UK: Working-class people in dangerous occupations most likely to die from COVID-19

Robert Stevens

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed that working-class people are most likely to die from COVID-19 in England and Wales.

Its report, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by occupation, England and Wales,” covers deaths registered between March 9 and December 28, 2020.

The survey covers deaths “involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by different occupational groups, among men and women aged 20 to 64 years in England and Wales.” It found that “7,961 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the working age population” were registered during the period surveyed. The almost 8,000 deaths recorded represented a twelfth of all coronavirus deaths at the time of publication.

The ONS notes, “When looking at broad groups of occupations, men who worked in elementary occupations (699 deaths) or caring, leisure and other service occupations (258 deaths) had the highest rates of death involving COVID-19, with 66.3 and 64.1 deaths per 100,000 males, respectively.”

Elementary occupations include postal workers, builders, cleaners, security staff and professions generally not requiring a qualification. The second highest death rate revealed by the statistics was among workers employed in caring, leisure and other service occupations.

The top 10 occupations of men who died from COVID-19 were taxi and cab drivers (209 deaths), security guards (140), large goods vehicle drivers (118), storage workers (111), care workers/home carers (107) processing plant workers (100), van drivers (97), builders (85), bus and coach drivers (83), chefs (82).

Among women, “process, plant and machine operatives (57 deaths) and caring, leisure and other service occupations (460 deaths) had the highest rates of death involving COVID-19 when looking at broad occupational groups, with 33.7 and 27.3 deaths per 100,000 females, respectively.”

The top 10 occupations in which women have died from COVID-19 are: care workers/home carers (240 deaths), sales assistants (111), nurses (110), cleaners (95), other administrative jobs (58), nursing assistants (54), teaching assistants (37), kitchen/catering assistants (36), personal assistants (30), payroll managers/clerks (26), government administrators (26).

In total there were 594 deaths in the care sector. One in seven of all working-age women who died from the disease last year were care workers. Of 2,833 women aged between 20 and 64 who died after catching COVID-19, 400 worked in care services. This is the highest number of women to have died in any single profession category.

Social care occupations had a “statistically significantly higher rates of death involving COVID-19 when compared with rates of death involving COVID-19 in the population among those of the same age and sex.” In these occupations there were 79.0 deaths per 100,000 among males and a total of 150 deaths, and 35.9 deaths per 100,000 among females, with 319 total deaths.

The lives of hundreds of social care workers employed in the care sector were sacrificed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, which ruthless implemented a herd immunity policy. In the first weeks of the pandemic, the government flooded care homes with elderly and vulnerable people who had been in hospital. Many were not tested for COVID-19.

As a result, over 18,000 residents and staff members died. The ONS report notes, “Almost three in four of the deaths involving COVID-19 in social care occupations (347 out of 469 deaths; 74.0%) were in care workers and home carers, with 109.9 deaths per 100,000 males (107 deaths) and 47.1 deaths per 100,000 females (240 deaths).”

The ONS reports that for the period surveyed there were “139 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) in teaching and educational professionals aged 20 to 64 years”. It acknowledges, “Of the specific teaching and education professions, the rate of death involving COVID-19 in male secondary education teaching professionals was statistically significantly higher than the rate of death involving COVID-19 in professional occupations in men of the same age.”

Despite government lockdown guidance that workers should work at home in those occupations that allow it, companies are routinely herding staff into offices that are previously unacknowledged transmission vectors for COVID-19.

The ONS reports 364 deaths in administrative occupations. The dangers facing office workers has been massive downplayed throughout the pandemic, despite outbreaks at headquarter buildings of corporations and at call centres, including one that has ripped through the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) HQ in Wales in recent months. At least 530 workers at the site have tested positive. Last week, it was reported that a worker employed there had died.

The DVLA headquarters in Swansea (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

This is just one of many outbreaks in office settings. Figures obtained this week from Public Health England via a Freedom of Information request from BBC 5 Live, revealed that there were than 60 suspected Covid outbreaks in offices in just the first two weeks of the current lockdown in England, beginning January 6.

The BBC reported, “The data from Public Health England, obtained by the 5 Live Investigations team, lists the different types of workplaces where there have been clusters of cases. The figures reveal for the first time which are the most susceptible to Covid outbreaks, with offices coming top.

“The data showed there were more than 500 outbreaks, or suspected outbreaks, in offices in the second half of 2020— more than in supermarkets, construction sites, warehouses, restaurants and cafes combined.”

Both reports underscore the criminality of the government’s herd immunity policy, which has led to the UK recording over 106,000 deaths, the fifth highest death toll in the world. Other countries with a death toll higher than 100,000— India, Mexico, Brazil and the United States—all have far larger populations than Britain.

The real number of deaths in the UK is, moreover, substantially higher than the government measure. According to a Financial Times model there had been an estimated 120,200 excess deaths by last week.

The figures made available from the Office of National Statistics and Public Health England add to a growing body of evidence confirming that the disease impacts most severely on the working class.

An ONS report released in May, “Deaths involving COVID-19 by local area and socioeconomic deprivation,” established that those residing in the most deprived communities are more than twice as likely to die from the coronavirus than those in the wealthiest districts.

The government and employers could never have imposed such mass losses of lives in workplaces without the assistance of the Labour Party and the trade unions, who have worked in a de facto coalition government with the Tories. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has continued the stance of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and offered to back Prime Minister Boris Johnson with “constructive criticism” in the “national interest”.

The trade unions never lifted a finger to ensure a full lockdown and the safety and necessary financial support for millions of workers. They have overseen the deaths of thousands of their members and worked with the government to ensure a “ mass return to work ” by prematurely ending the limited national spring lockdown.

Responding to the ONS deaths by occupation report, Trades Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary Frances O'Grady had the gall to state that workplace Covid-19 deaths have been “vastly under-reported”. She added, "Everyone should be safe at work. But this pandemic has exposed huge inequalities in our labour market. People working in low-paid and insecure jobs have been forced to shoulder much higher risk, with too many losing their lives.”

The TUC will do nothing to oppose any of this, with O’Grady stating only that “The Government urgently needs to beef up its workplace safety guidance and get tough on employers who put their workers in harm's way."

Britain’s flood defences continue to deteriorate

Barry Mason

Last year, over 3,400 crucial flood defence structures across England were deemed to be in poor condition.

