Foreign Policy As ‘Performing Art’ And ‘Deals As Indispensable Liabilities’

K.M. Seethi

Many eyebrows were raised when India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an ‘exciting’ speech in the Capitol Hill in Washington in the presence of an august audience in the Congress. ‘Research investigations’ were well underway whether it was an extempore speech or a ‘Modi-Tech Controlled Rendering.’ Social media world is all agog to know the ‘truth.’ ‘Researchers’ calculated that Modi ‘secured’ 10 standing compliments and 69 rounds of strident applauses. What a curious case of ‘quantitative’ analysis!

There is, of course, nothing wrong in using a teleprompter in a public speech, as Modi would have used it in the Capitol Hill, in terms of “serving its purpose.” Speeches of presidents, prime ministers, ministers, diplomats et al. are usually prepared well in advance (by concerned experts, or officials in charge) to avoid ‘slips’ especially when they are delivered in a special audience. Exception could be Nehru and a few others in India. Even Nehru used to keep notes prepared by him for ‘extempore’ speeches. Whether one uses a written text or a teleprompter, what matters is the content of the text, rather than the mode of presentation (by way of ‘performing art’!). Technology, of course, makes a difference in such situations of public/special addresses, but it would be ideal if a written text is in hand to avoid any unexpected slip or any unsolicited mudslinging that followed on this issue.

The content of the speech matters most, indeed.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India chose to visit the US first—not in search of any partnership in the American strategic games. Nehru unequivocally told them that India sought to sustain a distinct political stature and personality of its own in the midst of the cold war politics with the “Truman Doctrine” emerging as a new toolkit of American foreign policy. In his address (a short speech of just 15 minutes) to the US Congress in 1949 (sure, there was no teleprompter then), he reminded the Americans: "You will see that though India may speak to you in a voice that you may not immediately recognize, or that may perhaps appear somewhat alien to you, yet that voice somewhat strongly resembles what you have often heard before.” He was obviously referring to the autonomy of Indian foreign policy, which, later, was articulated and identified itself as ‘non-alignment.’ In that sense, Nehru himself emerged as Indian non-aligned policy’s ‘teleprompter,’ unmindful of its consequences for the country. Even Stalin called Nehru a ‘running dog of imperialism for his assertion of autonomy. How the non-alignment had been strengthened in the post-independence years, and then how it got diluted in subsequent years is a matter of history. ‘Strategic partnership’ has substituted ‘strategic autonomy’ of India over years and this has been cleverly done by successive Congress governments. This even prompted the Janata government (1977-79) to talk about ‘genuine non-alignment’ which Vajpayee repeated in his short tenure as foreign minister under the Janata regime.

Narendra Modi was born a few months after Nehru’s 1949 speech in the American Congress. The difference in speeches is so palpable to everyone’s ‘eyes.’ This can easily be described as ‘from autonomy to surrender.’ Everyone knows that Modi was even denied visa by the US for a decade due to his domestic records. Good that Modi talked about ‘freedom from fear’ in his speech: “All the 1.25 billion of our citizens have freedom from fear, a freedom they exercise every moment of their lives.” But the Americans have also been watching the ‘tolerance’ debate in India in the wake of series of killings and intimidations last year. Americans maintain ‘self respect’ throughout the world through their forceful and forthright public positions, on any matter about which people may have differences. India is apparently struggling to get ‘other respect’ through its ‘glasnostic’ skulduggery. Little do we discuss the short-term and long-term consequences of what went behind this diplomatic exercise.

A couple of months before Modi’s visit, the stage was set for deals after deals in vital strategic areas. For example, India entered into a Logistic Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the US, which will lay open its military bases to the US, facilitating the American fighter planes and warships to operate from the Indian facilities. LEMOA forms part of a strategic package which will steer the high technology cooperation between Washington and its defence partners. India’s military deals with the US have taken a big jump during the last few months. India’s long cherished goal of manufacturing its own aircraft carrier with technological support from the US is being realised and New Delhi has also been negotiating for a similar deal to get jet engine technology. The central pillar of the Indo-US joint statement issued after the Obama-Modi meeting on June 7, 2016 is therefore so obvious. It significantly underlines the partnership in defence, besides cooperation over civil nuclear energy. It is not surprising that the proposed deal for the construction of 6 nuclear plants in India by the Westinghouse Electric Co., a U.S. unit of Toshiba Corp has gone unnoticed in the midst of other issues being discussed. Even the parties which opposed the “123 Agreement” and subsequently the “Liabilities Bill” in and outside parliament are silent on the question.

In the course of his speech, Modi said that the US is “an indispensable partner.” Nobody denies that the US is an important factor to be reckoned with in global politics. In that case, can Obama or the new incumbent in the White House next year say that India is an ‘indispensable partner’ for the US? If India cannot ‘assume’ that role, obviously the role that is reserved for India is a ‘junior partner.’ Junior partners’ will always be at the receiving end—serving the cause of the senior partner, on the one hand, and shouldering the liabilities of the ‘cause’ without any payoff for the latter.

The Beleaguered Identity

Sheikh Javaid Ayub

What is Justice is the prominent theme of the debate of Plato’s Republic. The most realistic answer is provided by Thrasymachus that Justice is the interest of the stronger. This definition seems to be the most appropriate definition when analyzed in the context of the present day world order. Thrasymachus has an immense influence and contribution in determining the present global system. The fulfillment of these interests requires, on part of the stronger, some paradigms to shape the public opinion so as to justify the means to acquire the ends. A grand strategy is thus formulated to make ruler’s ideas the ruling ideas. In the contemporary version of this grand strategy the principle that is used as a frame of reference is “America is a historical vanguard” and the US hegemony is the realisation of history’s purpose, and what it achieves is for the common good, the merest truism and just. Justice is what keeps the hegemony intact.

The US imperial policy in the guise of altruism has resulted in making America a rouge superpower. Shielded by both military and economic power, America’s quest for being at the apex of the world system has put the world peace at high alert. The Preventive War doctrine of the United States, announced in September 2002 under the shield of National Security Strategy of the United States of America, implies that the United States will rule the world by force, and if there is any challenge to its domination-whether it is perceived in the distance, invented, imagined, or whatever- then the United States will have the right to destroy that challenge before it becomes a threat.

