What would a Biden administration mean for public education?

Renae Cassimeda

“For America’s educators, this is a great day: You’re going to have one of your own in the White House,” announced President-elect Joe Biden in his acceptance speech. Indeed, educators have expressed widespread relief that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a lifelong crusader against public education, should be ousted. #ByeBetsy has trended on social media.

But teachers should check their enthusiasm. Biden’s statement could not be more hollow. An understanding of what a Biden administration would have in store for educators requires a sober appraisal of the record of the Obama-Biden administration, the president-elect’s program and the class interests that Biden and the Democratic Party serve.

First of all, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have no difference with Trump and Wall Street on herding teachers, students and parents back to school and work. They have insisted that reopening schools “should be a top national priority.”

Jill and Joe Biden (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Democrats and Republicans alike are making every attempt to ensure students are back in classrooms so that parents can be thrust back into workplaces to produce profits for the financial oligarchy. The Democrats and the teachers unions have embraced the lie that schools can be reopened “safely” with a bit more PPE and plastic partitions.

To this end, Biden has suggested the need for $88 billion in new COVID-19 relief to schools. This is less than half of the amount needed by districts. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has said an additional $158.1 billion to $244.6 billion would be required to reopen school buildings safely and serve all students this year. Biden knows full well that such sums would never be approved by Republicans but has made the proposal to provide a political cover for his full support to a return to in-person schooling.

Secondly, a Biden administration will continue the austerity policies against public education, under conditions of a severe economic crisis. Originally Biden took to the presidential campaign trail with proposals for a series of mild reforms, including a threefold increase to Title I federal funding for low-income schools, universal prekindergarten and greater funding for special education programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). He also proposed “fixing” the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, support for student mental health, and “hiring more people of color into the Department of Education (ED).”

Aside from the nod to identity politics, these measures were all typical campaign lies. Public education is in unprecedented economic crisis. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that more than 354,000 K-12 and 337,000 higher ed employees have lost their jobs during the pandemic. As a result of the ongoing fiscal downtown, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) projects that the nation’s K-12 schools face a cumulative education funding deficit of between $295 to $370 billion.

Under these conditions, any new programs or budgetary reforms will be rejected as “unfeasible” in light of Wall Street’s demands for mass austerity and state deficits. In other words, Biden has zero intentions of keeping any of his promises, except for increasing the number of affluent blacks, Hispanics and women in the Department of Education. Instead, there will be a direct policy continuity between the outgoing Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration. The only real difference is that Biden will impose austerity (and it will be greater) under the rhetoric of identity politics and with the collusion of the unions.

What was the Biden record?

Just four years ago, Biden was the vice president in an administration infamous for its deep-going attacks on public education through punitive standardized testing, support for merit pay and other anti-teacher policies, defunding of federal education aid programs and outright support for privatization.

In the aftermath of the 2008 Wall Street crash, the Obama-Biden administration bailed out the banks and big businesses, funneling trillions to the financial elite while eviscerating social programs. This policy resulted in the unprecedented upward transfer of vast sums of money into the pockets of a financial oligarchy, together with a horrific growth of social inequality and poverty. As Biden-Harris take office in 2021, we can expect the same class response, under more severe circumstances.

While teachers thought Obama’s election would mean the end of George Bush’s hated No Child Left Behind scheme, they got the Race to the Top and Every Student Succeeds Act, which expanded the Bush era program of charter schools and privatization on behalf of the powerful edu-business industry.

For her part, Jill Biden toured with then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in 2009 promoting Race to the Top and Common Core. By 2010, US school districts faced a combined $230 billion budget shortfall, resulting in mass cuts impacting public school employees and students. Over 300,000 school employees permanently lost their jobs. Per pupil spending in many districts fell as much as $1,000 per year. Overall, elementary and high schools cut spending by 37 percent from 2008-2013, and public school infrastructure was left to crumble.

By 2016, after eight years of the Obama-Biden education reform, enrollment in charter schools doubled, with six percent of public school students attending charter schools, up from about three percent.

Starved and grasping for funds, thousands of public schools were forced to compete with each other for federal monies. Federal testing standards were devised which labeled schools in poverty-stricken areas as “failing.” These schools suffered arbitrary shuffling of personnel, and ultimately many were shut down, only to be replaced with for-profit charter businesses, often owned by minority entrepreneurs.

Obama’s final 2016 budget, which received bipartisan support, called for a 50 percent increase in federal support for charter schools. Such attacks set the stage for the further assault on schools by the likes of Trump and DeVos.

Most significantly, Biden’s transition team includes scores of big business foundation names strongly associated with years of school privatization efforts, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. To give a sense of the business opportunities afoot for the giant tech industry under a future Biden administration, Gates announced a Reimagine Education project for online schooling last May in the New York City schools, just as $827 million in cuts were announced.

2021 and beyond will bring educators, school workers, parents and students into struggle on a scale not yet seen. Workers will not accept mass death associated with the return to work in unsafe conditions nor the dismantling of public education.

For this reason, Biden is floating as a possible new Secretary of Education either Randi Weingarten, the current president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), or Lily Eskelsen-Garcia, former president of the National Education Association (NEA) from 2014-2020.

It is highly unlikely that Biden would nominate either one of the union executives to fill the post, given his emphasis on picking nominees that would be acceptable to the Republicans, even as they back Trump’s efforts to nullify the election and install himself as presidential dictator.

Nevertheless, the AFT and NEA officials have long proven their usefulness to the corporate and political establishment by suppressing educators’ opposition to savage austerity measures and school privatization schemes.