The research arm of the environmental charity Greenpeace, Unearthed, published a report on January 24 noting, “New data, obtained from the Environment Agency (EA) using Freedom of Information rules, shows that 3,460 ‘high consequence’ flood defence assets were rated as being in poor or very poor condition in 2019/20. That’s 6 percent of all such assets in England, an increase on the previous year after many defences were damaged in last winter’s flooding.”

Out of the 3,460, 791 of the assets were classed as very poor, having severe defects which could lead them to fail completely. The EA defines high consequence assets as “flood defence assets that contribute to managing flood risk in a location where the consequence on people and property of an asset failing is high”.

Large parts of the UK have just suffered flooding from Storm Christoph. The Environment Agency issued 130 flood warnings across England, with 225 less severe flood alerts. Residents were forced to leave their homes in parts of Ruthin, North Wales, and Maghull in Merseyside due to rising floodwaters.

In the Didsbury district of south Manchester, the River Mersey came very close to bursting its banks as it reached the highest water levels it had ever recorded. Around 2,000 homes and businesses were told to evacuate the area. This part of Manchester had not faced the danger of flooding for 60 years.

In areas that had suffered or were under threat from January’s Storm Christoph, such as Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Shropshire, South Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and Worcestershire, 831 crucial flood defences were classed as in poor or very poor condition when inspected last year. This represents nine percent of all the assets in those areas.

Warrington, which was flooded in Storm Christoph, had the second highest figure of over 25 percent of its flood defences classed as in poor condition last year.

Unearthed’s research showed flood defence assets maintained by third parties were even more likely to be in a poor state. It noted, “Across England, third party-managed flood defences were twice as likely to be in a poor condition last year as those managed by the EA —eight percent compared to four percent.”

It was difficult to compel such third parties, which include local authorities, private landowners and transport companies, to improve the flood defences for which they are responsible. “Last year, the National Audit Office (NAO) suggested that the EA’s strategy to strengthen England’s flood defences is being undermined by the array of different actors tasked with maintaining them. The NAO recommended the EA step up communications with third party owners in a bid to get them to take better care of their flood defences.”

A January 26 article on the New Civil Engineer (NCE) website quoted a flood specialist stating, “Failure of a third-party asset could have serious consequences for other flood defences in a local area, which are in good conditions, but are not designed to cope with additional flows that could result from a catastrophic failure.”

Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director at Greenpeace UK, told the Guardian, “The poor state of so many critical flood defences in England is putting thousands of people and homes at risk. This is unacceptable.”

In August 2019, following torrential rain during which half a month’s rainfall fell in one day, the town of Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, a dam holding water in Todbrook reservoir was near collapse. The reservoir is owned by the Canal & River Trust, a charitable body, came into existence in July 2012 as it took over responsibility from the state-owned British Waterways.

The emergency operation underway at the Toddbrook Dam (WSWS media)

The heavy rain meant water was overflowing down the concrete spillway, which suffered damage and was in danger of collapsing. Built in 1830, it was an earthfill or embankment dam built using a mixture of soil and gravel.

The spill way was a concrete topping over the earthfilled embankment designed to safely carry away any water overtopping the dam. In 2019, the overflow damaged about a fifth of the area of the spillway and was in danger of carrying away the earth embankment. Residents had to be evacuated from houses below the dam and emergency measures taken to try and lower the volume of water held by the dam.

The concrete covering had last been replaced in 1969 following damage a few years earlier and had been allowed to deteriorate. The Conversation news website in August 2019 noted, “Drone footage shot by Miles Haslam in 2016 shows plants and grass growing on the surface of the spillway. This could mean the concrete surface may have already been cracked, or even that the foundation of the concrete spillway had been undermined, allowing plant life to grow.”

It continued, “Concrete surfaces must be maintained and kept smooth and clean, without any cracks or holes. With water pouring across the spillway at very high speeds of up to 60-70mph, any small crack or hole will be subject to tremendous forces that will accelerate erosion damage.”

Following the near disaster, the Canal and River Trust issued reports on the state of the dam after Freedom of Information requests from the BBC. The dam had been inspected by the trust in November 2018. An independent engineer also inspected it. The two reports passed to the BBC were heavily redacted, citing security concerns.

A BBC news website report of October 2019 quoted Whaley Bridge resident Matthew Forrest’s response. “The population of Whaley Bridge had very little confidence in the Canal and River Trust as things stood after the near disaster in August that could have potentially killed thousands of people. This nonsensical black hole of a document does little to build upon any remaining confidence and faith in the Canal and River Trust to internally investigate the causes, let alone replace the neglected Todbrook Dam."

Climate change is making heavier rainfall and flooding in the UK more likely. A study of flooding across Europe in the prestigious science journal, Nature, involving 24 research institutes and based on reports from nearly 4,000 river flood measurements over five years, found an 11 percent increase in flooding in northern England and southern Scotland.

The recent UK floods have disproportionately hit those sections of society already suffering. A report issued in November last year by the Environment Agency concluded, “There is an inequality in terms of social deprivation and flood risk exposure from all sources of flooding. In other words, people from areas that are classed as more deprived disproportionately face more flood risk than those in less deprived areas. This is the case when taking into account nearby flood defences.”

Commenting on the findings in a November 30, 2019 Independent newspaper article, Professor Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist at Reading University, described the findings as “very worrying... A flood event will affect affluent areas and poorer areas in very, very different ways. This shows we’re not doing a good enough job of making sure those people who can’t bounce back after a flood event are taken care of.”

Disadvantaged people are more likely to live on flood plains in rural areas, or in densely crowded urban areas with poor water drainage and are more likely to live in temporary accommodation on flood plains or close to the coast, Cloke explained.

The weather outlook for the UK over the next few weeks is heavy rain and the threat of floods.

Vaccination debacle in Germany exacerbates spread of new variants

Marianne Arens

Well over 100 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, and more than 2.2 million have died from it. In Germany, nearly 57,000 have fallen victim to the virus so far. One year after the outbreak of the pandemic, the situation continues to deteriorate.

The much invoked “light at the end of the tunnel,” the vaccination of the population, is proving to be a real debacle. The EU and the German government have not bothered to provide the vaccine in sufficient quantities for all of Europe. Instead, they have entrusted this to private pharmaceutical companies worth billions. The vaccine manufacturers—BionTech-Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca—promised huge supplies to win the lucrative EU contracts; now they cannot fulfil them at all.

