Malaysia, Singapore adopt deadly “living with COVID” strategy

John Braddock

Malaysia and Singapore have both moved to reopen their borders and lift certain COVID-19 restrictions as the Southeast Asian neighbours officially dump zero-COVID strategies for a policy of “living with” the virus.

The moves come as governments across the region—including Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam—seek to revive their economies by re-establishing tourism and reopening businesses.

Oxygen tanks are prepared for patients in the hallway of an overcrowded hospital amid a surge of COVID-19 cases, in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, July 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Trisnadi)

Big business is ramping up pressure across Southeast Asia over the mounting global supply chains crisis. The Wall Street Journal noted last month that the surge in COVID-19 cases in the region “has throttled ports and locked down plantations and processors, sparking extended disruptions of raw materials such as palm oil, coffee and tin.”

Singapore is the headquarters of many multinational companies and is one of the world's biggest travel and finance hubs. Changi Airport has had two of its four terminals mothballed since last year after flights plummeted by 76 percent. Ford recently announced its auto factory in Cologne, Germany would pause production of Fiesta models because of a shortage of semiconductors sourced from Malaysian factories hard hit by the pandemic.

Both countries have begun treating the virus as endemic to be dealt with by vaccination, rather than public health restrictions. Despite relatively high vaccination rates, they are dangerously “opening up” while experiencing significant numbers of infections and deaths.

Latest COVID figures attest to the ongoing health crisis. Malaysia’s numbers have trended downward from a daily average peak of 21,571 in late August, but from October 4 to 17 there were still 113,122 cases reported.

Currently 89,173 cases are active, 679 of them critical. On 17 October, 6,145 new cases were confirmed with a seven-day average of 7,299. Malaysia’s total case numbers are a staggering 2.39 million with 27,921 deaths.

On October 17 there were 3,058 cases reported in Singapore with a seven day average of 3,030. There were 44,335 infections confirmed from October 4 to 17, with 25,456 active cases. Singapore has recorded a total of 148,000 cases and 233 deaths, most of them this year.

Despite the ongoing pandemic, Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob last week ended Malaysia’s domestic and international travel restrictions for fully vaccinated residents, after the vaccination target of 90 percent of the adult population was reached.

At the same time, Singapore added eight new countries to its vaccinated and quarantine-free travel lanes, the most significant easing of travel restrictions since borders shut last March. Singapore, a city-state of 5.45 million people, currently has 85 percent of the population fully vaccinated.

Both states battled disastrous surges in COVID-19 cases earlier this year, fueled by the highly infectious Delta variant. They responded by pursuing aggressive zero-COVID policies and imposing strict lockdowns and closing borders.

Singapore was previously among a few countries regarded as a model in combatting COVID-19. In April, Bloomberg gave Singapore a gold star for pandemic management, ranking it in top spot ahead of New Zealand and Australia. It seemed to have mostly suppressed earlier clusters among migrant workers.

Within a month, however, Singapore imported nearly 300 COVID-19 cases from South Asia. The government promptly reduced social gatherings, banned restaurant dining and reinstituted working from home for office workers. It began vaccinating children younger than 16 after pupils at seven schools had to return to home learning because 10 children tested positive.

In August, stocks on the Singapore Exchange fell from a 13-year high as investors reacted to the introduction of the limited restrictions. Singapore Airlines shares closed down 5.7 percent, providing a glimpse of the hostility of the financial elite to any measures that impacted on profits.

In Malaysia, the pandemic was similarly contained through 2020 as the previous government led by Muhyiddin Yassin imposed a strict lockdown and in July announced that the country had zero cases. However, as restrictions were eased, the number of infections and deaths rapidly escalated out of control.

Last January, amid a growing political crisis, Muhyiddin secured the support of the king to declare a state of emergency. When daily COVID cases hit 7,000 in June a “total lockdown” was declared. However, some manufacturing centres continued to operate, becoming transmission sites for the virus, exacerbated by an inadequate testing and contact tracing regime.

A series of anti-government rallies erupted in July, organized mainly by young people, over the government’s handling of the pandemic. The “black flag” protests developed into a broad social movement over the voting age, the high unemployment rate among 15- to 30-year-olds, stagnating wages, unaffordable housing, and the lack of any real social safety net in the pandemic.

Malaysia’s COVID surge peaked in August with the country reporting tens of thousands of cases per day. Amid a collapsing economy and a gathering political crisis, Muhyiddin resigned, replaced by Ismail Sabri Yaakob of the right-wing United Malays National Organisation.

When the vaccination rate rose to 66 percent the new government officially shifted the strategy to “living with” the virus. Eleven types of economic activities were allowed to resume in mid-August, including car washes, shops, beauty centres and hair salons. Schools began to reopen on October 3 at 50 percent capacity.

Yaakob told a news conference earlier this month: “We have to train ourselves to live with COVID, because COVID may not be eliminated fully.” He declared that Malaysia will not impose wide lockdowns again if cases rise.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said as the country moves into the “endemic stage” of COVID all Malaysians “have to be prepared to adapt to new norms.”