Both union presidents have endorsed and enforced the demand that educators return to the classrooms, despite the growing numbers of teacher and school worker deaths. After thousands of teachers across the country participated in walkouts, demonstrations and protests throughout the spring and summer, setting up independent Facebook groups to oppose the unsafe return to schools, the AFT allowed that they might endorse local “safety strikes.” Without exception, they prevented them and demobilized teachers. This has included districts, such as Detroit, which voted by 91-9 to walk out.

Eskelsen Garcia emphasized during the NEA Representative Assembly in July, “The American economy cannot recover if schools can’t reopen.” The AFT issued a document, “A Plan to Safely Reopen America’s Schools and Communities,” demanding that the union partner in reopening plans.

During the major wave of teacher strikes in 2018-2019, Weingarten, Garcia and their respective unions isolated, limited and sabotaged state and local strikes. They ensured that teachers, who were fighting to regain spending losses and layoffs that occurred as a result of the great recession and ongoing privatization of schools, did not develop into a nationwide strike that would challenge the austerity measures of the Democrats and Republicans and threaten the monopolization of wealth by the capitalist class and the affluent layers like the union executives themselves. (They each make more than $500,000 annually.)

It is highly significant that one of the potential picks for Treasury Secretary being mentioned is Roger Ferguson, a former Federal Reserve vice president, financial advisor to the Obama administration, who, since 2008, has been the CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), which manages $1.3 trillion in teacher pension funds, including those controlled by the AFT and NEA.

Both unions have vast investments in commercial real estate development and financial securities. This gives the unions a direct financial incentive to support austerity and other measures to maintain the relentless rise of the stock market, even as the death toll, including among educators continues to increase. To be blunt, the shortening of the life expectancy of retired teachers will be a positive benefit for the union executives’ investment portfolios, since it will mean smaller outlays for the payment of pension benefits, leaving more money to invest.

Biden and the Democrats, along with the servants in the unions, fear nothing more than a powerful movement of the working class against the corporate and financial oligarchy. That is why they are doing nothing to alert workers to the dangers posed by Trump’s coup threats, presenting his refusal to concede as a “tantrum” rather than a dire threat to core democratic rights.

The fight against this threat and the criminal back-to-school and back-to-work policies of both corporate-controlled parties requires the formation of new organizations of struggle, rank-and-file safety committees, which are independent of the AFT, NEA and other unions and committed to mobilizing the working class to close schools and non-essential industries, while fully compensating the workers, unemployed and small businesses, until the pandemic is under control.

This must be combined with the building of a mass political movement of the working class to fight for socialism, including the transformation of the banks and major corporations into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities.

The trillions squandered on the greed of the super-rich must be expropriated and used to provide for the social needs of the population and the development of a society based on equality and workers democracy.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos congratulates Biden as the president-elect packs his transition teams with servants of the corporate oligarchy

Tom Carter

Amazon oligarch and COVID-19 profiteer Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, congratulated president-elect Joe Biden following the declaration four days after the November 3 vote that Biden had won the US presidential election.

“Unity, empathy and decency are not characteristics of a bygone era,” Bezos wrote on Instagram, congratulating Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. “By voting in record numbers, the American people proved again that our democracy is strong.”

Jeff Bezos in 2019 (Image Credit: AP Photo/John Locher, File)

This sentiment was echoed on November 7 by the Business Roundtable, including Bezos as well as the chief executives of Apple, Cisco, Microsoft and Salesforce. The big business organization issued a statement that said: “Business Roundtable congratulates President-elect Biden on his election as 46th President of the United States. We also congratulate Vice President-elect Harris on her historic accomplishment as the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be elected Vice President of the United States… We look forward to working with the incoming Biden Administration and all federal and state policymakers.”

Last week, Biden’s transition team posted the names and most recent employers of members of its agency review teams on the website buildbackbetter.org. Given the composition of these teams, it is easy to see why Bezos and his fellow oligarchs are in a congratulatory mood.

The individuals who have been appointed are listed alongside the company for which they most recently worked, and organized into “teams” based on the government operations they are tasked with reviewing, such as the departments of Commerce, Defense, Education, Labor, State and Homeland Security.

The composition of these agency review teams demonstrates the intersection, if not outright integration, of the technology monopolies, academic aristocracy, beltway think tanks, trade union bureaucracies, giant law firms and the military-intelligence apparatus of war and repression at home and abroad.

Amazon will have not one, but two seats on the transition teams. Tom Sullivan, Amazon’s director of international tax planning, will sit on Biden’s Department of State team. In addition to Sullivan, Mark Schwartz, an “enterprise strategist” for Amazon Web Services, will serve on the extremely powerful Office of Management and Budget (OMB) team. The OMB oversees the $5 trillion federal budget and exerts influence across a broad range of federal regulatory frameworks.

In addition to figures from Amazon, Nicole Isaac, senior director of North American policy at LinkedIn, will sit on the Department of Treasury team. Brandon Belford from Lyft will serve on the Office of Management and Budget team, along with Divya Kumaraiah from Airbnb.

Shara Mohtadi of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is funded by the donations of billionaire oligarch Michael R. Bloomberg, will sit on the Council on Environmental Quality. And no less than four individuals, serving in various capacities, are drawn from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is co-owned by Facebook oligarch Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

Arun Venkataraman from Visa will sit on the team tasked with reviewing the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which will also review the US International Trade Commission and the US Trade and Development Agency. This team will also include Ted Dean from Dropbox.

The labor bureaucracies will also have seats at the table, demonstrating their complete integration into the apparatus of capitalist rule. Beth Antunez, Shital Shah and Marla Ucelli-Kashyap of the American Federation of Teachers, together with Donna Harris-Aikens of the National Education Association, will sit on the Department of Education team.

The labor bureaucracies are also represented by LaQuita Honeysucker from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, who will be on the Department of Agriculture review team, while Josh Nassar of the United Auto Workers will sit on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau team.