Patient in an intensive care unit (ICU) [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

The result is an increasingly open, vicious trade war at the European level. At the same time, hundreds of vaccination centres have stood empty for almost two months, while new, even more dangerous variants of the virus are spreading rapidly.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP), its youth organisation the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and the World Socialist Web Site call on workers, teachers, educators, students and pupils to take matters into their own hands. A European-wide general strike must enforce a coordinated lockdown in Europe that also shuts non-essential manufacturing and service industries and closes schools and day-care centres until the pandemic is under control. The IYSSE in Germany has organised an online meeting on the issue February 1.

In doing so, the SGP, IYSSE and WSWS explicitly oppose right-wing politicians, journalists and celebrities who are now using the chaotic vaccination debacle to spread nationalism and demand the opening up of businesses and schools. In Germany, one example is the Christian Democratic district administrator Stephan Pusch from North Rhine-Westphalia, who demanded on Facebook on Friday, “In two weeks, and this is an urgent appeal, schools must reopen.”

Pusch is crisis manager in Heinsberg, the first district to be severely affected by coronavirus, for which he received the Federal Cross of Merit from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Later, in an interview with several media outlets, he repeated that schools and shops must finally be reopened. “Little by little, the economy must also be loosened again … There’s a time bomb ticking.”

Regarding the vaccination chaos, Pusch criticised the German government for wanting to order the vaccine through the European Union. “When the pandemic broke out, we saw how nations around the world fought veritable battles over the supply of protective masks. Against this backdrop, it was naïve to believe that the community of nations would share the vaccine peacefully,” said Pusch, who was clearly in favour of an even stronger national solo effort.

The spread of the new virus variants from Britain, South Africa and Brazil shows the complete ineffectiveness and bankruptcy of such solo national efforts.

More and more outbreaks with the new mutation discovered in Britain are becoming known. In the meantime, there are already hundreds of cases of such mutations, and the number of unreported cases is very high, as even the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) admits. Sixty-four cases of infections with such variants have been discovered in Cologne alone, as Johannes Niessen, head of the Cologne Health Department, reported on broadcaster WDR. They were detected in four day-care centres, one refugee shelter and two hospitals.

Recently, Charité virologist Dr. Christian Drosten issued an unequivocal warning: “We’re in a risky situation, you have to realise that.” Speaking on broadcaster NDR’s “Coronavirus Update,” he explained what the consequence of a premature relaxation could be under conditions of a further spread of such mutations: Even if it were possible that the elderly were all vaccinated and protected (which he does not think is possible), then “we could have an extreme number of infections in a short time. In England, there were around 60,000 new infections every day.”

But it could be much worse, according to Drosten. “Then we would have a situation with 100,000 to 120,000 infections a day ... These would be much younger people who would then also become seriously ill. Because we know that people without risk factors also become seriously ill and end up in intensive care.”

This phenomenon can already be observed in several hospitals and day-care centres. Since the new variants spread more easily overall, more children and young people inevitably become infected with them. As a result, even children have become so seriously ill in recent days that they had to be ventilated.

“What is developing unpleasantly—it has to be said—is the situation among children,” the head of Lower Saxony’s crisis unit, Heiger Scholz, said a few days ago. He reported that the COVID-19 patients who had to be ventilated in his state included two children. A total of eight children with COVID-19 are in hospital in Lower Saxony.

In Hamburg-Altona, no fewer than 13 of a total of 14 educators at the Elbpiraten day-care centre have been infected with coronavirus, although it is not known with which variant. Among the children, 18 out of a total of 35 children are infected, and numerous family members are also said to have already been affected.

In Freiburg, too, a variant of the coronavirus was detected in 18 children and educators in a day-care centre. This prompted the state government under Winfried Kretschmann (Green Party) to change its plans, according to which it wanted to reopen schools as early as February 1—contrary to nationwide rules. Only a few days earlier, Kretschmann had vehemently pleaded for this opening of schools. One should not “forever pretend that primary schools and kindergartens are the problems of this pandemic. That is simply not the case.”

Meanwhile, on the TV programme “Anne Will,” intensive care physician Uwe Janssens warned of a “terrible third wave” if the Brazilian virus spreads. In recent days, there have already been several horrific outbreaks at hospitals in various German states.

On January 26, the Bayreuth hospital in Bavaria had to impose an admission ban and a quarantine of 3,000 staff after a new outbreak of the virus mutant B.1.1.7 was detected in a total of 99 cases. Now the hospital only admits patients who present in an absolute emergency.

Previously, the Humboldt-Klinikum in Berlin-Reinickendorf and the Medius-Klinik Nürtingen had been completely quarantined because of similar outbreaks. While the B.1.1.7 variant was also detected in Berlin, two other new mutations were discovered in Nürtingen. New outbreaks also occurred at hospitals in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

In these completely sealed-off hospitals, the staff are subject to a so-called “shuttle quarantine,” which places enormous additional burdens on them. They are only allowed to “shuttle” between work and home, but not to walk the streets, use public transport, or even go shopping, take the rubbish out or empty the mailbox.

“Where’s the shuttle service, where’s the shopping service, where’s the childcare?” caregivers ask desperately under the Twitter hashtag #shuttlequarantine. One writes, “The word ‘shuttle quarantine’ is a savage euphemism. It should rather be ‘isolation with work obligation,’ and that’s still the least drastic thing I can think of.”

The risk of contagion is also growing in the factories. At Airbus, the British variant has been detected in a further five employees at the Hamburg plant. This means that seven of the 21 Airbus employees who have tested positive so far have been infected with this variant. The WSWS wrote about this: “The outbreak at Airbus shows once again that workers are completely on their own when it comes to the high health risks to which they are exposed. The company, the authorities and the trade unions and their works council representatives owe their allegiance to the bank accounts of the shareholders rather than the lives and health of the workforce.”

New York Times weaponizes youth suicides to push for school reopenings

Dominic Gustavo

As the 2021 spring semester begins in the United States, the corporate press, spearheaded by the New York Times, is seeking to justify the criminal policy of school re-openings on the grounds that school closures are leading to an increase in student suicides. In so doing, the media is deliberately obscuring the true origins of the mental health crisis affecting young people, while at the same time providing a pseudo-moral justification for homicidal policies that have led and will continue to lead to countless infections and deaths from the coronavirus.