Another theory that was now being articulated was “Humanitarian Intervention”. This Trojan horse gave a kind of license to the West to intervene in the borders of any sovereign state. The Muslim world became a soft target. A consensus was build around the principle of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). This principle insists that states have primary responsibility for protecting their own citizens. However, if they are unwilling or unable to do so, the responsibility to protect is shifted to the wider international community. The R2P was adopted by the UN General Assembly in a formal declaration at 2005 UN World Summit. Reverend Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, president of the UN general Assembly, called R2P “redecorated colonialism” and said that a more accurate name would be the right to intervene. But one fails to understand that why is R2P not invoked when Palestinians are bombarded ruthlessly by Israel in Operation Caste Lead (2008-09), after which a UN report found a prima facie evidence of war crimes.

The fall of the Second World (USSR) was projected as the ‘End of History.’ The US system was presented as the model to be followed worldwide for all times to come. It became the final stop of the human imagination beyond which there was no need to trespass. The finality of this system was proved by the fact that this system has triumphed over all other systems man has been trying since ages. Absurdity and fantasy is to dream of any other system that parallels the US system. So resistance is nothing but futility. But when resistance came from the Muslim world, a dire need for inventing new labels was felt. Terrorism thus became a new Paradigm for the 21st century world order. Terrorism has done to the US what barbarianism for the British and Race for Hitler. Everyone who resists direct aggression are labeled a terrorists – sometimes South Vietnamese become terrorists other time it is Afghans and Iraqis who are labeled so. Hate is the lone slogan to dominate the world. The mantra that was loudly articulated in the media was “every Muslim is not a terrorist but every terrorist is a Muslim”. Islam and terrorism were made synonymous so was a Muslim and a terrorist. The West wanted an enemy because the end of the Cold war left the West particularly enemy less and thus - more or less issue less. Fascism and Nazism were defeated in the Second World War so was Communism in 1990’s. Now the finger was pointed towards Islam and Islam became a ferocious enemy that needs to be demonized, tamed and cut to size.

The world wars had intensely kept the European powers engaged within themselves. Therefore, there was no question of demonizing Islam; neither had Islam gained the focus of domestic nor foreign policies of these nations. According to Ali A Mazrui In the first half of the 20th century relationships between American values and Islamic values were close. On such issues as sexual mores, gender roles, the death penalty and alcohol consumption, American values and Islamic values converged. But in the second half of the twentieth century the US started distancing itself from the Islamic values – thus started a divergence of values between the West and the Islam. Till OPEC price rise in early 1974 Islam was scarcely figured in the West media and Western policies. The oil crisis made a huge impact on the psyche of a common Westerner. They were bombarded with by different consequences the policy makers and the media believed crisis would generate. They were forced to think that they would no longer drive their cars the way they used to; oil would become much more expensive; their comforts and habits would undergo a radical and most unwelcome change. All felt panic and the real issue got hoodwinked. Islam was becoming enemy now. The energy threat was changing the Western mind.

The Iranian revolution further increased the anxieties and worries of the West-particularly the US. Ayatollah Khomeini was projected as an obdurate, powerful and deeply angry at the United States. The occupation with Iran continued in to 1990’s. With the end of the Cold War Iran, along with it Islam has come to represent America’s major foreign policy devil. Instead of making it and ideological battle in which the Islamic Justice, Equality, Liberty, vision of society, value system etc could have been made to debate on, was made irrelevant and what counted for the West was what the so called Islamists were doing. For example, how many were executed in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In demonizing Islam the West uses its, what is generally labeled as, scientific research and intellectuals who possess a deep prejudice against Islam and whose purpose is to project Islam as a major threat. Once this objective is attained an implicit course of action against it is proposed. In this sense intellectual aggression in the guise of scientific research is vehemently applied before direct violence. In such a context both science and direct violence are forms of aggression against Islam.

These propagandistic intellectuals with the help of immense media coverage present Islam and the Islamic world in such a fashion as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression. This mechanism provides ample reasons for hegemon to intervene, penetrate and take hold on the Muslim countries. This is what made Afghans Mujahideens while fighting against the USSR and most wanted terrorists later on. To meet this objective an army of intellectuals was deployed to educate the Western public about the possibility and feasibility of interventions in the Muslim world. This could never be achieved without the selective and biased media coverage and inventing new theories to change public opinion. Different sets of illusions are created and crafted in such a fashion that they act as frame of reference for a global attitude towards Islam and acknowledged ground for policymaking.

The Western identity, its culture and civilization, its democratic ethos is projected as a beleaguered one, besieged by an alien force – Islam. Islam is thus projected in such a way one gets the notion that it is invariably found in a confrontational relationship with whatever is Western. Islam becomes the most dangerous civilization for the West – thus an inevitable clash of civilizations. Islam has bloody borders, a barbarian spirit, genetically angry at modernity, a static religion with a myopic vision of humanity and development. This is how fear replaces knowledge about Islam. Islam, thus, is compared with everything the West dislikes regardless of accuracy and authenticity.

The slogans of Islamic resurgence and Islamic revivalism echoed with high intensity seem dubious. This is how the minds are made receptive. They are frightened, terrorized by suing such slogans so that they easily fell to the line that is being projected. Islamic revivalism is used to only to suggest the threat of a return to Middle Ages but the destruction of what is regularly referred to as the democratic order in the Western world. However, the Muslims always believed that Islam has always been resurgent, alive, rich in thought, feeling and human production.

Consolidation of power need creating and countering perceived threats to the society. Threats are created and solved in such a fashion that people relinquish their sovereign powers and surrender before propagandist state apparatus that virtually present herself as the guardian and protector of individual. People are made do think in the terms state wants them to think, there is no thinking beyond that, and no truth beyond the truth that is articulated by the state. Truth is what the hegemon calls truth!

We are caged, our voices chocked and individuality crushed under the might of the power – be it the state power or the power of the corporate media. Let us dare to be different.

Senior Research Fellowships in Public Health and Tropical Medicine 2017

Application Deadlines: First Application Round: 27th July 2016. Second Application Rounds: 19th September 2016 and 21st November 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Low- and middle-income countries. See list below

To be taken at (country): United Kingdom

Brief description: Wellcome Trust offers Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine for Postdoctoral students with from low- and middle-income (developing) countries, UK, 2016

Eligible Field of Study: Public health

About the Award: This scheme enables researchers from low- and middle-income countries to establish themselves as leading investigators in their scientific field. The scheme aims to support research that will improve public health and tropical medicine at a local, national and global level.

