flint, Michigan; and opposition to the destruction of public education in Detroit, Michigan, the historic center of the US auto industry.

Entry into the NSG: Getting Past the Doorman

Manpreet Sethi

Doormen – big, burly individuals – at entrances of exclusive clubs impose entry regulations. They could deny you entry for not carrying the correct identity card, or for not entering as a couple. One particular country has assigned itself this role at the NSG door. Set and resolute, it has declared that you are not carrying the required NPT identity card and worse still, you are not ready to enter with a partner. So, China insists that India cannot be allowed entry into NSG, certainly not without Pakistan.

For a few NSG plenary meetings now, India has been hopeful that a decision on its membership would be taken, nearly eight years after the exceptionalisation was made for it to engage in international nuclear commerce. This task yet remains pending though the US agrees that India has the requisite credentials to join the NSG. Standing up to the US on its position, China thinks otherwise. Interesting insights can be gleaned from the Chinese position.

Firstly, this is a rare occasion that China has openly declared its objection to India’s entry and has dared to stand alone on this. Beijing has traditionally been shy of taking a position where it would have to stand singly. It prefers instead to hide behind objections being made by others, giving them tacit support without being identified itself as the primary obstructionist. It consciously avoids being called a spoiler. This seems to have changed, perhaps for two reasons. One, China has perceived that the bulwark of states that it was banking upon to stop India’s entry into the NSG is about to give up. So, it feels the need to step up itself. The other reason is that China’s confidence in its own clout and influence has grown. Having amassed economic and military strength with the accompanying political weight, it believes it can afford to assert its position and get away with it. Consequently, it is no longer chary of standing alone.

Secondly, China’s sense of assertiveness rises from the knowledge that its economic power is far above that of most of the NSG members. In fact, neither US, nor Russia can afford to offend the new China, and certainly not on the nuclear issue. Undertaking simultaneous construction of 22 nuclear power plants (accounting for more than one third of all reactors being built globally), China has deep nuclear pockets. Nearly every major nuclear supplier has a hand in it. China is importing from, as well as co-developing nuclear reactors with France, Russia, and the US. It is building nuclear reactors in the UK and Argentina. The nuclear industry of each of these states is invested in China, currently the largest nuclear market. Given the downturn in the fortunes of the nuclear industry after Fukushima, the nuclear marketplace today belongs to the buyer, not the seller. And China is the biggest buyer on the block. Who then can afford to upset it?

Thirdly, China’s objection to India’s entry into the NSG is because of India, and not because it necessarily wants its all-weather friend to be an NSG member too. It is only using Pakistan as a proxy, as China always has, to box India in. What China finds difficult to digest is the accommodation of India that would, in its eyes, make it its nuclear equal. Given that Beijing still insists on UNSCR 1172 of 1998 that called for a roll back and elimination of an ‘illegitimate’ nuclear weapons programme, it cannot brook the idea of any semblance of ‘legitimacy’ being granted to India. Sharing space as a nuclear rule-maker with India is anathema to China.

So, what should India do to get past the self-appointed doorman? For one, Indian nuclear diplomacy will have to work harder to chip away at the objections being raised by China or its proxies. Secondly, the Indian nuclear market must once again appear to look lucrative. When it did so in the mid-2000s, President Bush (actively supported by the nuclear industry) managed to engineer the huge transformation in the US’ nuclear relationship with India, including convincing others to make the NSG exceptionalisation possible. Since then, and especially after Fukushima, the Indian nuclear market has started to look dull.

The nuclear liability law perceptibly weighed against the supplier, public acceptance stalemates etc have taken the sheen off India’s nuclear ambitions. Of the two poster boys of the nuclear industry, China is shining, while India appears to be falling behind. Thirdly, India should seriously consider entering the nuclear market as a supplier itself. It has the capability and the capacity to do so. And once that happens, it would change India's de facto position. Fourthly, for China, its ‘face’ is very important. India needs to look for concessions that it can make to provide China the face saving to back off from its strident position. One idea here could be to take up China’s offer of nuclear cooperation made by Premier Xi Jinping on a visit to India. This cooperation could take many forms - R&D on new generation of reactors, between their nuclear Centres of Excellence, nuclear safety and security, etc. Such collaborative ventures could be one way of subtly introducing it to India's strengths in the nuclear power sector.