The easing of restrictions means fully vaccinated Malaysians can travel overseas without applying for permission. Domestic journeys will also be allowed, ending the ban on travel across Malaysia’s 13 states. The Langkawi islands holiday destination has been reopened to domestic tourists, while reopening the country to international travelers is under consideration.

Singapore also began lifting its restrictions in September as more than 80 percent of the population was fully vaccinated. Case numbers, however, continued to skyrocket throughout the month with over 3,000 new infections reported on average each day. Responding to widespread public concern, authorities were forced to reverse course. Tighter temporary measures included limiting social gatherings to two people and suspending or moving classes online for students age 12 and under.

Under growing pressure from business, however, many of these restrictions are now being removed, even as cases continue to rage. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong declared Singapore cannot “stay locked down and closed off indefinitely,” claiming that job losses, separation of families and business closures had caused “psychological and emotional strain and mental fatigue.”

In a major public statement on October 9, Lee falsely declared that a zero-COVID strategy was “no longer feasible” given the highly infectious Delta variant, adding that “almost every country has accepted this reality.” With vaccinations, he claimed, “the virus has become a mild, treatable disease for most,” and urged people to go about their “daily activities” while taking necessary precautions.

Singapore is now being held up internationally as an example of “living with” the virus, despite thousands of new cases daily and continuing deaths.

Marked slowdown in China’s growth rate

Nick Beams

China’s growth rate slowed significantly in the third quarter, adding to fears that flow-on effects mean that the so-called post-pandemic recovery in the global economy could be short-lived.

According to figures released on Monday, the economy grew by 4.9 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2020 but by only 0.2 when compared to the June quarter. This was one of its weakest quarterly expansions in more than a decade. The growth rate for the April-June period was 7.9 percent compared to the previous year.

Workers labor near a construction site with cranes near the central business district skyline in Beijing, China, October 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

While retail sales were up by 4.4 percent compared to the previous year, industrial production only rose 3.1 percent, compared to forecasts of 3.8 percent growth, an expansion of only 0.1 percent from the previous month.

The lowered growth rate is attributable to a series of problems including the surge in global inflation, power shortages leading to cuts in production, and clamp downs imposed to eliminate outbreaks of the Delta variant of COVID-19. Another major factor was the slowing real estate and property market where a number of companies, most notably Evergrande, have been experiencing major financial problems.

In releasing the data Fu Linghui, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, delivered a mixed message.

“The Chinese economy has maintained recovery momentum in the first three quarters with progress in structural adjustment and high-quality development,” he said.

Structural adjustment refers to the clamp down by financial authorities on the growth of debt, especially in the real estate sector. High quality development involves the moves by the government to impose restrictions on the high-tech financial and private education firms in the name of combatting social inequality.

Chinese premier Le Keqiang voiced confidence in the economy in a speech last week, saying that despite difficulties China would meet its meet its overall development targets. However, Fu said there were “increasing uncertainties in the external environment” and the “domestic economy is instable and unbalanced.”

One of the problems in the “external environment” is the surge in inflation from which China has not been exempt, particularly in the energy sector. Data released last week showed that factory gate prices in September rose at their fastest rate for more than a quarter of a century.

The producer price index jumped by 10.7 percent compared to a year earlier, the highest rate of increase since 1995.

This was the result of rising commodity prices for industrial materials and record prices for coal combined with significant shortages. The rise in production costs have not yet translated into higher consumer prices but there are warnings that China, like the rest of the world, could be at risk of stagflation—lower growth combined with increased inflation.

The financial crisis surrounding the property developer Evergrande, which has missed payments on dollar-denominated debt, together with financial problems at other real estate firms, has signalled that the role of property development in boosting Chinese growth is coming to an end.

Last Friday, in the first official comment since Evergrande missed international bond payments, Peoples Bank of China official Zou Lan made clear there would be no central bank bailout for the embattled company.

Zou told a press conference that the Evergrande situation was being resolved by local governments and authorities through “market and rule of law principles.” He said the company’s problems were of its own making and claimed they could be absorbed by the country’s financial system.

Evergrande, Zou said, had “poor management, failed to run its businesses cautiously according to changes in market conditions and expanded blindly.”

This was less than a full assessment. It failed to mention the central government’s role in promoting the expansion of property development as a driver of the Chinese economy and the effect of the credit restrictions it suddenly imposed last year.

Zou said Evergrande’s creditors were “scattered and individual banks’ exposure is small” and the “risk of spillover to the financial industry is controllable.”

Advisers to Evergrande bondholders have said they have had “no meaningful engagement” with the company.

Questions are also being raised about the role of the global accounting firm PwC in the Evergrande demise. The Financial Times has reported that last week Hong Kong’s Financial Reporting Council had raised “questions” about a PwC audit of the company in 2020 and for the six months to the end of 2021.