Teachers and staff protest outside Franklin D. Roosevelt High School as they call for more and better COVID-19 testing and precautions, Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

On January 24, the Times published an article highlighting the spike in youth suicides since the start of the pandemic. The article focused on Clark County, Nevada, the fifth largest school district in the US, encompassing Las Vegas, which saw 18 student suicides between March and December. By comparison, there were nine suicides in the district during the whole of 2019.

In one instance, 18-year-old Anthony Orr drove to a parking lot in August and shot himself in his car, just months after graduating. His mother, seeking to provide an explanation, told the Times, “Our kids are feeling hopeless. They’re feeling like there’s no future for them. I can’t see how there’s any other explanation.” The youngest suicide victim in the county was just nine years old.

The tragic experience of Clark County is mirrored throughout the country, in what has become an alarming trend. Baltimore County teen Michael Myronuk, Jr. was just 14 when he ended his life in October. His mother told WBFF Fox45 News: “He didn’t have any hope. He just gave up.” In another case, an 11-year-old Sacramento boy shot himself in December during his Zoom class.

The devastating increase in youth suicides and mental health issues is being utilized by the Times and other media outlets to serve as a justification for reopening the schools in the midst of the surging pandemic. Jesus Jara, the Clark County superintendent, told the Times: “When we started to see the uptick in children taking their lives, we knew it wasn’t just the COVID numbers we need to look at anymore. … We have to find a way to put our hands on our kids, to see them, to look at them. They’ve got to start seeing some movement, some hope.” Jara subsequently took to Twitter to proclaim that schools “must reopen to help all students.”

There can be no doubt that the mental health crisis in the US has worsened dramatically since the eruption of the pandemic, particularly among adolescents and youth, whose underdeveloped psyches are especially vulnerable to psychological stress. An August 2020 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that rates of depression and anxiety had tripled since the previous year. According to the same report, 26 percent of young adults ages 18–24 had thought about suicide during the previous month.

A November report based on data collected throughout the year in nationwide surveys found that October was even more devastating, with 47.7 percent of young adults reporting symptoms of depression, and 36.9 percent reporting thoughts of suicide or death. It is clear that the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic include an epidemic of despair among young people.

There is a close connection between the Times ’s cynical attempt to utilize the suicides of young people to justify the reopening of schools and the Biden administration’s repeated statements of support for the financial oligarchy’s back-to-school drive. The article was published just four days after Biden declared “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

Biden was signaling his intention to pursue the full reopening of the economy and de-facto continuation of Trump’s herd immunity policy, which has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. The efforts of the Times and other bourgeois outlets to shore up support for this criminal policy now assumes the form of feigned concern for the youth, in this case by utilizing the suicides of youths to proclaim that reopening the schools is an urgent necessity.

However, the establishment mouthpieces that proclaim such concern for the mental well-being of youths fail to explain how students’ mental health will be improved by herding them into unsafe classrooms to witness their teachers, their peers and possibly themselves falling ill to a deadly pathogen, not to mention the risk that they might pass the virus on to their parents, grandparents or other loved ones.

Moreover, they ignore the fact that the refusal of the government and both big business parties to implement policies that would contain the virus and save lives, because these policies—including the shutdown of non-essential production—would cut into the profits of the corporations and banks, is responsible for the uncontrolled spread of the pandemic, which makes the safe reopening of the schools impossible. It is the ruling class and its political servants that are responsible for the increasing mental anguish of young people, not teachers.

Now, under conditions where the pandemic has been allowed to spread exponentially, where serious scientific studies show that youth are susceptible to developing long-term complications from the virus, and where a deadlier and more contagious variant of the virus is known to be spreading, it is most certainly not in the best interests of students to be sent into schools with hundreds of other students, teachers and staff.

There is little doubt that the isolation imposed by the pandemic has had a negative impact on mental health, but it is far too simplistic to assert that the crisis is merely the result of loneliness caused by school closures. More to the point, this argument deliberately obscures the true causes of the epidemic of mental distress, which are deeply rooted and systemic in character.

Mental health in the US, especially among young people, has been steadily worsening for at least the past two decades. According to a 2019 report by the National Center for Health Statistics and the CDC, suicide rates among youth aged 10 to 24—which had been relatively stable between 2000 and 2007 at 6.8 deaths per 100,000—began steadily rising after 2007 to reach a rate of 10.6 deaths per 100,000 by 2017, an increase of 56 percent in just one decade. Suicide has been the second leading cause of death within that age bracket at least since 2017.

In this context, it is deeply misleading to state that the pandemic shutdowns are the cause of the spike in mental illnesses. Rather, the pandemic has accelerated a mental health catastrophe that has been long developing.

Mental health is a social phenomenon that cannot be considered apart from the broader political, economic and social structure of society.

The youth of the new millennium have come of age in an era of staggering social inequality. They’ve grown up in a nation that has been continuously at war for nearly three decades, with the youngest unable to remember a time when the United States was not engaged in armed conflict.

They have come to age in a society where school shootings and other outbreaks of homicidal violence are regular occurrences and are treated with indifference by the ruling class; a society in which suicide, drug overdoses, and other deaths of despair are tragically common; a country where the threat of brutal violence by the armed enforcers of the capitalist state—the police—always lies just beneath the surface; a culture that promotes the most backward values, such as greed and self-centeredness, as virtues.

Add to this the devastating impact of the pandemic, during which the most vulnerable members of society—the elderly, the infirm and the poor—have been ruthlessly sacrificed to satisfy the insatiable greed of the financial oligarchy. Countless youth have undoubtedly seen loved ones die of the virus. They’ve witnessed their parents struggling to cope with the economic difficulties caused by the pandemic depression. Many are either facing or have already been evicted due to a cutoff or decline in family income.

The pandemic has revealed more sharply than ever the brutality, incompetence and moral depravity of modern capitalist society. Under these conditions, the growing despair and anguish of the youth comes as a surprise only to the bourgeois writers of the New York Times et al., who are both blind and deaf to the realities that face the working-class majority.

The bourgeois press presents workers and youth with a Catch-22: either reopen the schools for in-person learning in classrooms that are clearly unsafe, or have the youth stay home to wallow in loneliness and despair.

Meanwhile, the mega-fortunes of the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezoses continue to soar, driven by a stock market fueled by endless supplies of free money from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

Socialists reject with contempt this false dichotomy. Under socialism, the resources of society would be rationally and scientifically organized to meet the social needs of the population.