Type: Post-Doctoral Research

Eligibility: To be eligible for a Senior Research Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine, candidate must:

• be a national of a low- or middle-income country
• have a PhD or a degree in medicine and are qualified to enter higher specialist clinical training
• have five to twelve years of postdoctoral research experience.
• have made significant progress towards establishing yourself as an independent investigator
• have a strong track record in your area of research
• have sponsorship from an eligible host organisation in a low- or middle-income country
• have a research proposal that is within our public health and tropical medicine remit.

Selection Criteria: Candidate’s application must show:

• good track record
• the quality and importance of the research question(s)
• good approach to solving these questions
• the suitability of candidate’s research environment.

Number of Awardees: Not stated

Value of Scholarship: Salary and research expenses covered

Duration of Scholarship: 5 years (candidate can apply for renewal after this time)

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Angola,  Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Dem. Rep. , Congo, Rep., Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Federation Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey , Uganda, Ukraine,  Rep. Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Other Countries: Afghanistan, Albania, American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh,  Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Arab Rep., El Salvador, Fiji, The Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Islamic Rep. Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Korea, Dem Rep., Kosovo, Kyrgyz, Republic Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mayotte, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea,  Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russian, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Serbia, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. ,Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Syrian, Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, RB Vietnam,  West Bank and Gaza Yemen,

How to Apply: Candidate must submit their application through the Wellcome Trust Grant Tracker

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Wellcome Trust, UK

Important Notes: Candidates who don’t have PhD or a degree in medicine may still be considered you if they have a first or a Master’s degree and can show substantial research experience. The scheme mmay be very important if candidate is an intermediate career fellow.

Normalisation Of Rape Culture In India: Eroticised Regressive Nationalism

Parul verma

There is a fine line between prevention and normalisation of any entity. When an event manifests itself through the acceptance of society , passively as an everyday occurrence or something that is unavoidable, it already is nurturing a dysfunctional repressed violent idea. One of the celebrated deviant normalcy in the Indian society is that of a Rape. What imparts it as ‘being normal’ is the idea that sexual desires are male prerogative ,exacerbation of display of police apathy in handling rape cases, victim blaming, fears of stigmatization suffered by rape victims and their families.

But, what I am going to focus in the article is the how Rape gets trivialized in the form of most mundane rules and regulation , that Indians follow , thinking of these rules as a Prevention strategy rather than passive Normalisation. Before we critically drown into How And Why we are unconsciously promoting the idea that Rape is unavoidable , we need to put forth the basic questions.

Why the collective cultural psyche of the Indian, view a Rape as inherent unavoidable sexualized event? How each one of us (yes, you the Feminist as well) are indulging in the trivialisation of rape in India that has categorised it as Normal? How the mundane usual laws like that of a segregation and assinging a different coach in the public transport for females, is a form of normalisation of a Rape Culture?

Body of a Woman as a Political conquest

Rape of the women in India has been normalised since the Post colonial times. By the end of the article, you wouldn’t wonder ,why the body of the woman becomes the primary target in any onset of communal or national riots.

During thee 1947 Partition of India, as the Nation was mourning the segregation of the lands and the ‘ once assimilated religious diversity’, as many as 100,000 women were abducted and raped . Muslim women were abducted by Hindu and Sikh men into India, and Hindu and Sikh women were abducted by Muslim men into newly partitioned Pakistan (Das, Critical Events, 59). Women’s' bodies became political site that communicated the language of Nationalism and Power. Each woman raped by the opponent, became an Object of Conquest. The nation state( India) synonymous as "Bharat Maata" was portrayed as the mother, a woman that needed protection against the outside enemy. The idea of gaining control over the land through conquering the Body of this " Bharat Maata" seduced the Unconscious psyche of the male aggressive thanatos .The desire to possess it, see it, touch it, conquer it , claim it, wandered in the Unconscious fantacy of men .

Thus, women's bodies thus became arenas of violent struggle. Women were humiliated, tortured, brutally raped, and murdered as part of the process that reflected the communal, national and religious conquest by the opponents. The rapes didn’t just led to the violation of the body but it symbolised the Political conquest. D.A Low argues that while the men of the opposite side were killed, woman were abducted. Literary evidence provides accounts of women’s skin being marked with tattoos of religious slogans, signing of the skin by the aggressor and imprinting of the patriotic slogans like “ Pakistan Zindabad” or “ Jai Hind”

You see, the skin of the woman was not just sexually violated but it became a story via which the aggressor commented its victory to the “ other's “. The infiltrating the Othered land through the coerisive usage of Militarisation was the Objective but the raping of the woman of the Other community has a Subjective infiltration. In fact, laws was introduced for the woman who were impregnated by the rivals. Rapists frequently mutilated and disfigured the girls' skins . Many women had their breasts chopped off, others suffered the abuse and torture of their genitals -- in most cases leading to death. The Indian government now estimates that 83,000 women and girls were abducted and raped during Partition, but other believed this estimate is far too conservative

The worst case scenario was encountered when the victim was impregnated by her rapist. Though Military Evacuee Organisation (M.E.O.) and Liaison Agencies had been established in Punjab in September, 1947, nothing was done at Government level to alleviate the sufferings of the abducted women until 6th December, 1947, when the following agreement was made between Governments of India and Pakistan regarding recovery of abducted women: The following decisions reached at the Conference between the Governments of India and Pakistan held on the 6th of December, 1947, are brought to the notice of all concerned for early compliance: Every effort must be made to recover and restore abducted women and children within the shortest time possible. Conversion by persons abducted after 1st March, 1947, will not be recognised, and all such persons must be restored to their respective Dominions. The wishes of the persons concerned are irrelevant. Consequently, no statements of such persons should be recorded before magistrates. ( Dr. Kirpal Singh "Partition and Women" Abstracts of Sikh Studies - June 1999)

The Normalisation of the Rape has been practised in India since the Post -colonial era where the primary conquest of the Other community was not through the land but its women. The act of being a Nationalist or fighting for the Nation became a regressive act of in-acting of the fantacy of Eroticised dysfunctional Nationalism , on the bodies of the woman of the “other” community.

Now, never wonder, why you hear the incidents of woman being raped as soon as the communal riots initiates in India. Looking at the statistics of the communal riots since 1980’s, the body of the woman becomes the primary target of the display of the regressive Power via the Rape.