The PwC audit signed off on Evergrande as a “going concern”—meaning it had the resources to continue operating for another 12 months. The Hong Kong authority said it would investigate whether PwC’s audit “complied with the applicable auditing standards.”

The problems of the Chinese real estate sector do not stop with Evergrande. Property developer Fantasia has defaulted on a $206 million bond and another company, Sinic Holdings, defaulted on payments on $246 million worth of bonds that were due on Monday.

Recent data shows a downturn in the property market. Bloomberg reported that the combined sales of the country’s top 100 property developers fell by 36 percent year-on-year in September, normally a peak month for home sales.

In the first nine months of the year, according to official figures released this week, new construction starts measured by floor area fell by 4.5 percent in the first nine months of the year compared to a fall of 3.2 percent drop in the January to August period.

Despite the problems arising from its economic restructuring program—above all the effort to rein in debt—the Chinese government appears determined to continue.

This is indicated by the publication last Friday in Qiushi, a journal of the Chinese Communist Party, of an extended version of President Xi’s policy address in August on the need to achieve “common prosperity” and promote wealth redistribution.

In an indication of what the CCP regards as being at stake, Xi said that in order to “continuously consolidate the Party’s foundation for holding power over the long term, we shall focus on driving common prosperity for all.”

“At present income inequality is a prominent issue around the globe. The rich and the poor in some countries are polarised with the collapse of the middle class. This has led to social disintegration, political polarisation and rampant populism—indeed, the lessons [for us] are profound! Our country must resolutely guard against polarisation, drive common prosperity, and maintain social harmony and stability.”

Xi said it had to be clearly recognised that “the problems of unbalanced and inadequate development in China remains prominent with wide gaps between urban and regional development and income distribution.”

Xi’s remarks are a clear expression of the fact that the promotion of capitalist development by the regime is giving rise to social tensions threatening its stability. These tensions are only going to increase if the economic slowdown, indicated by the latest data, is a continuing trend.

US billionaire wealth increased 70 percent since the start of the pandemic

Kevin Reed

The wealth of US billionaires has increased by a massive $2.1 trillion, or 70 percent, since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, while tens of millions of working people have faced unemployment and illness, and 724,000 have died from COVID-19. Additionally, the list of American billionaires grew by 131 individuals—going from 614 to 745—during the same period.

According to an analysis of Forbes data about US billionaires by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Program on Inequality, the wealth of the richest people in the country increased from “just short of $3 trillion at the start of the COVID crisis on March 18, 2020, to over $5 trillion on October 15 of this year,” and this wealth is “two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of U.S. households estimated by the Federal Reserve Board.”

Left: Elon Musk at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP); Right: A newly opened cemetery for the victims of COVID-19 in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, November 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

In an accompanying press release, the ATF and IPS state that the “great good fortune of these billionaires over the past 19 months” is in stark contrast with the “89 million Americans [who] have lost jobs, over 44.9 million [who] have been sickened by the virus” and the nearly three-quarters of a million who have died from it.

The billionaire who increased his wealth the most is Elon Musk. The wealth of the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX grew by an incredible 751 percent during the pandemic, from $24.6 billion to $209.4 billion. Musk became the wealthiest individual in the country, beating out Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who went from $113 billion to $192 billion, or a 70 percent increase over the 19-month period.

Other top billionaires who increased their wealth significantly during the pandemic include the founders of Google (now Alphabet, Inc.) Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who saw their fortunes rise by 137.2 percent to $120.7 billion and 136.9 percent to $116.2 billion, respectively. Phil Knight, founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc., nearly doubled his wealth since March 2020 from $29.5 billion to $57.9 billion.

A further analysis of the Forbes data shows that 12 percent of US billionaires are women, including Alice Walton of the Walmart empire with a personal fortune of $64.5 billion, up from $54.4 billion, and MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Jeff Bezos, who increased her wealth by 54 percent this year from $36 billion to $55.5 billion. There are five billionaires in their twenties, including Sam Bankman, the 29-year-old CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who was not previously on the Forbes list until this year, when he amassed $22.5 billion.

California has the largest number of billionaires in the US with 196. There are 182 billionaires in the finance and investment business and 142 in the technology industries. The next highest number is in the fashion and retail sector with 52 billionaires, with the Walton family members and Phil Knight at the top of the list, followed by Leonard Lauder (Estee Lauder), John Menard, Jr. (Menards) and Hank and Doug Meijer (Meijer), each with more than $10 billion in their fortunes.

The ATF and IPS analysis has been published as part of the campaign by Democratic Party senator from Oregon and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Ron Wyden to get support for a Billionaires Income Tax (BIT) bill in the U.S. Congress. The Wyden tax plan—which he announced on September 23—is part of the negotiations now underway in Washington D.C. over the Biden administration’s Build Back Better Agenda infrastructure plan.