Brad Markell of the AFL-CIO will sit on the Department of Energy Team. His name appears right before that of Trisha Miller from the venture capital firm Gates Ventures.

On the Department of Labor team will be Jennifer Abruzzo of the Communications Workers of America, Dora Chen of the Service Employees International Union, Jessica Chu of the Amalgamated Transit Union International, Nadia Marin-Molina of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and Shaun O’Brien of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, among others.

The major academic institutions represented on the list include Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, New York University School of Law, Duke University, Stanford University, Georgetown University and others. Major law firms and consulting firms include Deloitte Consulting; DLA Piper; Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Sidley Austin; Covington & Burling; and Latham & Watkins.

The racial and identity politics promoted by the Democratic Party did not fail to be reflected on the list, with Bonnie Jenkins appointed to the Department of State team from an organization titled Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security. Jenkins, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, previously served as the coordinator for threat reduction programs in the Obama administration’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation.

The Department of Defense team will be led by Kathy Hicks from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who will be joined by Melissa Dalton and Andrew Hunter, also from the CSIS; Stacie Pettyjohn, Christine Wormuth and Terri Tanielian from the RAND Corporation; Ely Ratner from the Center for a New American Security; and Lisa Sawyer of JPMorgan Chase, among others.

The composition of Biden’s agency review teams exposes and refutes all of the pseudo-left and opportunist groups in the orbit of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracies, which have throughout the year attempted to persuade American workers that Biden, the Democratic Party and the unions represented some sort of channel through which they could advance their own independent interests.

The parade of lobbyists, servants and agents of the capitalist class into the incoming Biden administration prompted a defensive article in the New York Times on Thursday, titled “Progressives Press Biden to Limit Corporate Influence in Administration.”

The title of the article essentially acknowledges that “corporate influence” (i.e., corruption) is playing a pervasive role in the formation of the incoming administration, and suggests “limits” on that influence.

The article concedes that “Mr. Biden’s team included executives from Amazon Web Services, Lyft, Airbnb and a vice president of WestExec Advisors, a Washington consulting firm whose secretive list of clients includes financial services, technology and pharmaceutical companies.”

The Times then points to the efforts of “progressive Democrats” who are advocating “for tighter ethics rules.” This is nothing but a fig leaf for the otherwise naked domination of the Democratic Party by the interests of the military-intelligence-corporate-financial oligarchy.

The facts presented in the Times article themselves paint a devastating picture of how the so-called “left” wing of the party is being shoved aside as the fat cats shoulder their way into the new administration. In a joint letter sent Thursday, a number of organizations associated with the so-called “progressive wing” of the Democratic Party pleaded with Biden not to “nominate or hire corporate executives, lobbyists, and prominent corporate consultants,” and to adopt “ethics” rules to limit corruption.

These and other feeble efforts by the “progressive Democrats” are being unceremoniously ignored. The Times itself was compelled to acknowledge that “Mr. Biden has not always shared the left’s concerns about lobbying.”

Tendencies like the Democratic Socialists of America were used by the Democratic Party during the election campaign to further the Democrats’ electoral prospects, but within days of the vote they were tossed aside and roundly denounced for having supposedly cost the Democrats votes and positions with their “radical” and “socialist” rhetoric.

These “socialist” elements had been promised “space” in a Biden administration, but they showed up after the election only to find their “Green New Deal” and other promised reforms piled up in trash bags by the curb.

There is nothing unexpected about the emerging right-wing, pro-war, pro-Wall Street composition of the incoming Biden administration. Biden himself spent decades in Washington as a corrupt bag-man for wealthy interests in the state of Delaware, the legal headquarters of hundreds of thousands of corporations that take advantage of its business-friendly laws.

As vice president, Biden was reportedly opposed even to the barebones rules against corruption that were imposed during the Obama presidency. In the words of the Times: “When he was vice president under Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden bristled at the strict lobbying rules, which he contended would deprive their nascent administration of experienced talent.”

From the moment Biden secured a lead in the voting results, the Democratic Party swung viciously to the right, attacking “socialism” and the “left” in general. On a conference call with House Democrats after the election, former CIA agent Abigail Spanberger, now a representative from Virginia, shouted: “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”

While the “socialists” have been escorted out of the back door, the front door has been thrown open to corporate executives, lobbyists and consultants to staff the new administration.

American workers should sever all ties with the Democratic Party, an old political mafia totally dominated by the capitalist class, as well as with all organizations and tendencies still promoting illusions in it.

Amazon workers, for example, cannot fight against Amazon with a political party stacked with agents of Amazon. They need their own organizations, which they must build and control themselves.

Windstorm leaves hundreds of thousands without power across the northeastern and midwestern US

Kathleen Martin

On Sunday, November 15, a strong windstorm with gusts up to 66 miles per hour swept across the northeastern and midwestern United States, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of households and businesses in the region.

According to the Weather Channel, more than 792,000 customers from New York to Illinois lost power Sunday. As of Monday evening, nearly 140,000 customers nationally were still without electricity from the previous evening. The most severe outages were reported in Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Unlike other developed countries, power lines in the US are still above-ground, subject to even the smallest weather events. Power outages from downed power lines, even during relatively minor storms, take place on a semi-regular basis. Dead branches, fallen trees, and sustained winds often down power lines, creating hazardous live wires and fires, and knocking power out across the country’s decaying infrastructure.

A fallen tree in the backyard of a home in Detroit, Michigan (Credit: Twitter/@DTE_Energy)

Sunday’s outages have seriously disrupted life for the thousands of people working or learning from home, sheltering in place, or quarantining due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michigan, which has seen a massive surge in positive COVID-19 cases and death rates in the last few weeks, and which just implemented further lockdown measures, had the most outages at over 340,000 on Sunday. Nearly 150,000 were still waiting for repairs and without power during the day Monday, according to DTE Energy, one of the state’s utility companies which raked in $319 million in its 2019 third-quarter earnings.