Guided by humanity and reason, a socialist society would provide resources for the spiritual and cultural nourishment of the youth, along with the mobilization of all available technology to provide education and communication during the pandemic.

Mental health treatment and therapy would be available to all workers and their children to help them cope with isolation until the pandemic was brought under control. In the meantime, workers and their families would receive full compensation.

This is far from a utopian dream. The material resources exist to build a just and humane society. However, only the conscious struggle of the whole working class can bring about this transformation.

Australian government sets course to impose pandemic debt crisis on working class

Mike Head

After pouring billions of dollars into corporate pockets as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit profits, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government is now moving to slash unemployment benefits and other critical social spending, threatening widespread impoverishment.

In his first major appearance for 2021, billed as a “headland speech” at the National Press Club, Morrison declared: “You can’t run the Australian economy on taxpayers’ money forever.”

Scott Morrison speaking at the National Press Club (Facebook/Scott Morrison)

This is a complete fraud. The vast majority of the $251 billion that Morrison boasted of providing in “COVID-19 economic support measures” went to prop up and subsidise big companies—including Qantas, Virgin, Toyota, Crown Resorts, Star Entertainment Group and Qube Holdings—even as they laid off thousands of workers and cut workers’ wages and conditions, while pocketing profits and paying executive bonuses.

In his speech, Morrison outlined the government’s intent to try to extract the cost of the escalation of its debt burden, expected to exceed $1 trillion within several years, from the working class, especially the jobless and lowest-paid.

The prime minister said his government’s task now was to stick to its “economic recovery plan” and exercise “fiscal discipline” to reduce the debt. “We are not running a blank-cheque budget,” he insisted, after a year of handing the corporate elite virtual blank cheques.

This places the Liberal-National Coalition government and the political establishment as a whole on a collision course with the working class as the economic and social crisis fueled by the pandemic intensifies.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg went on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Insiders” TV program on Sunday to give the clearest indication so far that the government will cut unemployment benefits back to their pre-pandemic below-poverty level of about $40 a day for a single adult, when its slightly higher JobSeeker payments are terminated at the end of March.

While he refused to yet announce a definite decision on the payments, Frydenberg said the government had made a point during the pandemic of not “baking in” such “structural spending” that would continue into the future.

In reality, the sole reason for imposing such financial and social hardship on the three million workers who remain unemployed or “underemployed” is to coerce them into poorly-paid work on super-exploited conditions. That is the thrust of the government’s “economic recovery plan.”

For the same reason, Frydenberg also ruled out any extension of the government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy program beyond March 31, even though employers are still using the scheme to pay the wages of about 1.5 million workers, and many are likely to be retrenched as a result.

By contrast to the treatment of those worst-affected by the economic impact of the pandemic, the treasurer highlighted the government’s ongoing handouts to business. These include a $27 billion Business Investment Allowance, a reduction in the small and medium company tax rate from 30 percent to 25 percent, loss carry-back tax write-off provisions and “JobMaker” payments to employers for hiring workers aged under 35.

Morrison and Frydenberg flatly defended the obvious double standard involved in hounding and punishing welfare recipients for alleged over-payments, as exposed in the $1.2 billion robodebt harassment scandal, while permitting employers to retain overpaid JobKeeper subsidies that they received despite recording bumper profits.

Morrison said anyone who criticised this was displaying an “envy narrative.” Frydenberg offered a cynical circular argument. He said businesses that had managed to improve their profitability during the public health crisis were not required to pay back the wage subsidies, because the government had not mandated repayments.

In addition, Morrison and Frydenberg foreshadowed further “support packages” for businesses in certain sectors, such as travel and tourism, that have lost revenues because of global travel safety restrictions.

The Labor Party, which backed all the corporate handouts, has essentially continued to mirror the government’s position by suggesting a continuation of JobKeeper subsidies for those particular industries, while feigning concern about cutting the dole all the way back to $40 a day.

Interviewed yesterday by right-wing radio host John Laws, Labor leader Anthony Albanese said Labor wanted to “make sure we restore confidence in the government of the day.” He added: “One of the problems, and you know this, John, there’s a whole lot of cynicism out there.”

These remarks point to the anxiety in ruling circles, including the Labor and union apparatuses, about the discontent mounting in the working class.

While still supporting the government, the financial oligarchy is demanding that it go far further and faster to gut social spending, cut business taxes and restructure workplace relations.

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) editorial on Monday said Morrison was “right to signal that the year of big spending is over and the economy can’t run on taxpayers’ money indefinitely.” But it accused him of missing the chance to use his opening set piece speech of 2021 to “prepare the political ground for the supply-side tax, workplace and other regulatory reforms needed for the economy to grow back better.”

Last year, the editorial recalled, “Morrison suggested that a Hawke-Keating scale economic reform agenda was required to repair the COVID-19 damage; and Mr Frydenberg invoked the supply-side inspiration of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.”

The Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996 imposed the Reagan-Thatcher agenda on workers in Australia with the essential assistance of the trade unions. The editorial’s call for another such assault is a warning of the readiness of the Labor Party and its associated unions to again enforce the dictates of the ruling class.

Already, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and its affiliates, as well as Labor, have played a central role in the pro-business response to the pandemic.

The ACTU helped devise JobKeeper, which funneled billions to major corporations as they were laying off workers, and has overseen the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs, wage cuts and reductions in conditions. Labor rushed the main aspects of the government’s October budget through parliament, including massive tax cuts for wealthy individuals and big business.

The AFR editorial expressed fears over the implications of Labor’s deepening crisis, including moves to unseat its federal leader Anthony Albanese. It complained: “The Prime Minister and Treasurer are under little pressure to seize what should be a burning platform for a supply-side agenda due to the state of the federal Opposition. As Anthony Albanese’s frontbench reshuffle of the climate portfolio from the left to the right wing of the party showed, federal Labor is still preoccupied with the internal fall-out of the traumatic 2019 election loss.”

This reference to the Labor Party crisis confirms that the financial elite is concerned that Labor continues to be so discredited in the working class that it is unfit to reliably back the government in such an offensive and to suppress the social unrest that will be ignited.

Military seizes power in Myanmar

Peter Symonds

Myanmar’s military, also known as the Tatmadaw, yesterday seized control of the country in a coup and arrested the top leaders of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), including Aung San Suu Kyi. A state of emergency has been declared for a year, handing far-reaching powers to the armed forces. The military’s commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has taken power.