The press statement says that 67 national organizations have sent letters to Congress “expressing concern that neither the Ways and Means committee plan nor President Biden’s plan will adequately tax billionaires,” although the statement says that Wyden’s BIT proposal—the specific details of which have yet to be disclosed—is supported by the White House.

The ATF and IPS press release states that “most of these huge billionaires’ gains will go untaxed under current rules and will disappear entirely for tax purposes when they’re passed onto the next generation.” The statement reveals that, on average, billionaires pay an “effective federal income tax rate of about 8 percent” and that this is a lower rate than many “middle income taxpayers pay like teachers, nurses and firefighters.”

The document further explains how the super-rich avoid paying income tax on their enormous wealth increases. Most of their income comes from “the increased value of their investments such as stocks, a business or real estate, rather than a paycheck like most people,” and they do not have to pay taxes on this wealth unless they sell the assets. “But the ultra-rich don’t sell assets,” the statement says; instead they borrow money against their assets from the banks at extremely low interest rates “and live lavishly tax free.”

Even when they do sell the assets, the super-rich only pay a top capital gains tax rate of 20 percent—plus a 3.8 percent Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT)—that is far below the current top rate of 37 percent they would pay in taxes on an equivalent salary.

The report says that many billionaires have paid zero taxes in recent years, “including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros” and the top 25 billionaires in the US “paid a tax rate of just 3.4 percent on a $400 billion increase in their collective fortune between 2014-18.”

The ATF and IPS analysis fails to mention that the grotesque increase in the number and wealth of America’s billionaire capitalist elite over the past 19 months has been fueled by a combination of an increase in the exploitation of the working class during the public health crisis and the unprecedented purchase of $7 trillion in financial assets by the Federal Reserve Bank as part of the US government’s pandemic stimulus response.

The staggering sums of billionaire wealth being accumulated at one pole of society, both within the US and on an international scale, are mirrored in the negative by the increasing poverty and suffering of the poor and working-class populations in the billions. The ruling elite is using the pandemic to accelerate, like a runaway train, the process of wealth inequality that has been underway for decades. But the working class is beginning to articulate its response to this crisis in the form of a strike wave developing throughout the United States and around the globe.

Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program (SIFP) 2022

Application Deadline: 1st November, 2021

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): United States of America

About the Award: The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program offers opportunities for independent research or study related to Smithsonian collections, facilities, and/or research interests of the Institution and its staff. Fellowships are offered to graduate students, predoctoral students, and postdoctoral and senior investigators to conduct independent research and to utilize the resources of the Institution with members of the Smithsonian professional research staff serving as advisors and hosts. These fellowships are offered through the Smithsonian’s Office of Fellowships and Internships, and are administered under the charter of the Institution, 20 U.S. Code section 41 et seq.

Applicants who wish to conduct research at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) should go here as SAO application requirements and deadlines may be different.

The publication, Smithsonian Opportunities for Research and Study, outlines Smithsonian research activities and lists the research staff. Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact staff members to help identify potential advisors, determine the feasibility of the proposed research being conducted at the Smithsonian Institution, and the availability of relevant resources such as staff, collections, archives and library materials during the proposed tenure dates.

The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program offers fellowships for research and study in the following fields and encourages applications of an interdisciplinary nature:

• Animal behavior, ecology, and environmental science, including an emphasis on the tropics
• Anthropology, including archaeology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, and physical anthropology
• Astrophysics and astronomy
• Earth sciences and paleobiology
• Evolutionary & systematic biology
• Folklife
• History of science and technology
• History of art, especially American, contemporary, African, and Asian art, twentieth-century American crafts, and decorative arts
• Materials research
• Molecular biology
• Social and cultural history of the United States

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• The program is open to US citizens and Non-US citizens. Applicants whose native language is not English are expected to have the ability to write and converse fluently in English. All application materials must be presented in English (foreign transcripts may be translated, see below).
• Past or current fellowship recipients are eligible to apply for another award.

Graduate Student Fellowships: When they apply, students must be formally enrolled in a graduate program of study at a degree-granting institution. Before the appointment begins fellows must still be enrolled and must have completed at least one full-time semester or its equivalent, or have completed the graduate program within the past four months. Graduate Student Fellowships are usually intended for students who have not yet been advanced to candidacy if in a doctoral program.

Predoctoral Fellowships: Students enrolled in a university as candidates for the Ph.D. or equivalent are eligible for predoctoral fellowships. By the time the appointment begins, the university must approve the undertaking of dissertation research at the Smithsonian Institution and certify that requirements for the doctorate, other than the dissertation, have been met.

Postdoctoral Fellowships:  The doctorate degree must be completed by the time the fellowship begins.

Senior Fellowships:  Applicants must have held a Ph.D. or equivalent for at least 7 years. Applicants who have received the Ph.D. or equivalent before November 1, 2014 are eligible to apply for senior fellowships.  If you have taken a “leave of absence” from research and wish to apply under the postdoctoral fellowship application instead of senior fellowship application you will need to provide a justification in the additional information section at the end of the application.