DTE, like many of the other widely-hated utility companies, has notoriously and criminally scaled back its tree-trimming maintenance, allowing nature to run its course on the aging power grid.

In Connecticut, over 16,000 Eversource Energy customers were still affected by Monday. At one point during the peak of the storm on Sunday, over 36,000 in Connecticut were without power. Several school districts were delayed or closed on Monday from either outages or storm damage.

Eversource spokesman Frank Poirot told a local news outlet, “Sunday’s intense storm brought a combination of heavy rain saturating the ground and high winds that hit the state, causing trees already weakened by the prolonged drought to come down, taking power lines with them and leaving thousands of our customers without power.” Eversource Energy’s total 2019 earnings were $909.1 million.

In Ohio, nearly 100,000 had no power as the storm swept through Sunday evening. Northeast Ohio was worst hit, and by noon on Monday over 20,000 in Cuyahoga County and 12,000 in Summit County still did not have power.

First Energy reported that power “should be restored by Thursday at 4pm,” leaving many without power during the pandemic for days on end. At least one fatality was recorded, that of a 63-year-old woman in Dayton who was struck by a falling tree. First Energy’s 2019 earnings were $908 million.

Several recreation centers and bars in the region opened their doors to residents so they could power electronics and warm up. Residents were required to social distance and wear face masks.

Pennsylvania saw nearly 57,000 residents lost power. Most were First Energy customers but several thousand from other utility companies were also impacted.

Tornado warnings were issued in seven counties in New York. Water levels in Lake Erie rose dramatically due the wind, causing significant lakeshore flooding and erosion in the area. Approximately 40,000 lost power during the worst part of the storm on Sunday. In-person and remote learning was canceled for several schools in the western portion of the state.

Power outages are tracked by private utility companies on a state-by-state basis. No real-time data is managed or tracked by the federal government. However, according to PowerOutage.us, a private company which aggregates data from utility companies, there were still over 87,000 customers without power in Michigan as of this writing.

A recent analysis by the Department of Energy found that there has been a 67 percent increase in major power outages, defined as 50,000 customers or more, from weather events in the United States over the last 20 years. This is due in large part to decayed infrastructure which is barely maintained by private utility companies which rack up multi-million to billion dollar profits every year.

It is not clear how the power outage will impact the skyrocketing cases of COVID-19 in each state. While many state and local governments are requiring or encouraging residents to follow recommended guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, thousands have been forced to mix with other households to warm up, charge phones, get internet access to complete work or school assignments, plug in needed medical equipment, and other basic necessities.

The private utility companies, many of which refused to implement a moratorium on payments at the beginning of the pandemic—and which swiftly cut power to those who cannot afford their bills, pandemic aside—must be expropriated by the working class and run democratically so that utilities including heat, water, electricity and internet can be provide for free as essential services. Trillions of dollars must be invested in modernizing the country’s infrastructure so that predictable weather events like rain and high winds do not disrupt or devastate workers lives.

Such a development can only be achieved through the reorganization of society to meet human need and not private profit.

Boeing announces 7,000 additional layoffs

Steve Filips

Boeing, the giant US commercial and military aviation manufacturer, has announced 7,000 layoffs, bringing its total to 30,000 for the year. The company cited the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the airline industry as the underlying cause, and also announced that there were no orders forthcoming for the entire month of October, the second consecutive month where this occurred. Boeing intends to make these cuts despite receiving $17 billion in federal bailout money earlier in the year.

Additionally, 37 orders of the 737 MAX, the airliner whose serious technological defects were covered up by the company, and led to two separate crashes and 346 deaths, have been taken off the books.

Boeing logo (Credit: Flickr.com, sota)

The collapse in new orders is driven by the crippling of the airline industry by the coronavirus pandemic, with the amount of passengers declining 65 percent. This in turn has led to a wave of route consolidations and closures. According to OAG Aviation Worldwide, the airline industry reduced 47,756 air routes operating in January to 33,416 in November, a 30 percent decline.

In March, while haggling with Congress for a share of the trillion-dollar corporate bailout under the CARES Act, the airline industry held workers’ jobs for ransom, threatening tens of thousands of job cuts unless the federal government intervened. In the end, the airline industry promised only to delay any layoffs until September 30. The industry group Airlines for America announced that US carriers have shed 90,000 of the 460,000 industry jobs since March, a 20 percent reduction. Southwest Airlines is also threatening layoffs for the first time in its history unless workers accept 10 percent wage cuts.

Indicating the worsening position of the airline industry, 25 of the 37 canceled orders for the 737 MAX were dropped by Boeing because of the financial weakness of the purchasers.

Southwest Airlines traditionally uses variants of Boeing’s 737 aircraft and was the largest customer for the 737 MAX. It was forced to cancel thousands of flights after the 737 MAX was grounded, and as a result Southwest is considering purchasing A220 aircraft from Airbus, Boeing’s European rival. Boeing, the largest US exporter, and Airbus are at the center of trade war measures between the US and Europe. In retaliation for increased US tariffs, the EU last week slapped 15 percent tariffs on US aircraft.

However, Airbus, as with all major manufacturing companies, maintains operations all over the world, including the United States. In 2015 it opened a plant in Mobile, Alabama with the capacity to produce 40 to 50 A220 and A320 aircraft per year.

In attempt to cut labor costs, Boeing has announced plans to shift all production of its new 787 Dreamliner from Everett, Washington to North Charleston, South Carolina.