Naroda Patiya massacre ( Gujarat Riots )Reports presented by Citizen's Initiative, and Human Rights Watch stated that out of the 36 women killed in the Naroda Patiya massacre, most were sexually assaulted before their deaths; surviving women also reported being assaulted. According to Human Rights Watch, women and girls were "brutally raped before being killed". Most of the rapes took place in public, and the victims were then killed and their bodies burnt. Among the women surviving in the relief camp, many suffered the most bestial forms of sexual violence – including rape, gang rape, mass rape, stripping, insertion of objects into their bodies and molestation.

Another 1984 Sikh Massacre witnessed the same ideology. Although the official numbers of women who were raped were not disclosed, but most of the women, especially those who had some surviving male members in their family, were not willing to say they had been raped although most of them did talk about women in general having been abducted and raped. They were pressured into staying silent about their personal experience merely by the threat of social ostracism within their own community such as being abandoned by husbands or not finding husbands if unmarried.

The Desire of a Submissive Woman ( Power and Psychological Discourse of Rape )

It becomes important to analyse why the Indian psyche shares a cognitive prism that of a woman , who is submissive and the value of her character is weighted by her purity. The idea of woman, who ought be pure, pious and submissive is directly proportional to the trivialisation of the Rape Culture. Victim blaming, slut shaming are the result of this regressed collective stereotype that the Indian society shares.

We need to understand that the Political acquisition , in the form of Erotic Regressive Nationalism is just part side of the exploited coin. Gender representation within the Indian culture passively promotes Rape Culture. Scholarly presentation of the gendered sexual manipulation and roles assigned to each gender has been written on, since ages. Indian woman's accumulation of "self abasement"( Spivak ) i.e. the degree to which they have assimilated the regressive devaluation of woman and their sexuality ,merging with the idea of submission to the male kingship , has had a direct role is shaping of the woman's selfhood. The similar concept has been explained by Sudhir kakar, expressing how the idea of the " ideal woman " has seeped into the cultural unconsciousness of the Indian society via the Religious text , fables, traditional scriptures that define an " ideal woman " as a pious and submissive female.

“...the ideal of womanhood incorporated by Sita is that of chastity , purity, gentle tenderness and of singular faithfulness which cannot be destroyed or disturbed by her husband’s rejection, slight or thoughtlessness.... the moral is the familiar one: whether treated well or ill a wife should never indulge in ire..” ( Kakar, 1978:66 )

The gendered sexual role given to the woman precipitated from the shared Cultural texts is largely responsible of the prototype of a woman who should be submissive sexually and otherwise in miscellaneous activities. The encounter with a strong woman, in cases leads to the “ conceptual shock “ ,furthermore leading to the usage of aggressive Unconscious defence by the rapist.

For example, In the documentary of the Nirbhaya rape case, when Leslee Udwin interviewed the charged rapists, one of the rapist said two things of significance: Mukesh Singh said Nirbhaya invited her rape by being out on the streets at night when she should have been at home “cooking and cleaning” as he put it. He then said Nirbhaya should not have resisted the rape; if she had not fought back, if she had submitted meekly and quietly to being raped then he and his three other rapist friends would not have thrust a rod repeatedly into her vagina, pulling her entrails out and battering her to death.

Ask Yourself

Ladies, when you travel in the metro, rushing to the first compartment reserved for ladies, you are consciously making an attempt to travel securely. You might be just adhering to the rules of travelling in the compartment assigned for your safety, but unknowingly you are Normalising the trivialisation of the Rape culture. How , you ask ? You are unconsciously agreeing to the concept of sexual desires as the male prerogative that cannot be avoided, hence the precaution of travelling in an all ladies compartment. You are not resisting the idea of this trivialisation. I am not saying to boycott travelling in the ‘all ladies compartment ‘ , but question as to why a girl can’t travel in the midst of the male crowd without a fear of being molested or raped.? Why can’t you firmly believe that in the onset of a horrendous unwanted sexual act, the perpetrator will be charged with effective legal consequences immediately?

As women, we both know the answer. But, as we both are busy protecting ourselves from the unwanted gaze, we are passively contributing in the preservation of the trivialisation of the Rape culture by incorporating norms that avoids the rape but fails to eradicate it.

Italian Lessons

Linh Dinh

From “Positano,” a 1953 article by John Steinbeck:

About ten years ago a Moslem came to Positano, liked it and settled. For a time he was self-supporting but gradually he ran out of assets and still he stayed. The town supported him and took care of him. Just as the mayor was their only Communist, this was their only Moslem. They felt that he belonged to them. Finally he died and his only request was that he might be buried with his feet toward Mecca. And this, so Positano thought, was done. Four years later some curious meddler made a discovery. The Moslem had been buried by dead reckoning and either the compass was off or the map was faulty. He had been buried 28 degrees off course. This was outrageous to a seafaring town. The whole population gathered, dug the Moslem up, put him on course and covered him up again.

This tale of an outsider being embraced is very resonant to me, as I’m always outside of everywhere, even my birthplace. Living in Saigon from 1999 to 2001, I was often mistaken for a Taiwanese, simply because I was fatter and lighter than the locals, and my body language was different. I planted my feet too far apart, rarely leaned against anything and never squatted.

Steinbeck’s account is also close to home because my wife and I spent two years in Italy. Our stay in Certaldo, population 16,000, was the happiest of our lives. Although Vietnamese, we were a part of that town and, further, felt more embraced by the earth and time. History snuggled us. Certaldo’s walls of bricks from different centuries, stones and mortar immemorial reminded us, daily, that humanity endures and remembers.

Sort of.

A mere block from our apartment was the Boccaccio House. I had read the 14th century author in college, back when a higher education meant trying to acquire as wide a historical and geographical perspective as possible. Now, it’s militant solipsism. Restored in the 19th century, the Boccaccio House was destroyed by an American bomb in WWII, then rebuilt again. His tomb lies in a church thirty yards down Giovanni Boccaccio Street. In spite of the solemn inscription, “Han sub mole iacent cineres ac ossa Iohannis,” Boccaccio’s bones aren’t beneath, but dug up and tossed away in 1783. Lord Byron lamented this desecration in 1818, “even his tomb / Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot’s wrong.”

Everywhere, there were sights to contemplate. One September, we looked out our kitchen window to see the glass coffin of Beatific Giulia riding by as she made her annual trip down the hill, carried on the shoulders of townspeople. When Giulia died in 1367, church bells pealed by themselves, Certaldesi claim, but this is also said of Saint Verdiana of nearby Castelfiorentino, and of Saint Fina and Beatific Vivaldo of San Gimignano, that hilltop town of many towers, visible from our bedroom window.