Selection Criteria: Applications for Smithsonian Institution Fellowship are evaluated and fellows are selected, by scholars in appropriate fields, on the basis of the proposal’s merit, the applicant’s ability to carry out the proposed research and study, the likelihood that the research could be completed in the requested time, and the extent to which the Smithsonian, through its research staff members and resources, could contribute to the proposed research. The number of appointments made each year is determined by the availability of funds for the program. The Smithsonian Fellowship Program does not discriminate on grounds of race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age, or disability.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship:

SENIOR FELLOWSHIPS -for scholars at least seven years beyond the Ph.D.

Term: 3 to 12 months
Stipend: $55,000 per year
Research Allowance: up to $4,000 per year

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS – for scholars up to seven years beyond the Ph.D. *

Term: 3 to 12 months**
Stipend: $55,000 per year
Research Allowance: up to $4,000 per year
** Postdoctoral applicants in Science may apply for up to 24 months.

PREDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS -for doctoral candidates to conduct dissertation research.

Term: 3 to 12 months
Stipend: $40,000 per year
Research Allowance: up to $4,000 per year

TEN-WEEK GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWSHIPS -for graduate students to conduct independent research usually before having been advanced to candidacy if in a Ph.D. program.

Term: 10 weeks
Stipend: $8,000

* If you have taken a “leave of absence” from research and wish to apply under the postdoctoral fellowship application instead of senior fellowship application which makes you 7 or more years out from receiving your Ph.D., please provide a justification in the additional information section at the end of the application.

Fellowship tenures must begin between June 1, 2021 and March 1, 2022. It is important that applicants consider the following factors carefully when choosing the dates for the proposed fellowship: their academic schedule; completion dates of their preliminary exams, course work, or dissertation (if applicable); the schedule of their proposed advisor/host and the availability of required resources.

How to Apply: Apply Through the Smithsonian Online Academic Appointment System (SOLAA)

Completed general information in SOLAA

Please ensure you go through the application guidelines in Scholarship Webpage before applying.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

The Embarrassment of Riches

John Feffer

The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it.

They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their names can live on in granite forever.

At the same time, the rich withdraw into gated villas, travel in their own private jets, and buy their own Picassos so that they don’t have to mix with the hoi polloi at museums. The rich want us to know about their wealth, but they also want to be left alone to enjoy it. They engage in an enormous game of peekaboo with the public. Now you see my wealth, now you don’t

In our globalized era, this game of peekaboo has become a vast enterprise. Enormous fortunes are generated by multinational operations and transnational financial flows. The profits in turn are protected by a baroque system of secret bank accounts and tax shelters. The rich will give away their money, occasionally, but as little as possible to governments. Their gifts to private charity are often just another way of robbing the public. Global tax shelters, meanwhile, are grand theft.

The recently released Pandora Papers, a trove of nearly 12 million documents, shines some light on the mechanisms by which the wealthy squirrel away their gains. One example jumps out: Tony Blair.

The former British prime minister and his lawyer wife Cherie purchased a multi-million-dollar townhouse in London as her office but did it in such a way as to avoid paying a tax on the sale. In this offshore financial sleight of hand, they skipped out on paying several hundred thousand dollars to the very government over which Blair once presided.

The maneuver, which was perfectly legal, is salient for two reasons.

First, Blair himself had initially railed against tax dodges of this nature. “Offshore trusts get tax relief while homeowners pay VAT on insurance premiums,” he said as Labor Party leader. “We will create a tax system that is fair which is related to ability to pay.”

Second, Blair celebrated a “third way” that was supposedly an accommodation between socialism and capitalism. When it came to global markets, Blair wanted “to remove regulatory burdens and to untie the hands of business,” as he put it in a celebrated 1999 speech.

It’s no surprise, then, that he took advantage of the very mechanisms that he initially opposed and subsequently facilitated through deregulation.

Blair is by no means alone in his opportunism. The Pandora Papers are full of politicians who campaigned on anti-corruption platforms and are now being hoisted by their own petards.

The billionaire Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš, for instance, made his political fortune on the basis of promises to stand up to corruption and run the Czech Republic like a business. When Czechs gave his party an overwhelming victory in 2017, they didn’t seem to find anything contradictory about such promises. Babiš at that time stood accused of various corrupt practices involving his businesses, including improper receipt of European subsidies. These allegations continued to dog him throughout his term of office, leading to an official European Parliament censure several months ago.

So, naturally, Babiš turns up in the Pandora Papers as well. According to the documents, the businessman transferred $22 million to offshore entities to buy a luxury French chateau. He engaged in this subterfuge to keep the purchase secret and probably to reduce his tax burden as well. This week, Czech voters finally changed their minds about Babiš and effectively voted him out of office.