The military took over the media and telecommunications. Reports from the commercial centre of Yangon and other cities indicated that the services of four of the country’s telecom companies had been cut off, as were some internet services. TV broadcasts were restricted to the military’s Myawaddy TV channel. Troops and armoured vehicles had already been on the streets.

Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi addresses the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

The pretext for the coup was alleged irregularities in the November 8 national election, in which the NLD won 83 percent of the vote and took 396 out of 476 seats in the combined lower and upper houses of parliament. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development party won only 33 seats. The new parliament was due to convene yesterday.

The military refused to recognise the result of the election and in mid-January claimed that more than 90,000 cases of election fraud had taken place. No proof was provided publicly. Last week, military spokesman General Zaw Min Tun warned of a coup if allegations were not addressed. Last Thursday, the election commission dismissed claims of irregularities, which have been largely rejected by international observers.

Last Friday, the US and its allies, including Britain, Australia and New Zealand, issued a statement warning Myanmar’s military against a coup. Responding on Saturday, its commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing did not deny that the army was planning a coup but declared it would abide by the constitution.

A military spokesperson yesterday insisted there were “huge discrepancies” and “terrible fraud” in the election results, which the country’s election commission had “failed to settle.” The military invoked article 417 of the constitution, which allows for the declaration of a state of emergency in conditions that threaten to “disintegrate the union or disintegrate national solidarity.” It declared that new elections would be held but provided no timeline.

The previous military junta drew up the 2008 constitution to ensure that it continued to hold key levers of power. A quarter of seats in both parliamentary houses are reserved for military appointees, ensuring that it can block any constitutional amendment. The military also remains in control of powerful ministries, including defence and home affairs, and is thus excluded from any civilian oversight.

Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest in 2010, and her NLD agreed to this democratic charade, which was part of the military’s shift away from China and toward the US. The NLD represents sections of the country’s ruling class who regard the military’s domination as a barrier to their business interests. They oriented to the West for support. For the Obama administration, Myanmar’s turn toward Washington was regarded as one of the successes of its confrontational “pivot to Asia” against China. Washington ended Myanmar’s pariah status, dropped economic sanctions and proclaimed it to be a “developing democracy.”

The NLD won the 2016 elections and formed a government. Suu Kyi, the supposed “icon of democracy,” became a roving ambassador for what in effect was a military-backed regime, seeking foreign investment and defending the military against charges of gross human rights abuse as it conducted its murderous operations against the Muslim Rohingya minority that drove hundreds of thousands to flee the country.

The military’s decision to take back full control of the country is no doubt conditioned in part by the turn to authoritarian and fascist forms of rule internationally amid the deepening crisis of capitalism triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic—not least in the United States. Significantly, Myanmar’s military has followed the playbook of Trump, who on the basis of lies about electoral fraud and a “stolen election” attempted to engineer a fascist coup by storming the Capitol on January 6.

Myanmar is confronting a worsening economic and social crisis as a result of a surge in COVID-19 cases since mid-August. Between late March to early August, Myanmar recorded just 360 cases and six deaths. However, those figures have risen dramatically to the current level of 140,000 cases and more than 3,000 deaths, putting huge strains on the country’s limited health care system. Economic growth for the financial year 2019–20 (starting on October 1) is projected to be 3.2 percent, sharply down from 6.8 percent in the previous year. Growth for 2020–21 is expected to be just 0.5 percent.

Lockdowns have contributed to major job losses and a dramatic rise in poverty. A poll by the International Food Policy Research Institute last September found that 59 percent of 1,000 households surveyed in urban Yangon and 66 percent of 1,000 households surveyed in the country’s rural dry zone earned less than $US1.90 a day—a commonly used benchmark for extreme poverty. Only 16 percent of respondents in a similar survey in January 2020 were in extreme poverty.

“That level of poverty poses huge risks for food insecurity and malnutrition,” Derek Headey, lead author of the study, commented. “Though necessary to control the virus, lockdown periods have resulted in disastrous impacts on poverty and need to be accompanied by larger and better targeted cash transfers if Myanmar is to successfully contain the economic destruction of COVID-19’s second wave.” Since that September survey, the plight of the urban and rural poor has undoubtedly worsened, fueling sharp social tensions.

In comments to the media about the coup, Myanmar historian Thant Myint-U warned: “The doors just opened to a different, almost certainly darker future. Myanmar is a country already at war with itself, awash in weapons, with millions barely able to feed themselves, deeply divided along religious and ethnic lines… I’m not sure anyone will be able to control what comes next.”

The new Biden administration had previously signalled a hard line toward Myanmar. During his congressional confirmation hearing, incoming Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would oversee an inter-agency review to determine whether Myanmar’s atrocities against Rohingya constituted genocide. Myanmar’s top generals, including Min Aung Hlaing, are already facing hearings in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which started last year, over their human rights abuses.

In response to yesterday’s coup, Biden warned of the re-imposition of sanctions on Myanmar. “The United States removed sanctions on Burma over the past decade based on progress toward democracy,” he said, invoking Myanmar’s traditional name. “The reversal of that progress will necessitate an immediate review of our sanction laws and authorities, followed by appropriate action.”

Like Obama, Biden is not motivated by any genuine interest in defending human rights. Rather the US is driven by renewed concern of growing Chinese influence. The failure of Myanmar to attract significant foreign investment, along with growing international criticism of the treatment of the Rohingya, compelled Suu Kyi, her government and the military to increasingly turn back to Beijing for financial and diplomatic assistance.

Myanmar’s dependence on Beijing deepened with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, including for a free supply of vaccines developed in China. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visited Myanmar last month to discuss closer collaboration on its Belt and Road Initiative, which includes strategic transport routes and pipelines through Myanmar to southern China. For Beijing, an alternative to the US-controlled sealanes through the Strait of Malacca is vital to ensure supplies of energy and raw materials as tensions with Washington continue to rise.

China’s response to the coup has been decidedly muted. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said only: “We hope that all sides in Myanmar can appropriately handle their differences under the constitution and legal framework and safeguard political and social stability.”

The prospect of a renewed “human rights” offensive and economic sanctions by US imperialism and its allies could have been a significant factor in prompting Myanmar’s military to take power directly, rather than relying on the potentially unreliable support of Suu Kyi and the NLD. Suu Kyi has now called for protests against the coup. Despite her much tarnished image as a democracy symbol, she will undoubtedly turn to Washington for backing.