Education Reform in India: Emerging Trends

Sarral Sharma

The renewed focus on ‘Indianisation’ begs the question — how does the current component of Indianisation translate into education policy? This commentary will attempt to show the translation of rhetoric into policy in the states ruled by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) — such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra — and try to assess its overall impact on the New Education Policy (NEP).

The term ‘Indianisation’ suggests that indigenous culture, customs and history are emphasised over 'Westernised' aspects of Indian education inherited from the British Raj. During the first few years succeeding the Independence of India, the social studies discipline was suitably decolonised in order to buttress the national myth associated with the newly formed Indian Union. Is the current process of Indianisation buttressing that national myth?

Early this year, the Rajasthan Secondary Education Board omitted works of Western poets like John Keats, William Blake, and others from the Class VIII English textbooks. These poets have been replaced by indigenous writers such as Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore in order to highlight the richness of Indian literature. Prominence (or textual space) has been given to the ancient, yet vital, scientific discoveries made by Aryabhatta and Bhaskaracharaya — credited with the discovery of zero (or shunya) and contribution to calculus respectively — over western scientists such as Pythagoras and Newton. Similarly the social science curriculum has also been revised. A chapter dedicated to the South African Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela has been replaced with an essay on India's tribal communities.The biographies of local figures such as Hemu Kalani, Maharaja Dahrsen, Saint Kanwar Ram, and Swami Tauram have also been given space in the revised curriculum.

Gujarat has seen a similar but differentiated trend. One of the compulsory school text books in Gujarat, Tejomay Bharat (Shining India), mentions the concept of Akhand Bharat (or undivided India), which emphasises the cultural unity of countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and  Myanmar. Similarly, another primary school book, Shikhan nu Bhartiyakaran (Indianisation of Education), under the chapter Samajik Chetna (Social Awakening), advocates that, “Birthdays should be celebrated by shunning the western culture of blowing candles. Instead, we should follow a purely Indian culture by wearing swadeshi clothes, doing a havan [prayer to a sacred fire] and praying to Ishtadev [preferred deity], reciting the Gayatri mantra, distributing new clothes to the needy, feeding cows, distributing prasad [libation] and winding up the day by playing songs produced by Vidya Bharati.” Recently, the Gujarat Education Board introduced a chapter on economic thought in the economics textbooks for higher secondary students which include the economic formulations and biographies of local figures such as Chanakya, Mahatma Gandhi and Deendayal Upadhyay.

On similar lines, the Maharashtra government recently announced that Maharashtra’s role in the freedom struggle would be made compulsory in schools affiliated to various educational boards. The education minister Vinod Tawde justified this saying, “Schools set up in the state need to teach the history and geography pertaining to the state.” 

These examples though different, point to a twin trend. There is a definitive trend both at localising the social sciences syllabus as well as Indianising it. While there seems to be almost no attempt at localising the sciences and geography however there is a tendency to Indianise the sciences as far as historical contextualisation goes. The question that then arises is— what does this trend mean at the level of the Government of India in the formulation of the NEP? Organisations such as Vidya Bharati, et al have proposed the inclusion of vedic maths in schools, Sanskrit in middle-level school, and a three-language formula according to which schools located in states that do not have a Hindi-speaking majority will be under compulsion to teach the local language, English, and Hindi. These organisations have also proposed mandatory foundation programmes on ancient Indian history, philosophy, values for students in central universities among other things, in order to promote national unity and a composite Indian culture.

Y Sudershan Rao, the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), defines 'Indianisation' as a process, in which, he believes, "Every nation has the right to write its own history from its own perspective, with certain national objectives." Clearly then the process of Indianisation and localisation of education are perceived by the government in the context of buttressing the national myth and making parochial identities such as the states feel more connected to this national myth. At some level it betrays a certain lack of confidence within the government’s educational apparatus in the foundations of the Indian myth that requires corrective action. However there is a worrying trend here. The attempt to generalise local customs such as a particular way of celebrating birthdays cannot in any way bolster the national myth of a heterogeneous country.  

It is highly likely that the Indianisation trend will be enshrined in the NEP, however it will be a major mistake on the part of the government to impose localised interpretations on the population at large.