Other anti-corruption campaigners have been ensnared in the Pandora web of incriminating documents. Volodymyr Zelensky, for instance, promised voters that he would clean up Ukraine’s swamp of corruption, but the Pandora Papers revealed his ownership of shares in offshore entities and shell companies. Oh, Zelensky “cleaned up” all right.

What was surprising about many of the 35 current and former world leaders that appear in the Pandora Papers was not so much their presence on the list— Gabon’s Ali Bongo, for instance, is notoriously corrupt while Chile’s Sebastian Pinera was already linked to 14 corruption investigations before he became president again at the end of 2017—but that they went to such great lengths to hide their purchases from the public.

Jordan’s King Hussein is a monarch, for goodness sake. Monarchs are expected to spend royally. The Queen of England enjoys $500 million in personal assets, and hardly anyone blinks an eye at all the money the royals spend very publicly on weddings, junkets, and the like. And yet, according to the Pandora Papers, King Hussein went about collecting $100 million of property around the world in secret. Of course, Jordan is a relatively poor country, and the government has imposed very unpopular austerity measures. It doesn’t look so good for their king to buy three cliff-top mansions in Malibu, four apartments in Georgetown, and several properties near Buckingham Palace.

Tolerance for the fabulously wealthy waxes and wanes. Back in the 1980s, TV viewers thrilled to glimpses of the “lifestyles of the rich and famous.” Nowadays, anger has been steadily mounting against the 1 percent. That’s why kings and politicians have been more discrete in moving their wealth around.

And that’s why governments feel that they have the public on their side when they try, even in half-hearted ways, to tap into this stream of globally circulating wealth.

Doing the Minimum

One of the virtues of globalization, from the perspective of a corporation, is the ability to move operations from one jurisdiction to another to take advantage of better tax deals. Some countries, like Ireland and Hungary, have billed themselves as havens for corporations that want to pay as little tax as possible.

At the prodding of the United States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been pushing through a corporate minimum tax rate of 15 percent. It will also tax digital companies in locations where they operate even if they don’t maintain any offices there.

All of this is lower than what the United States initially pushed for—a 21 percent rate. The measure, if passed, will have a 10-year transition period. And it’s not entirely clear that the United States itself will ratify the accord given the predictable Republican opposition. But hey, it’s something.

This effort might make a small dent in the gross receipts of the world’s wealthiest, like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. But even a small dent adds up to a lot of revenue. “Tax havens collectively cost governments between $500 billion and $600 billion a year in lost corporate tax revenue,” writes tax haven expert Nicholas Shaxson. “Of that lost revenue, low-income economies account for some $200 billion—a larger hit as a percentage of GDP than advanced economies and more than the $150 billion or so they receive each year in foreign development assistance.”

It’s not just corporations that are hiding their profits from tax authorities. Individuals continue to profit enormously from the global economy and, with the help of their accountants, avoid paying as much as possible to their respective governments. Shaxson offers a range of anywhere between $8.7 trillion and $36 trillion, which adds at least another $200 billion in lost government tax revenue per year.

To take advantage of low to non-existent tax rates, the rich love to park their money, and sometimes themselves, in places like the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. But the real surprise of the Pandora Papers is South Dakota’s status as a capital magnet. Like those island hideaways, South Dakota has no income tax, inheritance tax, or capital gains tax. And, like the Switzerland of old, it protects the money of the rich behind walls of secrecy.

On top of that, South Dakota trusts offer something else the rich crave: deniability. As Felix Salmon explains, “All three parties — the settlor, the trustee, and the beneficiary — can legally claim that the money isn’t theirs. The settlor and the beneficiary can say they don’t have the money, it’s all in a trust run by someone else. The trustee can say that she is just looking after the money and doesn’t own it.”

In other words, the rich often want to be as inconspicuous as possible—to avoid the tax inspector, that persistent creditor, and the anger of crowds.

So, the first step to clean up this highly lucrative mess is sunlight. One global tool is the Common Reporting Standard by which participating countries provide basic information about foreign assets held in their territories. Guess what: the United States is alone among major countries in not participating. In its usual exceptionalist way, America shares financial information on its own terms, not according to a global standard. Sunlight should extend to corporations as well, which should be obligated to submit financial information on every country where they operate.

The next step is to crack down on tax havens. The European Union maintains a tax haven black list, but it only has nine locations on it after the recent removal of Anguilla, Dominica, and the Seychelles. “Today’s decision to delist Anguilla, the only remaining jurisdiction with a 0% tax rate, and the Seychelles, which are at the heart of the latest tax scandal, renders the EU’s blacklist a joke,” concludes Oxfam’s Chiara Putaturo. So: better black lists.

And, of course, more should be done to raise the floor on corporate tax rates. The United States was right (for once): 15 percent is too low.

Soak the Rich

Decades of deregulation have led to the rise of a new class of the super-rich. More than 500,000 people around the world possess more than $30 million each, and half of these live in the United States. Of that latter number, over 700 are billionaires, and they saw their collective wealth increase by $1.8 trillion during the pandemic.