Certaldo is the setting for but one story in the Decameron, with its population depicted as simpletons foolish enough to be tricked by a glib talking Friar Cipolla, or Brother Onion, a nod to Certaldo’s most famous produce. Only one Certaldese is described in detail, “a stocky kitchen-maid, who was plump and coarse and bowlegged, with a pair of paps like a couple of dung-baskets and a face like Baronci, her skin plastered in sweat, grease and soot” [translated by G.H. McWilliam]. Ah, but it’s good to be immortalized by your most celebrated son! I saw this story dramatized in Certaldo.

Stories must be swapped and retold, for without memory, a man or community is nothing. Visiting Certaldo in the 1830’s, Frenchman Antoine Claude Pasquin reported, “the inhabitants, dealers in wood and charcoal as in Boccaccio’s time, are still exactly like those he so humorously describes, agiati (at their ease); and the taste for hearing and telling stories continues popular in the country.”

The truth is, story telling was an enjoyable compulsion wherever people gathered, but this most human of impulses has been nearly snuffed out in this age of television, recorded music and, more recently, smart phones. Now, we mostly fling crude fragments of stories at each other. If texted, they are perforce illiterate and incoherent. Even face-to-face, we often have to scream to barely rise above the percussive thumps, guitar snarls and rapped obscenities.

With no large streets, vast parking lots or huge shopping malls, 21st century Certaldo retains its human scale. We walked everywhere. Each evening, hundreds of people gathered in Piazza Boccaccio, in front of the town hall, just to stroll, sit on the church steps, say hello or chat with their neighbors. Teenagers flirted, kids played. Under a clump of trees across from the ice cream parlor, old men in rumpled suits relaxed. A flaxen haired girl picked up a large, dry leaf, and that was her toy for the evening.

At first, I assumed that everyone but my wife and I was Italian, but soon enough, I saw, or was told, that there were Albanian, Moroccan and even Sri Lankan immigrants among the locals. We knew a Chinese family ran the Hong Kong clothing shop, but we never saw them. At Pizzeria Cavour, the cashier was a Chinese teenager. Even now, I can hear her clear, crisp command, “Dimmi!”

Among the pizza toppings, one could choose hotdog, and at Finn Mac Cool Irish Pub, there was a Confederate flag with a death figure brandishing a bloody knife and “THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN.” Other signs of American culture included Mormon missionaries who rang our bell one evening, kids trick o’ treating and, of course, American music on the radio. At a local festival, a teenage singer sang R.E.M. with the help of a lyric sheet.

Certaldesi needed few pretexts to get together. There were several festivals, a huge communal meal, political dinners and a fashion show featuring locals modeling clothes from the town’s shops. Seeing a flyer for a walking club at the supermarket, my wife and I decided to join. Paying modest fees, we took several bus trips to nearby towns, where everyone walked around for a couple of hours then had a drawn out meal together. Wine would be poured, and songs would pour forth. More than sightseeing or exercising, socializing was the real purpose, obviously, for there was no reason why each participant couldn’t just drive the relatively short distance to wherever we were going.

At Piazza Boccaccio one afternoon, I saw two of the organizers of the walking club. Smiling, they asked if my wife and I were coming to the next gathering. The plan was not even to squeeze onto a bus, but merely meet at some field just outside of town to gaze at stars.

“No,” I shook my head. “It’s just outside of town.” I grinned.

Frowning somewhat, one of the men explained, “Going somewhere is not why we do this!”

As with so much else, seeing each other face-to-face to share stories was the real reason.

Dodging the Black Death, the Decameron’s narrators told wise and amusing stories to affirm life. In the Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade had to keep inventing stories to prolong her own life. Without meaningful stories, a culture is more or less dead. What stories do we have besides the stultifying fantasies and vapid fables force fed to us endlessly by the suited hyenas?

To not be able to tell and hear stories is torture. In Philadelphia, my home, solitary confinement was equated with penitence. Visiting Eastern State Penitentiary in 1842, Charles Dickens reported, “I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment [solitary confinement], prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature.” While not technically in solitary confinement, too many of us are solitary enough. Seeing nothing but ourselves, photographing mostly ourselves, we rage at others for not admiring us.

If small town Italy had such an ideal human arrangement, why would anyone ever leave? To make money, of course. My best friend in Certaldo was Niccolo, and I’m still in touch with him more than a decade later. Niccolo left Certaldo even before I did. A sommelier, he found a job in Japan, and has been there since 2003, working first for an Italian restaurant, then as a breakfast manager at a large hotel. Six years ago, Niccolo confided that he yearned to return to Certaldo to become a yoga teacher, but that plan has been scrapped, since the Italian economy has been sinking ever lower. Niccolo’s sister has emigrated to Germany.

Six months ago, Niccolo asked me to proofread his resume so he could apply for a job in Taiwan. Truly brilliant, Niccolo can speak, read and write English, French, Spanish and Japanese, and get by in German. Nearly forty, Niccolo must think he can learn Chinese too.

A broken economy destroys communities. War, too, obviously. This world will be increasingly immersed in both.

Warming World: Can India Cope With Drought?

Swati Agarwal

Severe heat waves intensified across northern and parts of western India when temperature in some places rose to above 50C.

The meteorological department issued a warning of likelihood of further intensification of temperature, pointing to the impact of worsening climate change.

These changes led to drought like situations for two consecutive years affecting the economy of around 10 states across 256 districts and impacted livelihoods of nearly 330 million people in rural India.

This magnitude and scale of the impacts due to drought have rarely been witnessed in recent time in any other part of the world.

Estimates by the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) indicate the share of agriculture and allied sectors (including agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishery) has declined to 15.35% of the Gross Value Added (GVA – 2015-16), but it supports nearly 70% of the population.

Given this, worsening of drought in the country could stunt economic growth through direct and indirect impacts such as- loss of livelihoods, loss of agricultural produce, loss of soil health, distress migration to urban areas and increased expenses on relief, which adds up to the total cost to the economy.

Moreover, this would adversely impact on health of children and women besides increasing farm debt due to loss in livestock and farm economy in the drought-hit districts.

It is believed that if drought like situation prevails, farmers in some of the States like Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh will be worst hit due to agrarian crisis leading to farmer suicides which is currently over 160% higher than for all Indians excluding farmers, though direct linkage of farmer suicides to drought is not well established.

However, despite two consecutive droughts in the country, Indian economy continued to grow at 7.9% in 2016 Quarter 1 and is expected to grow at 7.2% in Quarter 2 in the year.