Chinese fishing vessels seized in the Pacific

John Braddock

Two Chinese fishing vessels were seized by authorities in Vanuatu in late January for allegedly fishing illegally in the south west Pacific island nation’s territorial waters.

Authorities claimed the Dong Gang Xing 13 and Dong Gang Xing 16 were fishing in Vanuatu’s northern waters near the remote Torres islands. Vanuatu’s department of fisheries, the police maritime wing, and a French naval reconnaissance plane from New Caledonia had monitored the ships before they were detained by a Vanuatu patrol boat. The crew is facing investigation after undergoing quarantine in Port Vila.

US Coast Guard cutter participating in Operation Kurukuru in October 2019, an annual operation targeting "illegal" and unregulated fishing, in waters off Palau. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

New Zealand journalist Michael Field described the incident as “murky,” chiefly because of the nature and origin of the vessels. There are currently 200-300 Chinese longliners and purse seine tuna fishers legitimately operating in Vanuatu’s 663,251 square kilometre exclusive economic zone, from their base in Fiji.

The arrested boats, owned by Zhuhai Dong Gang Xing Long Distance Fishing, were operating closer in-shore for grouper and sea cucumber. Beijing had given the company permission to fish in Mauritania, Africa, and Vanuatu under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Vanuatu currently maintains diplomatic relations with China and, along with Tonga, signed up to the BRI in 2018.

According to Field, the company says it has permission under the BRI to build a base in Vanuatu, a claim that has not been acknowledged by Vanuatu. Field speculated the boats may have believed they were operating under a deal between Port Vila and Beijing and asked: “Is Vanuatu heading for a diplomatic row with China?”

Pacific island nations have in recent years sought to clamp down on illegal and unregulated fishing. In 2015 Palau burned four Vietnamese fishing boats caught off its coast and arrested the captains. During coordinated maritime sweeps in 2017, several Vietnamese boats were detained in the territorial waters of the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia.

However, driven by the US diplomatic, economic and strategic offensive against Beijing, Pacific states are now being drawn into fierce geo-strategic rivalries. Washington has seized on claims of illegal fishing to boost its military presence across the region. Armed US Coast Guard cutters are currently being deployed to American Samoa and Guam to counter “Chinese activity.”

The incident in Vanuatu came just a month after Palau, a former US Pacific territory, detained a Chinese-flagged vessel and its 28 crew, also for allegedly harvesting sea cucumber in its waters. In December, Palau’s president-elect Surangel Whipps Jr announced he would oppose Chinese “bullying,” declaring the small archipelago nation would stand by its “true friends,” the US and Taiwan. Palau is one of only four of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies in the region after the Solomon Islands and Kiribati switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 2019.

The Chinese fishing vessel and six auxiliary boats were intercepted at Helen Reef, in Palau’s northern waters, and escorted to the main island of Koror by a naval patrol boat donated by Australia, as part of its own anti-China Defence Cooperation Program. The ships and crew were ultimately released after being detained for several weeks, accompanied by official complaints from Palau to the Chinese government over its “intransigence” on illegal fishing by “their people.”

Beijing has not commented on either of the recent incidents. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had earlier declared China was “a responsible fishing country,” with “zero tolerance for violations of relevant laws and regulations committed by distant fishing vessels.”

Palau’s actions were hailed by US Ambassador John Hennessey-Niland, who said Washington “steadfastly support Palau’s efforts to protect its territorial sovereignty and prevent People’s Republic of China (PRC)-flagged vessels from engaging in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.”

Last October, US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien accused China of encouraging fishing violations, building illegal military outposts, dumping garbage and harassing commercial vessels. O’Brien told Radio NZ that China was “threatening the rules-based order that’s kept the peace since World War II.” Coast Guard vessels would “enforce US laws,” while partnering with other Pacific nations, O'Brien declared.

Last year, Palau’s outgoing President Tommy Remengesau Jr wrote to US Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite saying Washington should look at setting up military facilities in Palau as a bulwark against “destabilizing actors.” Palau’s demands included port facilities, secondary airfields, law enforcement training grounds and maritime enforcement and surveillance facilities.

China has the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet, with nearly 17,000 vessels. Its expansion into the Pacific is raising the ire not only of the US, but also its close ally and regional imperialist power Australia. A Papua New Guinean (PNG) regional governor, Toboi Awi Yoto, last month sharply criticised Australia’s hostile response to a plan to establish a $200 million Chinese fisheries park on Daru Island in PNG.

Canberra raised concerns late last year about “national security” and “potential overfishing” and dispatched officials to Daru for “discussions.” Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne told the Australian parliament that the government had contacted the PNG government to ensure Australian interests are “fully safeguarded.” She warned the Australian Border Force would patrol the Torres Strait to ensure that “traditional-only” fishing rules were enforced. “Commercial-scale fisheries would not be considered a traditional activity under the Torres Strait Treaty and would not be permitted,” Payne declared.

Yoto hit back on Facebook at the overt bullying, saying Australia had no counter-offer to the Chinese plan and he was “not satisfied with their intentions for my people to remain the same,” i.e. living in poverty. “It’s regrettable that all they want is for us to be subsistence farmers and fishermen and maintain our current status quo,” he added.

Regional geo-strategic and political tensions have further escalated due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has decimated the Pacific’s tourism industry. Many Pacific island nations have reached out to Chinese-led agencies to prop up their budgets after exhausting financing options from traditional sources.

Indian government presents budget amid economic crisis, swelling social opposition

Kranti Kumara & Keith Jones

India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government yesterday tabled its budget for the 2021-2022 fiscal year, which begins April 1.

India’s economy is beset by multiple crises—all of which have been greatly exacerbated by the government’s calamitous mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include: a banking system that is mired in bad loans; a massive unemployment and underemployment crisis; falling consumer demand and shrinking capital investment.

The Minister of State for Commerce & Industry (Independent Charge), Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman addressing a press conference, in New Delhi on October 14, 2016 (Wikimedia Commons)

No less troubling for India’s far-right BJP government and ruling class is a groundswell of popular opposition to the raft of pro-big business measures Modi has implemented since August 2019 in a desperate bid to revive investment and capitalist growth.

Tens of millions of workers across India joined a one-day general strike on Nov. 26 to protest the government’s class war policies, including a labour law “reform” that would illegalize most strikes and further casualize the labor force. A more than two-month long mass agitation by farmers has disrupted implementation of the three pro-agribusiness laws the government rushed through parliament last September at the same time as it amended the labor code.