The International Association of Machinists, which has 35,000 members at Boeing, has done nothing to mount a defense of jobs at the Everett facility, calling on workers instead to wait until 2024 when the contract is up for renegotiation. In 2014, under the bogus pretext of “job security,” the IAM forced through a vote on a concessions-laden contract, which had eliminated pensions for new hires, after it was initially rejected by the membership.

Mass layoffs are also taking place at other aviation companies. Raytheon Technologies, which is the product of the April merger between Raytheon and United Technologies, announced last month it is cutting its workforce by 15,000, blaming the dramatic downturn in commercial passenger airline demand.

The company has also announced that it is moving all production from Connecticut to Asheville, North Carolina, where the company expects significantly cheaper labor costs.

GE Aviation announced in May it would eliminate up to 13,000 jobs, a quarter of its workforce. Of this total, 10,000 cuts are taking place at two locations, Cincinnati and Dayton. David Joyce, the head of GE Aviation, said of the layoffs: “[The] comprehensive strategy we are developing for resizing the business is consistent with the forecast of our commercial market.”

Nepal-India Relations: A View from Kathmandu

Yubaraj Ghimire

A somewhat long meeting between Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Oli and Secretary of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), Samant Goel, on 21 October 2020 continues to trigger a debate in Nepal’s political circles about openness—or lack thereof—in Nepal-India relations.

Oli, who hosted the meeting, has been criticised—even by his own party—of not only breach of protocol and diplomatic norms, but also for meeting with the intelligence chief rather than a diplomat or senior political leader at a time when Nepal-India relations are their lowest ebb. This comes after New Delhi and Kathmandu published new political maps, with both sides including the 370 sq km area of Kalapani, Lipulekh, and Limpiyadhura in their respective versions.

Oli clarified that he met Goel not in his capacity as Secretary (R), but as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s special emissary. The territorial dispute has soured bilateral relations which have suffered an intermittent does of irritants: India only ‘noting’ but not recognising Nepal’s new constitution promulgated in September 2015, and the border blockade that created enormous shortages and hardship for the Nepali public for nearly five months.

Nepal’s journey to radical politics and a prolonged transition began in 2005-06 when the Maoists—the ultra-left force that had been leading the insurgency against the state for a decade at the time—and seven major left, democratic, and regional (Terai or plain-centric) political parties were brought together under India’s mediatory role. The goals charted by the deal reached in New Delhi in November 2005, commonly known as the 12-point agreement, were the end of absolute monarchy, consolidation of peace and democracy, and economic prosperity. In April 2006, in his last declaration as the Monarch, Gyanendra Shah said that Nepal would have a new constitution written by an elected Constituent Assembly. Shah was put under suspension soon after and the monarchy abolished in May 2008.

The constitution declared Nepal a federal democratic republic and a secular state. It is however contested by a huge, although unorganised, opposition of dissenters, not just for its vagueness about many crucial issues such as centre-state relations, but also the way in which the only Hindu kingdom in the world was declared a secular republic without involving the people directly, or through a referendum. In October 2020, the government secretly issued a circular that the country will henceforth be identified only as ‘Nepal’, without using the terms ‘secular’, ‘federal’, and ‘republic’ in both internal and external communications. 

This indicates major problems within Nepal’s domestic politics, which have manifested in the brewing dissent against KP Oli’s government that secured a nearly two-third majority in parliament less than three years ago. Nepal is nowhere near achieving economic prosperity, consolidated peace, democracy, and political stability as envisaged by the 12-point agreement. There are also signs of visible distrust and uncertainty in its relationships with India and China, its immediate neighbours, and the world outside. The distrust between Nepal and India is mutual, and it puts both sides’ diplomacy to the test. Will the future relationship conform to the rhetoric often parroted by both, which is of Nepal and India’s common civilisational, cultural, and historical links leading to a shared destiny?

The heat and dust raised by Goel’s visit to Nepal must thus be understood in context. Former Secretary (R) PKH Tharakan played a crucial role in bringing Nepal’s eight parties to agree on a common agenda 15 years ago, in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). Why then has his successor’s visit raised such doubt and resentment in Nepal? The answer is China. Between the radical changes ushered in 2006 and now, China has emerged as the most influential actor not only in Nepal’s investment and development sectors, but also as a key factor in Nepal’s internal politics, thus displacing India.

India’s mediation for change in Nepal, and its successful lobbying of endorsement by major Western powers, mainly the US and the European Union (EU), was seen as a matter of strategic concern by China. A suspicious China began making deep inroads into Nepal and magnifying investment manifold, across a range of crucial sectors: hydro energy, trade and investment, post-earthquake reconstruction, and tourism. It has been the biggest FDI contributor in Nepal for four years in a row. 

China also exploits India’s perceived negative image in Nepal as an external force that ‘interferes too much in internal politics’, and a development partner that has a record of poor delivery compared to pledges. Further, there is still skepticism about international motivations since the monarchy, a party to the conflict, was kept out of the peace accord signed in November 2006.

General MM Naravane, India’s Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), visited Nepal less than a month after Goel. The next visit is scheduled to be by  Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Sringla. However, whether these engagements will re-initiate a culture of dialogue and be effective in resolving bilateral tensions amicably and to mutual benefit remains to be seen. India must realise that the management of internal politics is Nepal’s own sovereign business—but certainly with the commitment that it will not allow its territory to be used in detriment to India’s core or vital interests.

India-Nepal Relations: A View from New Delhi

Sangeeta Thapliyal

India-Nepal relations have been on a downward slope. Many have blamed the border blockade as the turning point; others have pointed to China’s increasing influence. Many more have highlighted Nepal’s domestic politics as being primarily responsible.

What looked like a visible upswing in relations following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grand reception in Kathmandu in 2014 did not last long. Modi visited Nepal four times in his first tenure as PM and signed many agreements on infrastructure, tourism, trade, and culture. However, these developments coincided with Nepal’s adoption of the new constitution.