It’s time for rich people to fork over their fair share. The planet is presenting its bill to humanity. Pay up, says Mother Earth, or you’re toast.

Right now, those who are the least able to shoulder the costs of climate change are suffering its worst effects. In 2015, the World Bank estimated that, unless the international community took immediate steps, climate change would push 100 million people into poverty by 2030. Those immediate steps have not been taken. As a result, more than a million people are on the brink of famine because of drought in Madagascar. Poor islands like Haiti are especially vulnerable to climate change, and the population simply doesn’t have the capacity to adapt to their changing circumstances.

Elsewhere, the poor are doing whatever they can to keep their heads above water. In a recent astonishing study, the International Institute for Environment and Development reports that the rural poor in Bangladesh are spending more than their government or aid agencies to combat the climate impacts on their communities.

The rich are clearly embarrassed by their riches, so much so that they are going to great lengths to keep their transactions a secret. Now, can we embarrass them even more so that they pay what is necessary to save the planet?

Between Hunger and Poverty: Politics and Policies of Estimation

K.M. Seethi

Hunger and poverty are so intertwined that reports concerning one have implications for the other, and a palpable common factor is food security. The release of the Global Hunger Index (GHI) for 2021, on the eve of the observance of World Food Day (16 October), and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October) has naturally generated both anxieties and resentment. While anxieties are understandably pervasive across regions and countries, the resentment has come, this time, from an emerging economy in South Asia—India—which has high stakes in the global economy with its collaboration and partnerships with a large number of stakeholders. This, however, does not mean that the economy at the macro level is doing badly, notwithstanding pressures of global recession and the pandemic. It is yet critically important what countries such as India are doing at the micro level where the link between poverty and hunger is so obvious.

The United Nations has already come out with reports that as much as 842 million people across countries are undernourished and “almost all of them live in developing countries,” such as in regions like Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. According to the UN, “the COVID-19 pandemic that gripped the world during the past year has resulted in reversing decades of progress in the fight against poverty and extreme poverty.”  Quoting from the World Bank data, it says that “between 88 and 115 million people are being pushed into poverty as a result of the crisis, with the majority of the new extreme poor being found in South Asian and Sub-Saharan countries where poverty rates are already high.” The UN predicted that in 2021, “this number is expected to have risen to between 143 and 163 million. These ‘new poor’ will join the ranks of the 1.3 billion people already living in multidimensional and persistent poverty who saw their pre-existing deprivations aggravated during the global pandemic.”

According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), more than 3 billion people (nearly 40 per cent of the world population) cannot afford a healthy diet. This happens when the world’s agri-food system employs 1 billion people, more than any other sector. FAO says that small holder farmers produce more than 33 per cent of the world’s food, despite challenges including poverty, and a lack of access to finance.  FAO also underlines that   governments “need to both repurpose old policies and adopt new ones that foster the sustainable production of affordable nutritious foods and promote farmer participation.” It also says that policies “should promote equality and learning, drive innovation, boost rural incomes, offer safety nets to smallholders and build climate resilience. They also need to consider the multiple linkages between areas affecting food systems including education, health, energy, social protection, finance and more, and make solutions fit together.”

Does this happen in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? While the year-long farmers’ agitation in India is an indication of the ground level reality and burgeoning anxieties, the scenario in Africa is predictably grim. It is in this context that GHI 2021 holds significance, for countries like India.

Global Hunger Index and India

According to the GHI Report, India occupies 101th position in the hunger index, a further deterioration from 2020 rank (94). What is more disappointing for the policy circles in New Delhi is that India is lagging behind its neighbours in South Asia such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. GHI—prepared by the Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and Germany’s Welt Hunger Hilfe—revealed that 18 countries, including China, Brazil and Kuwait, come on the top of the ranking, with GHI scores of less than five. The GHI characterised the condition of hunger in India as ‘alarming.’ GHI sought to analyse data from 135 countries, but only 116 countries provided sufficient data.

The GHI considered four major indicators for score analysis—undernourishment; child wasting or the share of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition; child stunting or the number of under-5 children who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition; and child mortality. According to the report, wasting among children in India grew from 17.1 per cent between 1998 and 2002 to 17.3 per cent between 2016 and 2020. “People have been severely hit by covid-19 and the pandemic-related restrictions in India, the country with the highest child-wasting rate worldwide.” The Report further said that though other countries in the region such as Nepal (76), Bangladesh (76), Myanmar (71) and Pakistan (92) are also placed in the ‘alarming’ hunger list, they have managed better at feeding its citizens than India. This obviously angered New Delhi. The Statement issued by India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development says:

“It is shocking to find that the Global Hunger Report 20201 has lowered the rank of India on the basis of FAO estimate on proportion of undernourished population, which is found to be devoid of ground reality and facts and suffers from serious methodological issues. The publishing agencies of the Global Hunger Report, Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, have not done their due diligence before releasing the report.”