The economy has diversified to the extent that consecutive droughts do not affect the economy in any significant way.

In addition, the drought resilience framework in India addresses drought in its multiple dimensions:

-Meteorological (through early warning systems, crop weather watch group, improved datasets)

-Hydrological (through improved irrigation, water conservation and management)

-Agricultural (via drought resistant seeds distribution, soil conservation practices)

-Socio-economic (addressing the issues of livelihoods of people through relief, subsidized food, alternate employment opportunities)

Through these efforts, India has come to a situation, where droughts no longer lead to famine or famine like conditions.

While the economy as whole has achieved resilience from the impacts of drought, rural communities in large parts of the country continue to face the wrath of monsoon failure, leading to distressed selling of lands, movable assets, and migration.

This is aggravating poverty of the people affecting their nutritional standards rendering them more vulnerable to disease and ill-health and loss of productivity.

As per a recent industry study, total estimated impact on the Indian economy of drought in the year 2016 is estimated at $100 billion.

The Indian government is able to provide ex-post relief to drought sufferers through national and state disaster response funds, but there remains a wide financial gap.

The fund has an annual corpus of around 60,000 crores INR for a period of 5 years to respond to all types of disasters covering 29 states in India. This demonstrates an inadequacy of the funds for disaster relief in the country.

The Disaster Management Act, 2005 called for creation of the National Disaster Mitigation Fund, but the government in its wisdom has decided not to set up the fund. However, the Govt of India has created the National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change that receives funding through budgetary allocation.

The fund currently has a total corpus of nearly 350 Crore INR to be disbursed across a range of sectors requiring adaptation support.

If the allocations under this fund is also drawn towards addressing drought related stress and losses, cumulatively the total financial requirements would remain inadequate.

The prime strategy for India’s drought resilience plans therefore needs to be charted out in a way beyond the business-as-usual practices which will address drought resilience as an ex-ante measure.

The call by Prime Minister Modi to prepare a contingency plan for 67 districts in the country that are prone to drought even in years of normal monsoon is a welcome initiative.

This would ensure long term sustainability of the agricultural community against the recurring drought. Until, these plans are in place effectively, drought would continue to affect millions of poor people.

Therefore government initiatives need to be supplemented through community based interventions for climate change adaptations for drought resilience.

The Green Climate Fund should open a window of opportunities for such adaptation initiatives through grassroots level pilot projects, activities, and cross-cutting research which could be further improvised and replicated on a larger scale to all drought stressed regions in the country.

Canadian economy faces sharpest quarterly contraction since financial crisis

Roger Jordan

The second quarter of 2016 is set to witness the sharpest contraction of Canada’s economy since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008-9.

Announcing late last month that it would maintain its base interest rate at a record low 0.5 percent, the Bank of Canada projected Canada’s economy would contract between April and June. While much of the projected downturn can be put down to the estimated 1.25 percent knocked off economic growth by the Alberta wildfires and resultant halt to oil production, a number of key economic sectors continue to deteriorate. Researchers at BMO Capital Markets have predicted that this will result in a second-quarter contraction of more than 1 percent.

The gloom deepened further when Statistics Canada revealed May 31 that the economy contracted in March by 0.2 percent, even though overall first-quarter growth was at an annual rate of 2.4 percent. The main drag on growth was a poorly performing energy sector, which fell 1.5 percent in March alone.

Subsequently, the Alberta wildfires cut oil production by an estimated 1 million barrels a day—a cut that translates into $70 million in daily losses for producers.

Canada is expected to have the lowest growth among the G7 in 2016 and among the lowest among the 34 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. Among OECD states, only Switzerland, Norway and Greece have experienced less growth than Canada during the past year.

Canada has been hard hit by falling commodity prices, especially the collapse in oil prices from over $100 per barrel in 2014. Tens of thousands of oil workers have lost their jobs, and Canada’s oil-producing provinces, particularly Alberta and Newfoundland, are in deep recessions. Provincial governments, including the Liberal government of Dwight Ball in Newfoundland and Rachel Notley’s NDP government in Alberta, have responded by slashing spending in austerity budgets.

To the surprise of many analysts, May’s job figures, which were released yesterday, showed a slight decrease in unemployment to 6.9 percent, but there were major regional variations linked to the crisis in the energy sector. When discouraged workers are included, the jobless rate is closer to 10 percent.

The Bank of Canada (BoC), in the semiannual review of the financial system it issued Thursday, made a strongly worded warning of the danger posed by overinflated housing markets in Vancouver and Toronto and the sharp downturn in resource-dependent regions. “Strong regional divergence persists among housing markets,” it wrote. “Job losses have increased financial stress for highly indebted households in the regions most affected by low commodity prices.”

Housing prices have repeatedly set new records over the past year, and several reports, including one from the OECD, have warned of the possibility of a major correction—that is, a sharp fall in housing prices. At the same time, the market in Calgary is plunging due to the troubles facing the energy sector.

The latest figures show that the price of an average home in Toronto rose 15 percent over the past year, while in Vancouver the increase was 30 percent. Statistics show that a relatively small decline in house prices would leave a significant section of homeowners with negative equity (i.e. owing more money than the worth of their homes), a development similar to that which took place in the United States in 2008.

Statistics point to steadily rising household debt. With wages stagnating or declining, Canadians have borrowed ever-larger sums to cope with rising prices for housing and other necessities. By the end of 2015, average household debt was equal to 165 percent of household income, making Canada the country with the highest ratio of household income to debt in the G7. The BoC noted in its review that “economic fundamentals” would not “justify continued strong [house] price increases,” a tacit admission that they are unsustainable.

The BoC’s review also pointed to challenges arising from the economic slowdown in China and other emerging economies, as well as the prospect of persistently low commodity prices.

A further mounting cause of concern for the ruling elite is the disastrous decline in business investment. In the first quarter, gross fixed capital formation, which includes company outlays on machinery, structures and equipment, fell by 1.5 percent. It was the fifth quarter in a row that such investments contracted. Also down were business inventories, shaving 0.3 percent off the annualized growth rate.

Economists now expect that the BoC will not increase interest rates from their current record low until well into 2017. This creates a major problem for the financial elite because the US Federal Reserve may move ahead with plans to increase its rates this year. A divergence between interest rates in Canada and in its largest trading partner would result in a sharp drop in the value of the Canadian dollar, stoking inflation.