The Indian stance on this was seen unfavourably by Nepal. The official Indian statement said, “We note the promulgation in Nepal today of a Constitution.” In the same statement, India also expressed concern about violence in response to the new constitution, and urged “that issues on which there are differences should be resolved through dialogue in an atmosphere free from violence and intimidation, and institutionalized in a manner that would enable broad based ownership and acceptance.”

India’s preference was for a consensual constitution, which took all stakeholder interests and concerns into account. Within Nepal, however, the Madhesis and Janjatis were opposed to the constitution. Ultimately, the Madhesis closed the border with India, obstructing movement of goods across the border. This caused great discomfort to the people, who had been affected by the earthquake just a few months earlier.

The strain in relations thus worsened. While 1975 and 1989 also saw border blockades, political parties and the Nepali public had then blamed their monarchy and government for deteriorating relations with India. This time around, the government, political parties, as well as public sentiment, especially in the hills, blamed India, and supported the government in looking for trade alternatives.

Nepal looked to China to bail it out of economic hardship. To meet its fuel deficiency, Nepal signed agreements to import petrol, diesel, and petroleum products. China agreed to supply 1,000 metric tons of fuel on a grant basis. Agreements on infrastructure development in Nepal, hydropower, trade, and construction of railways and highways linking the two countries were also signed.

At the time, Nepal had only one trade point with China, through the Kodari pass that had been damaged during the 2013 landslide and later, the earthquake. Another trade route was opened through Kerung pass in 2014, which was later connected with the rail link from Xigaze. Kathmandu and Beijing are planning to open seven more trade routes. In 2017, Nepal signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Chinese presence across various domains in Nepal, such as socio-economic, political, and defence, has increased over the past few years. Incidentally, the increased interaction has also diminished China’s attractiveness, with local media reporting incidents of clashes between Chinese nationals and Nepalis. Similarly, the media and political commentators—hitherto cautious in their commentary—have begun to question the government's policies and projects with China.

More recently, Nepal countered India’s new map and laid claim on the Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura passes in Uttarakhand. It became more assertive after India inaugurated a road to Lipulekh pass in 2020. A new map with the aforementioned territory was unanimously passed by Nepal's parliament.

Some Indian policy analysts have suggested that this was done at China’s behest given its coincidence with the India-China border standoff. Historically, these passes belonged to India. People used them for trade and pilgrimage to Mansarovar. Nepal has never used them. Kathmandu’s aggressive posturing on boundary issues with New Delhi, despite other pressing issues such as the pandemic, led to the suspicion that Prime Minister KP Oli was trying to divert domestic attention by raising issues related to nationalism and sovereignty.

Ultimately, there are various reasons for the negative turn in the bilateral relationship. First is Nepal’s domestic politics, with PM Oli attempting to usher in anti-India nationalism to counter dissent within his party and from opposition parties. This age-old political tactic still works like a charm. Secondly, PM Oli’s personality must also be assessed. He is a confident, assertive, and astute politician who is currently quite displeased with the belittling of his office by Indian bureaucrats.

It is Nepali public sentiment and transboundary people-to-people links that have helped the bilateral relationship withstand political challenges. However, irresponsible reporting in the Indian media and personal comments on Oli that have verged on slander have impacted the Nepali view of India. Nepal amending its Citizenship Act has also done little to alleviate the depression in the relationship.

The Indian government has shown a preference for solemn resolve to assuage tensions and not let political tensions spill over into other areas of cooperation. Over the past two years, energy and infrastructure projects such as the 69 km-long Motihari-Amlekhgunj petroleum pipeline have been completed. The pipeline was inaugurated in 15 months instead of the stipulated 30 months. Survey work for a railway link from Raxaul to Kathmandu was completed in December 2019, and the Jayanagar-Kurtha broad gauge rail is expected to be operational from December 2020.

During the pandemic, India has lent periodic assistance to Nepal by supplying PPE kits, medical supplies, ventilators, etc. In keeping with tradition, Indian Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General MM Naravane visited Nepal on the invitation of Nepal Army Chief, General Purna Chandra Thapa on 4 November, in a continuing Indian attempt to reset the relationship.  

Nepal does not emerge as a ‘loser’ in this scenario. It has sparked further competition between its neighbours, and is benefitting from both relationships. It has tried to shrink the space traditionally occupied by India by opening up space for China—especially in the political and economic spheres. India’s projects thus appear to be directed more at countering China and reclaiming lost space in Nepal.

At Odds with Haitian Presidency, a Government Watchdog is Weakened by Executive Decree

Jake Johnston & Kira Paulemon

On Friday, November 6, the Haitian government published in Le Moniteur a new decree limiting the powers of the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes (CSCCA). The decree itself was signed by the president and ministers nearly two months earlier, on September 9, but was not formally made public until this past weekend. The court, one of only a handful of nominally independent government institutions, is responsible for reviewing draft government contracts as well as conducting audits. While its functions and title have been altered over time, the court was first established in 1823, and was only completely eliminated during the 19-year US occupation of Haiti. It was reestablished afterward and enshrined in the 1987 constitution.

President Moïse has ruled by decree, which is not formally allowed by the Haitian constitution, since January 2020, when the terms of most of parliament expired. He has extended executive powers, reforming the penal code, naming a new electoral council with a mandate to reform the constitution, and now weakening one of the last remaining institutions exercising government oversight. The latest decree follows years of conflict between the CSCCA and the Haitian presidency.