In presenting her budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman nevertheless blithely claimed, “India is well well-poised to be the land of promise and hope.”

Having promised a budget like “no other,” Sitharaman attempted a fiscal and political high-wire act. In an attempt to kick-start the economy, she raised government outlays, particularly infrastructure spending, and injected additional funds into the troubled banking sector. At the same time, she tried to appease the international credit-rating agencies, which have threatened to reduce India’s rating to junk bond status, by slashing subsidies and pressing forward with other pro-investor policies, long demanded by international and domestic capital.

To the delight of big business, despite the government’s rapidly deteriorating fiscal position it announced no tax increases for business or the rich. This included dropping plans to introduce a “pandemic cess”—what would have been a temporary charge to fund measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected more than 10 million Indians and killed over 150,000.

Underscoring the budget’s sharp right-wing thrust, the government also did not (as had been suggested in many press previews of the budget) introduce any measures to mollify farmers’ anger, and it ignored the unemployment crisis altogether. In fact, it is slashing spending on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee in the coming budget, which is supposed to provide 100 days of menial, minimum wage work per year to one member of any rural household that needs it. For years, the program has been massively over-subscribed, meaning millions go hungry because they cannot access the “guarantee.”

Indian big business, which is itself hobbled by debt and has been pleading for some time for the government to increase deficit-spending to pull the economy out of the doldrums, responded to the budget with enthusiasm. India’s principal stock index, the Sensex, surged 5 percent, led by gains in financial, banking and auto stocks.

The overall budget amounts to Rs. 34.8 trillion ($473 billion). This is a modest increase from the Rs. 34.5 trillion that the government now projects it will spend in the 2020-21 fiscal year, which ends March 31. Because of the pandemic, the government was compelled to announce multiple new emergency spending measures, but most of this went to bailing out the elite, with the hundreds of millions of workers and toilers who lost their jobs and/or income offered little more than famine-style relief.

However, if the government’s fiscal deficit for 2020-21 surged from the 3.5 percent of GDP estimated last February to the 9.5 percent of GDP now projected, it was more due to a massive drop in revenue than to increased spending. Relative to most major economies, India’s emergency spending measures were in fact quite small, due to the BJP’s hostility to social spending and fear of the international credit rating agencies.

According to the budget, borrowing will account for Rs. 18.4 trillion ($250 billion), or 54 percent of total expenditure in the 2020-21 fiscal year, more than double the original budget estimate of Rs. 8 trillion ($109 billion).

Sitharaman is projecting that the deficit in the coming year will be 6.8 percent of GDP.

Highlights of the budget include:

• A 34 percent increase to Rs. 5.5 trillion ($75 billion) in capital spending on highways, bridges and other infrastructure.
  
  
• A more than doubling of health care spending to Rs. 2.23 trillion ($30 billion). This, however, is far less than meets the eye. First, at less than 1.5 percent of GDP, India’s current health care spending is among the lowest in the world. Second, the government has included in the health budget the one-time cost of vaccinating the population against COVID-19, as well as funds indirectly related to health care, such as spending on clean water and the environment. Shorn of these, healthcare spending will only go up from Rs. 721 billion ($10 billion) in 2020-21 to Rs. 796 billion ($11 billion) in 2021-22, meaning per capita health care spending is being increased by about $1.
  
  
• A massive program of selling off (disinvestment and full privatization) of state-owned enterprises to the tune of Rs. 1.75 trillion ($24 billion). Apart from “four strategic sectors,” Sitharaman said the government now aims to divest itself of all public sector undertakings.
  Already last December the Modi government sent instructions to the managements of all state-owned enterprises that they had to focus on increasing the share values of their companies and raising their dividend payment to shareholders. These marching orders have been given so as to sweeten the pot sufficiently for profit-hungry giant financial investors who have previously shunned the BJP government’s attempt to sell off Air India and other government enterprises.
  
  
• For the first time the government will privatize two public sector banks and a life insurance company.
  
  
• Draconian cuts are being made to subsidies on food, cooking gas and kerosene. Total expenditure is to fall steeply from Rs. 6.5 trillion ($88 billion) in the current financial year to a mere Rs. 3.7 trillion ($50 billion) in 2021-22.
  
  
• Expenditure on armaments is to increase by 20 percent to just short of $20 billion in 2021-22. In the course of the current fiscal year, the Modi government spent an additional, unbudgeted 200 trillion rupees ($3 billion) on emergency weapons purchases due to the ongoing border standoff with China.

Since 2010, India’s military spending has surged, raising it from the world’s ninth to the third largest military spender.

India’s growth rate has been falling sharply for several years. In fiscal year 2019-20, it fell to 4.2 percent, its lowest level in eleven years since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial meltdown.

In August-September 2019, shortly after winning re-election and presenting a new budget, the Modi government was forced to reverse course after coming under heavy criticism from big business for failing to recognize the urgent need for measures to boost growth. It announced corporate tax rates would be slashed to bring them in line with those in East Asia and a massive acceleration of its privatization drive.

The pandemic and the government’s ruinous response to it resulted in an unprecedented economic contraction that has plunged tens of millions of additional Indians into absolute poverty. Between April and June, India’s GDP fell by 23.9 percent.

According to the Modi government’s Ministry of Statistics, the economy will contract by 7.7 percent during the whole of fiscal year 2021. Others, such as the International Monetary Fund, are projecting a double digit contraction for the full financial year.

The Modi government has responded to the crisis roiling Indian capitalism by doubling down on the two central axes of the strategy India’s venal ruling class has pursued for the last three decades: the imposition of socially incendiary pro-market, pro-investor reforms aimed at making India a cheap labor haven for global capital; and the forging of ever closer ties since 2005 in a “global strategic partnership” with US imperialism.

Prior to announcing the budget, Sitharaman and a slew of other senior cabinet ministers interacted closely with Indian and foreign big business leaders during last December’s CII Partnership Summit 2020. Hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), the summit exemplified the intimate relations between big business and the corrupt, autocratic, and communalist Modi government.

In her address at the summit, Sitharaman implored the assembled capitalists to essentially dictate the budget. She said she could not craft the budget “unless I get your inputs and wish list... Without that, it is impossible for me to draft something which is going to be that budget like never before, a budget which is being made after a pandemic.”