The first quarter also saw Canadian corporations post their worst quarterly profits in five years. Profits were down 4.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2015, continuing their decline for a third straight quarter and reaching their lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2010. The poor performance was led by energy corporations, which suffered their worst quarter since the oil price crash, with collective losses totaling $4.8 billion. Manufacturers of petroleum and coal products made their first quarterly loss in 23 years.

Overall, half of the 22 sectors surveyed registered quarter-to-quarter declines. Manufacturing profits fell 7.8 percent, their sixth straight quarter-to-quarter reduction, quarrying and mining profits 9.5 percent, their fourth straight quarter-to-quarter drop, and finance and insurance profits 7.1 percent.

The Liberal government came to power pledging an economic stimulus program to boost growth. In reality it is preparing for major attacks on the working class, with the aim of boosting corporate profitability and attracting investment by improving “competitiveness,” while upholding the reactionary fiscal framework brought about by decades of social spending cuts and tax breaks for big business and the rich implemented by successive federal Liberal and Conservative governments.

The closest allies of Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberal government at the provincial level, the Liberal governments of Ontario and Quebec, continue to implement ruthless austerity measures, slashing public services and imposing concessionary contracts on the workers who administer them.

Last month, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau declared that action has to be taken to encourage labor market “flexibility,” i.e. to make it easier for companies to shed workers. The multimillionaire former Bay Street pension executive declared, “The ability to grow a business by hiring people would seem like a positive thing, but if you’re unable to actually resize your business one year or four years later with changes in the economy, that presents a real challenge for business managers to actually take the decision.”

The consequences of such policies can be seen in France, where the Socialist Party government is seeking to force through a right-wing labor market “reform” to deregulate the jobs market in the face of mass popular opposition.

The appointment of Dominic Barton, a director at the global consultancy firm McKinsey, to head the government’s council of economic experts exemplifies the government’s anti-working class agenda. McKinsey recently published a report warning the world’s biggest firms that they need to prepare for a profit “squeeze” and growing resistance within the working class to their cost cutting.

In his first budget, tabled in March, Morneau announced that the government would record $110 billion in budget deficits over the coming five years, due to the rapidly deteriorating economy and the Liberals’ attempt to stimulate growth by spending on infrastructure. Such spending is aimed above all at boosting corporate profitability, as shown by the government’s commitment to find $6 billion in annual budgetary savings by the end of its first four-year term in office.

The Liberals’ stimulus plans are a drop in the bucket in the face of the deep-going crisis confronting global capitalism. Moreover, the greatest crisis of world capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s is fueling militarism and great power conflict, as well as a turn on the part of all the rival national bourgeoisies, Canada’s included, to economic nationalism and protectionism.

The utter impossibility of the major capitalist powers coordinating their economic policies to stanch the crisis was demonstrated by last month’s G7 summit meeting. While Trudeau declared that he would be pressing for language in the summit statement committing the world’s seven largest imperialist powers to stimulus spending instead of rigid austerity, the end result was a communiqué that sanctioned each government pursuing its own course.

Australia: Labor unveils “tough, unpopular” budget cuts

Mike Head

With three weeks still to go before the July 2 federal election, the Labor Party yesterday repudiated another set of pledges to oppose deep cuts to welfare, healthcare, education, pensions, aged care and family payments.

Families with children, students and universities—all already facing acute financial stresses—are especially targeted by Labor’s latest policy reversals, which will slash social spending by another $6.1 billion over the next decade.

Worse is yet to come. Labor leader Bill Shorten said there would be further “hard” measures before the election. “We will need to make difficult decisions as this election unfolds,” he declared.

In previous elections, incoming governments waited until the voting was out of the way before junking their promises. This is no longer possible because of a rapidly deteriorating economic situation in Australia and internationally. The corporate and media elite is demanding an austerity agenda to make the working class pay for the economic breakdown, and Labor is just as committed as the Liberal-National Coalition government to satisfying those dictates.

Shorten described yesterday’s measures as “fair,” claiming they would affect “rich” families. But among the biggest items were halving family tax benefits for families with combined incomes of over $100,000 a year, stripping more than $500 million from them over the next four years. This would hit many working class households, most of which now depend on having both parents working in order to try to make ends meet.

Likewise, the government’s current freeze on the indexation of the Private Health Insurance and Medicare Levy Surcharge thresholds would be continued for 10 years to 2026–27, making thousands of families liable to pay the tax levy of up to 1.5 percent of income. Households would pay an extra $2.3 billion over the decade.

Students face a reduction in the threshold for repayment of HECS-HELP tuition fees from annual incomes of $54,126 to $50,638. This would raise another $129 million from graduating students over 10 years. Fees would rise by $159 million over the decade for students in early childhood education, maths, science and nursing.

Resources for universities, chronically starved of funds, would be cut by a further $3.7 billion over the decade by indexing funding to the official cost of living index, not education costs.

This is the second instalment of promises to be ditched. Two weeks ago, Labor repudiated pledges worth more than $9 billion over four years. It abandoned plans to retain the $4.5 billion school kids bonus and reverse $3.6 billion in pension cutbacks and $1.2 billion in aged care cuts.

Labor has foreshadowed further budget measures, such as imposing a four-week wait for young people to access unemployment benefits, raising the age of eligibility for the Newstart jobless allowance to 25, and removing the carbon pricing scheme compensation for new welfare recipients.

A party spokesman told the Australian Financial Review the measures included some “tough, unpopular” decisions and “it’s not going to be pretty for the true believers.” These are vows to deliver the requirements of big business, regardless of the electoral backlash or working class opposition, just as Labor governments have done in the past.

In a bid to exploit the hostility toward the Coalition government’s budget cuts, Labor’s election slogan remains: “We’ll put people first.” But the shift in its focus to assure business of its intentions was symbolised by the removal from Labor’s election web site of two petition campaigns that ran for months. One was called, “Don’t pocket our pensions” and the other, “Fair go for families.”

Shorten yesterday underscored Labor’s essential bipartisan unity with the Coalition government, not only matching the government’s pledge to eliminate the $40 billion budget deficit by 2020-21 but saying the difference between the two on the deficit over the next four years would be “relatively modest.”

A day earlier, Labor released a vague ten-year “economic plan” that would allow slightly higher budget deficits than the government’s until 2020–21, then cut spending enough to return to surplus. But this provoked warnings by business economists and global ratings agencies that Australia’s credit rating was threatened, because of the country’s rising public and private debt levels.