In 2018, anticorruption protesters began advocating for an investigation into Moïse and his predecessors’ handling of billions in Petrocaribe-related spending. Moïse, under increasing pressure from the streets, pledged to support such an investigation. The CSCCA has since released three audit reports on Petrocaribe, finding widespread irregularities and fraudulent practices in the management of the Venezuelan-led aid program, and directly implicating the president, and the company he led before his election. Last year, members of the court had to temporarily leave the country due to threats. As of yet, there has been no real judicial progress in holding anyone accountable for the misuse of public funds. The president has denied all the CSCCA’s allegations.

The conflict has extended beyond just the Petrocaribe investigation, however. In June, the court raised questions over a contract to provide the presidency with helicopters, which had gone to a close political ally. The same month, the CSCCA was accused of hampering the response to COVID when it identified irregularities in a number of contracts to provide the health ministry with face masks awarded under a state of emergency exception. The contracts, worth about $10 million, moved forward despite the concerns — which included companies that had no experience in the sector and one which was owned by the wife of a current minister in the government. The health emergency “served as a pretext … to accelerate the corruption machine,” according to The Center of Analysis and Research in Human Rights (CARDH). The organization found that $34 million in emergency spending had bypassed CSCCA review all together.

In late August, the court blocked a $57 million no-bid government contract with the US company, General Electric, and asked the government to make needed corrections. The president has held the deal up as a key to his pledge to provide electricity across the country. According to the court, one reason for the court’s delay in approving the GE contract was the presence of unknown subcontractors that were to be paid a portion of the total amount.

On September 6, Moïse held a “community dialogue” at the National Palace, where he declared that it would be necessary to “reform” the CSCCA. Public works minister Joacéus Nader went so far as to say the court was blocking progress in the country, and referred to its independent judges as “ignorant” and “incompetent.”

In response to comments made by Moïse, the court issued a five-page statement outlining a series of acts of intimidation and threats on its members. The court also provided some of the reasons why it had not approved contracts. “How is the Court responsible for the invalidity of this draft contract? Where are the blocking acts? Who is blocking whom, or who is blocking what?” the court asked.

Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe attempted to ease tensions, apologizing just days later on Nader’s behalf, and telling Haitian daily Le Nouvelliste that while it was possible to remove bottlenecks in contract processing, changes would not be made without the court’s involvement. We now know that by the time of Jouthe’s apology, the government had already drafted and signed the decree curtailing the court’s powers — but it had not yet been made public.

Two weeks after Jouthe’s apology, Nader appeared at the CSCCA’s offices in Petionville, claiming he and the large group he arrived with were there simply to check on the status of the General Electric contract. But the president of the court had a different interpretation: “When you come into an institution with a group of heavily armed men who have their faces covered and dressed in black, and whom we can’t even identify if they are police and they cross all of the perimeters to go into an area that is extremely sensitive where even some of the judges don’t go to, that is nothing more than an act of intimidation,” Rogavil Boisguéné told the Miami Herald. “It was a threat to prevent the court from doing its job.”

With the recent changes made by decree, the Haitian presidency will no longer have to wait for the court’s approval before moving forward with government contracts. In the decree, the Moïse administration argues that the reform is necessary due to the “unjustified slowness in the signing of contracts,” which, it argues, “is detrimental to the socio-economic development of the country.” A significant change is that the court’s opinions on draft contracts will only be “advisory” now. The court also will only have three to five days to issue an opinion before the government can move forward with the contract in question. Overall, the court’s review has been changed from ex-ante to ex-post; the court will still provide oversight, but only after the contract has been executed.

On November 12, the CSCCA’s president issued a brief statement taking note of the government’s decree. In the release, Boisguéné states that the court’s ex-ante control is derived from a “strict application” of the constitution and reminds public officials that “the administrative and financial responsibilities attached to their functions are strictly personal” and that is it “their responsibility” to “ensure that … opinions are respected within the framework of this constitutional provision.”

Haiti’s public finance system is notoriously cumbersome. In 2016, the World Bank noted that multiple institutions played similar roles in approving contracts, and that the CSCCA was conflicted in that it both approved contracts and then audited spending afterward. The National Commission on Public Procurement (CNMP) is also tasked with approving government contracts. “There is considerable debate within Haiti and among donors over the appropriateness and the utility of this ex-ante role [for the CSCCA]. However, it continues to date,” the Bank wrote. The new decree specifies that if the CNMP has approved of a contract, the CSCCA cannot prevent its execution regardless of if irregularities are identified.

But, shifting the CSCCA’s role without further efforts to ensure it is able to provide effective oversight on the back end sends a dangerous message, according to activists. The court would still be able to conduct audit reports such as those it produced on Petrocaribe, but the lack of judicial follow up to that report serves as an example of why limiting the court to after-the-fact auditing will be of limited value in preventing government waste or holding officials accountable.

With the president replacing the heads of the anticorruption and anti-money-laundering institutions in 2017, parliament now dissolved and the judiciary seemingly unable or unwilling to take on politically sensitive cases, the CSCCA had been one of the last remaining institutions able to check the powers of the presidency. In a country with a long track record of impunity, the changes have sounded alarm bells.

“Since 1986, we never had a head of state who had shown so much desire to neutralize the institutions of control,” economist Etzer Emile Tweeted. “This new decree could open the door for more acts of corruption in a country where impunity is king,” he added. Emile acknowledged that administrative procedures may be burdensome, but “it does not mean we have to remove the locks.” Checks and balances, he continued, “are critical … to guarantee transparency and good governance.”

On Sunday, a group of opposition political leaders issued a statement decrying the government’s desire to “to transform the country into a lawless state.” Moïse, the leaders argue, has repeatedly ignored constitutional limits on executive power, and they noted that ministers who sign these unconstitutional decrees could face legal repercussions after leaving office.