Terming the methodology employed by FAO as ‘unscientific,’ the Ministry alleged that these agencies “based their assessment on the results of a ‘four question’ opinion poll, which was conducted telephonically by Gallup. There is no scientific methodology to measure undernourishment like availability of food grains per capita during the period.” The statement further said that the scientific measurement of undernourishment “would require measurement of weight and Height, whereas the methodology involved here is based on Gallup poll based on pure telephonic estimate of the population.” According to the Ministry, the agencies completely disregarded “Government’s massive effort to ensure food security of the entire population during the covid period, verifiable data on which are available. The opinion poll does not have a single question on whether the respondent received any food support from the Government or other sources. The representativeness of even this opinion poll is doubtful for India and other countries.”

It also said that both GHI 2021 and FAO report on The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021 have completely ignored some glaring facts available in public domain, pertaining to schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna (PMGKAY) and Atma Nirbhar Bharat Scheme (ANBS). Under PMGKAY, the government “made allocation of food grains @ 5 kg per person per month free of cost for around 80 Crore (800 million) beneficiaries of the 36 States/UTs covered under National Food Security Act (Antyodaya Anna Yojana and Priority Households) including those covered under Direct Benefit Transfer for the period April to November 2O2O and again for the period May to November 2021.” In 2O2O, 3.22 crore (32.2 million) metric tons of food grains and in 2021, about 3.28 crore (32.8 million) metric tons of food grains were allocated free of cost under PMGKAY scheme to approximately 80 Crore (800 million) NFSA beneficiaries. Besides food grains, pulses were provided @ 1 kg per household per month for the period April to November 2020 free of cost to all beneficiaries under NFSA covering 19.4 Crore (194 million) households. The Ministry also noted that under ANBS, the government made allocation of about 8 lakh (800 thousand) metric tons of additional free of cost food grains covering all the States/UTs for migrants/stranded migrants who were neither covered under NFSA nor State Scheme PDS cards, @ 5 kg per person per month free of cost for a period of two months, May and June 2020.

GHI, however, stated that while India fared better in indicators such as the under-5 mortality rate, prevalence of stunting among children and incidence of undernourishment due to inadequate food continued to be high. The report indicated that food security is under challenge on multiple fronts. It highlighted that deteriorating conflict, weather fluctuations related to global climate change, and the economic and health challenges associated with the Covid-19 pandemic are all causing hunger. It said that “since 2000, India has made substantial progress, but there are still areas of concern, particularly regarding child nutrition. India’s GHI score has decreased from a 2000 GHI score of 38.8 points—considered alarming—to a 2021 GHI score of 27.5—considered serious. The proportion of undernourished in the population and the under-five child mortality rate are now at relatively low levels. While child stunting has seen a significant decrease—from 54.2 percent in 1998–1999 to 34.7 percent in 2016–2018—it is still considered very high. At 17.3 percent—according to the latest data—India has the highest child wasting rate of all countries covered in the GHI. This rate is slightly higher than it was in 1998–1999, when it was 17.1 percent.”

The report also noted that “it is difficult to be optimistic in 2021 because the forces driving hunger are overpowering good intentions and lofty goals. Among the most powerful and toxic of these forces are conflict, climate change, and covid-19—three Cs that threaten to wipe out any progress that has been made against hunger in recent years,” the report added.

As the GHI report appeared, the CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury came down heavily against the Union Government saying that while “food grains rotting in central godowns, mass hunger grows.” He said that in 2014 when Modi became prime minister India ranked at 55. In 2020, India “slipped to rank 94. Now we rank 101/116 countries.”

It may be recalled that months back, India had proposed to help the World Food Programme (WFP) replenish its foodgrain stock from overflowing state-owned granaries to assist the organization’s efforts in providing food to the most vulnerable global population amid the covid-19 crisis. The proposal was in reply to an appeal by WTO nations to lift ban on shipment of foodgrain for humanitarian aid. A Live Mint report said that in recent years, the government’s record procurement had led to burgeoning central pool stocks at 2.5 times the existing buffer norms. Till September, for instance, Food Corporation of India had central stocks of 22.2 million metric tonnes of rice and 47.8 million metric tonnes of wheat. The food grains Stock in Central Pool for the years 2016-2021 is now available in the public domain.

A major question being raised is whether the Public Distribution System (PDS), which played an important role in providing relief to people in India, is any more ‘viable and sustainable’ under neoliberal policy regime and its pressures, beyond this critical period of pandemic. While the peasant population in India is under tremendous pressure of ‘contracting out’ farming, without any state protection, the accumulation of problems emerging from the situation of state withdrawal will be so critical. Hunger caused by poverty will naturally be higher notwithstanding robust schemes put in place from time to time. The peasantry in India is already a victim of crop price fluctuations, high inflation and the rising cost of living. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) for 2021 is therefore a matter of concern insofar as its forewarning has a bearing on policymaking, beyond the politics of resentment.