One economist, John Daley from the Grattan Institute, pointed to the mounting frustration in big business with the failure of federal governments, both Labor and Coalition, to dismantle welfare entitlements and slash social spending since the global crash erupted in 2008.

Daley said Labor had “placed the AAA rating at risk” because governments and oppositions were again delaying harsh measures. “They [the agencies] are very nervous about a pattern of behaviour that puts off tough decisions again and again,” he said.

A cut in the credit rating would increase the interest rates on government and corporate debt, including that held by the country’s four major banks. This is under conditions where the mining boom has collapsed, prices for commodity exports have plummeted, a debt-fuelled housing bubble is showing signs of bursting and many areas of the country are already in recession.

Labor’s move yesterday came in direct response to demands in the corporate media for it to impose key cuts to health, education and welfare that have been blocked in the Senate since the 2014 budget. This impasse has largely resulted because in the last federal election, in 2013, “independent” and “third party” candidates won about 25 percent of the votes for the Senate by posturing as opponents of the major parties—Labor, Liberal/National Coalition and Greens—and felt compelled to oppose the most egregious cuts for the sake of their own political survival.

Australian Financial Review political editor Laura Tingle voiced fears that the July 2 election could result in greater political instability. “There has been a lot of talk around what sort of Senate the next government will face. But whoever actually takes their seats in both houses, the relationship between the government of the day and the Senate will be heavily influenced by the extent to which the two major parties ultimately agree on a range of these spending measures.”

In its June 9 editorial, the Australian demanded that Labor return to the path of “economic and fiscal reform” pioneered by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in the 1980s and 1990s. It was Labor—backed by the trade unions—that began the assault on the social position of the working class, cutting taxes on companies and high-income recipients, and carrying out the greatest redistribution of wealth to the rich in Australia’s history.

In its election statement, the Socialist Equality Party warned against any illusions in Labor’s efforts to regain office via “shameless lies that it will pour billions into health, education and infrastructure.” The statement explained: “The credit rating agencies have made clear they will insist on savage cuts to social spending to slash the budget deficit. And Labor will obey their dictates.”

That warning has already been vindicated, and there is still three weeks of the election campaign to run.

Croatian government collapses after four months

Markus Salzmann

The Croatian government led by the non-party pharmaceutical manager Tihomir Oreskovic has fallen apart after just four months in power.

Last week, the head of the rightward-leaning Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Tomislav Karamarko, withdrew support from Oreskovic and allowed the coalition with the right-wing liberal Most party, under its leader Bozo Petrov, to collapse.

However, because Oreskovic has no intention of resigning, the HDZ could introduce a motion to remove him in parliament. Oreskovic previously demanded the resignation of Karamarko and Petrov from their joint position as deputy prime minister. The HDZ leader then ended the coalition. The issue is now whether the HDZ will manage to cobble together a new majority in parliament or if new elections will be required.

Karamarko came under severe pressure after it was revealed that his wife received consultancy fees of €60,000 from a lobbyist for the Hungarian minerals firm Mol. The opposition Social Democrats (SDP) responded in May by initiating impeachment proceedings against Karamarko.

Parliamentary elections last November ended in a tie between the right-wing HDZ and SDP. The new party, Most, became the kingmaker and united with the HDZ to appoint Oreskovic as Prime Minister. Oreskovic had never before publicly participated in political life and was unknown to the wider public. The former head of a North American pharmaceutical concern was, in the words of former intelligence agency chief Karamarko, pledged to impose “tough reforms.”

From the outset, fierce conflicts and controversy rocked the new government. Three Most deputies left the party and refused to vote for Oreskovic because they did not agree with the allocation of ministries. Regardless, the coalition explicitly agreed on an extremely right-wing programme.

The HDZ is based on ultra-conservative and radical right-wing groups. In May, the government backed a “march for life,” which was initiated by clericalist and openly fascist forces against the right to abortion. The most prominent participant was the wife of the Prime Minister, Sanja Oreskovic. The chairman of the council of bishops, Selimir Puljic, felt so emboldened that he proposed a referendum on the lifting of the ban of the fascist greeting from World War II, “Ready for the fatherland,” in the military.

The minister of veterans, Mijo Crnoja, who has since resigned, planned a list of “national traitors,” a state register of all those who did not show enough “devotion to the fatherland” in the war against Serbia or spoke out against the government. He was explicitly defended by Oreskovic.

In addition, the coalition also agreed to continue to deter refugees fleeing the imperialist wars in the Middle East and close off the so-called Balkan route.

At the end of April, the government passed a national reform programme in response to a critical country report by the European Union which demanded the implementation of further reforms. Oreskovic referred to sixty “not difficult, but necessary” austerity measures being put in place. On the spending side, comprehensive cuts were included which hardly left any sector untouched, from healthcare to childcare and agriculture.

The government also pressed ahead with the privatisation of state enterprises. Above all, the state electricity provider and highway company are to be hived off as soon as possible, and will be connected with large-scale layoffs. The pension system is also to be reformed. An increase in the retirement age to 67 is planned.

Croatia has been in a deep economic crisis since 2008. The country has one of the highest unemployment rates in the EU, officially at 16 percent.

Public debt continues to increase, currently standing at 87 percent of GDP. The budget deficit, at 5.9 percent, is well above the Maastricht criteria, which stipulate that EU members must maintain a budget deficit of less than 3 percent of economic output.

After six years of recession, the Croatian economy grew minimally last year. Croatia was recently unable to issue any new government debt because political instability pushed interest rates too high. Moody’s downgraded Croatia’s credit rating in March.

Large protests erupted last month in response to attacks on the education system. The attempt by the openly fascist culture minister Zlatko Hasanbegovic to turn the education system to the right unleashed the largest protest movement in years. Forty thousand people took to the streets in the capital Zagreb with other demonstrations taking place across the country. Hasanbegovic, a historian, has defended and relativised the crimes of the Ustashe regime during World War II.

The collapse of the government has provoked a serious political crisis in the country. Oreskovic and President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic have already held secret talks to discuss future steps. The government is under significant pressure from the EU and the International Monetary Fund to pursue a sustained austerity program.

Representatives of all parties agree that the imposition of economic reforms takes priority. Vladimir Seks, a leading figure in the HDZ, stated that even the resignation of Karamarko could be considered and may even be “in the national interest” to allow the government to proceed with its austerity program. Bloomberg news agency cited a business representative as saying, “Economic growth in Croatia is more important than temporary political instability.”