The president, in an interview Monday morning with Tele Métropole, was defiant. He repeated the argument that the reform was necessary to take on entrenched interests that simply wanted to block progress, and claimed that the decree would actually strengthen the CSCCA by allowing it to just focus on its auditing role. There is little doubt that Haiti’s procurement system needs to be reformed, but, in a comment to HRRW, a former high-ranking government official, who asked to remain anonymous, offered a different rationale for the changes: “To have the road completely opened to allow contracts without any restrictions to his friends or partners.”

Hindutva Hindrance to Economic Growth and Development in India

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The perils of Indian economy are products of directionless economic policies of Modi government. It is led by ignorant leadership and arrogance of Hindutva politics based on exclusionary ideology, which is inspired by European Nazism and fascism. There is a method madness in the reactionary politics of BJP and RSS. It intends to convert multicultural India into a monolithic India based on Hindutva. It is a reactionary political outlook shaped by national and global capitalist classes.  These forces have unrestricted access to national treasury and natural resources in India under Modi led government. From deregulation, demonetisation, GST to pandemic lockdowns, Modi government did everything to dismantle both supply and demand side of the Indian economy. The collapse of two primary pillars of economy led to the growth of unemployment and declining purchasing power of the masses. The consumption and consumer demands declined immediately, which shocked Indian economy and pushed it to undeclared recession for the first time in Indian economic history. Modi government is doing everything to protect corporate interests, when people are trying to find ways to survive with hunger, homelessness, unemployment and Coronavirus pandemic. Indian economic predicaments are inherent within exclusionary Hindutva politics. The economic recovery, growth and development in India depends on social, religious, and political inclusive culture, where citizens are equal shareholders of economic opportunities.

Hindutva exclusionary politics is trying to hide all its failures and constantly diverting public attention. The advocates of Hindutva glorify mythological Hindu past and blame all previous governments for all ills of Indian society today. The current problems are products of past deeds. It is a perfect Hindutva recipe that derives its philosophical legitimacy from the Karma theory of the Bhagavad Gita. The current problems are products of Hindutva economic policies, which are geared towards upholding the interests of corporates in India. It is evident in the rise of corporate wealth and decline of per capita income of the working Indians.  Hindutva uses neoliberal dispossession to mobilise the masses and consolidates its Brahmanical social and cultural order. At the same time, Hindutva politics accelerates neoliberal economic policies that dispossess the masses. This political and economic contradictions are integral to Hindutva politics. The mainstream mass medias are playing a central role in hiding these contradictions by promoting Hindutva agenda of dispossession and disenfranchisement of majority of Indian citizens; Muslims, religious minorities, lower caste, tribals, women and working classes. Hindutva exclusionary ideology is not only depriving Muslims from their citizenship rights but also accelerating deprivation of lower caste, women and working-class population from participating in economic opportunities by privatising national resources.

Hindutva politics is opposed to the idea of India as an inclusive, constitutional, liberal and secular democracy. It follows mythological theocracy, which is opposed to very foundation of scientific and modern India of 21st century. The Indian economic perils are products of such a reactionary and medieval ideology of Hindutva. It is shaping India with its Hindutva shock therapy based on prohibitions, controls, and commands over everyday lives of people. Hindutva discourse is trying to dominate every aspects of Indian life from food habits, dress patterns, education, health to reproductive rights. These regressive outlooks are fundamentally opposed to economic growth and development in India. Because social, political, economic religious, and cultural marginalisation weakens citizens, families, societies, states and institutions to mobilise internal resources of India.  The centralisation of power by Hindutva forces further diminish the abilities of local and provincial governments to mobilise local resources. The availability, accessibility and distribution of goods and services depend on production, demand and supply. Hindutva politics destroys every economic foundations of the country by creating social and religious conflicts and violently suppressing political opposition and democratic decentralisation processes.

Hindutva model of economic and political governance of Modi government is based on multiple forms of exclusionary practices that hinder economic growth and development in India. Hindutva’s innate hatred for Muslims is the first form exclusion, which diminishes more than fourteen percentage of Indian population and their abilities to contribute to their individual lives and to the national economy. Hindutva politics considers women only as mothers, sisters and wives who can be prayed inside the house. Such a patriarchal approach discourages civic and economic participation for nearly forty-eight percentage of Indian women population. The apartheid Hindutva ideology believes in caste hierarchy, which disables social and economic abilities of nearly twenty five percent of lower caste and tribal population. It means eighty-seven percentage of Indian population are living under the conditions of structural barriers that does not allow them to grow and be the shareholders of national life.  The processes of marginalisation, denials of citizenship rights and lack of participation creates social, political and economic conditions of institutionalised deprivation, which gives power to Hindutva forces. Therefore, crisis crime, dominance, and deprivation are four weapons of Hindutva politics in India.

Hindutva exclusionary politics creates conditions of deprivation trap, which breeds unemployment, poverty, debt, destitution, marginalisation, illiteracy and illness. These outcomes are dangerous and weakening of India and Indians both in short run and long run. Social coexistence, peace and inclusive cultures are foundations of economic growth and development. But the idea of inclusive culture and peace are alien ideals and antithetical to Hindutva politics. Therefore, Hindutva ideology is a hinderance to economic growth and development in India.

The Hindutva politics led Modi can neither be reformed nor can be revised. The only alternative is to defeat it ideologically and politically till it becomes qualitatively and quantitatively irrelevant and illegal in India. Hindutva is Indian version of Nazism and fascism. It is detrimental to India, Indians and humanity. India and Indians will suffer social and economic underdevelopment as long as Hindutva rules the country. The institutionalisation of Hindutva discrimination destroys all potentials and conditions for economic growth and development. The struggle against Hindutva is struggle against caste, gender and religious based discrimination in India. The united struggle against Hindutva politics must develop radical narratives based on social, political and cultural integration, inclusive economic and development policies for peace and prosperity for the masses. These are essential conditions of sustainable economic growth and secular development of society in India.