The Infamy of the Palestinian Elites: An Imminent Split within Fatah?

Ramzy Baroud

The Fatah movement is involved in a massive tug-of-war that will ultimately define its future. Though the conflict is between current Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, and once Gaza strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, is in no way motivated by ending the Israeli Occupation, their war will likely determine the future political landscape of Palestine.

The issue cannot be taken lightly, nor can it be dismissed as an internal Fatah conflict. The latter is one of the two largest Palestinian factions, the largest within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and has single-handedly pushed Palestinians into the abyss of the ‘peace process’ and the great Oslo Accords gamble, which has come at great cost and no benefits.

Moreover, Fatah embodies Palestine’s ruling elites. True, Abbas’ mandate expired in 2009 and Dahlan has been accumulating massive wealth since he fled the West Bank in 2011 (following his public feud with Abbas) but, sadly, both men wield substantial authority and influence. Abbas runs the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah with an iron fist and with the full consent and support of Israel and the United States, while Dahlan is being actively groomed by various Middle Eastern governments, and possibly Israeli and US powers, as the likely successor of the aging Ramallah leader.

They are both indifferent to the harsh reality experienced by their people on the ground.

A limited uprising, known by some as the ‘Knife Intifada’ and others as ‘al-Quds Intifada’, is teetering on the brink, with no serious efforts by the Palestinian leadership to, at least, try to harness Palestinian energies towards a sustainable, long-term popular uprising. On the contrary, Abbas has done his utmost to ignore the Palestinian people’s cry for help and for an astute, courageous leadership.

Instead, Abbas continues to perceive his ‘security coordination’ with Israel as ‘holy’, while continuing to crackdown on Palestinian resistance and on his own Fatah opponents and their supporters.

He is yet to designate a successor, despite the fact that he is 81-years-old and suffers from heart ailments.

This has signaled an opportunity to Dahlan, who has been accused of involvement in various shady Arab affairs. Dahlan has been aching for a comeback from his villa in Abu Dhabi. In a recent New York Times article, Peter Baker, who interviewed Dahlan, described part of his wealth:

“His spacious home here in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, features plush sofas, vaulted ceilings and chandeliers. The infinity pool in the back seems to spill into the glistening waterway beyond.”

Dahlan’s amassing of wealth goes back to his years in Gaza, when he was the head of the notorious Preventive Security Service, itself formed and trained with the help of the US, the CIA in particular, according to various media reports. Its torture techniques were criticized repeatedly by international human rights groups.

Dahlan remains unrepentant: neither apologetic about his unexplained wealth, nor for the Gaza crackdowns which ended when Hamas deposed him and his movement in 2007, resulting in a short-lived civil war.

‘Two things that I am not denying,” he told the NYT. “That I’m rich. I will not deny it. Ever. And that I am strong, I will not deny it. But I work hard to increase my level of life.”

Explaining what many perceive as a brutal reign in Gaza, he dismissed it, saying that he “wasn’t head of the Red Cross,” at the time.

A Human Rights Watch report expounded on the extent of the crackdown that commenced soon after the PA took charge of the Occupied Territories in 1994. For example, “during the first eight months of 1996, at least 2,000 Palestinians were arrested” by the PA police. The rate is almost as high as arrests carried out by the Israeli army. “The arrests were arbitrary,” according to HRW and no courts or due process was ever part of the procedure, which, almost always, involved torture.

Sadly, the legacies of Abbas and Dahlan are largely predicated on such behavior, and their current conflict is mostly concerned with personal power struggles that involve just them and their followers.

Abbas, who is slowly losing the traditional Arab allies who once supported him against Hamas, and is relegated by Israel – which is trying to arrange the post-Abbas Palestinian leadership – is trying to explore new alliances. He has recently visited Turkey and Qatar. In Qatar, he met with top Hamas leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Ismael Haniyeh.

Hamas is not being courted by Abbas to end the protracted and disconcerting Palestinian feud for many years, but rather to counterbalance earlier moves by Dahlan to pander to Hamas.

Dahlan is involved in various ‘charity projects’ including financing mass weddings in impoverished Gaza. But it is not Dahlan’s money that Hamas is seeking; rather the hope that he mediates with Egypt to ease movement on the Rafah-Egypt border.

With a growing clout and rising number of benefactors, Dahlan’s resurrection is assured, but imposing him on an embattled Fatah faction in the West Bank remains uncertain.

To preclude Dahlan’s attempt at regaining his status within Fatah, Abbas’s PA forces in the Occupied West Bank have been conducting arrests of Dahlan’s supporters. The latter’s armed men are retaliating and clashes have been reported in various parts of the West Bank.

Moreover, Abbas has called for the seventh Fatah conference to be held sometime later this month, where the Abbas faction within Fatah is likely to rearrange the various committees to ensure Dahlan’s supporters are weakened, if not permanently removed.

Considering Dahlan’s strong support base, and his ability to win followers using his access to wealth and regional allies, a move against his followers is likely to backfire, splitting the party, or worse, leading to an armed conflict. Despite Israel’s intentional silence, there are also reports that Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who was tied to Dahlan repeatedly in the past, is keen on ensuring the return of Dahlan at the helm of Fatah.

Tragically, the power struggle rarely involves ordinary Palestinian people, who remain alone facing the Israeli military machine, the growing illegal Jewish settlements, the suffocating siege, while persisting under an unprecedented leadership vacuum.

This is one of the enduring legacies of the Oslo Accords, which divides Palestinians into classes: a powerful class that is subsidized by ‘donor countries’ and is used to serve the interests of the US, Israel and regional powers, and the vast majority of people, barely surviving on handouts, and resisting under growing odds.

This strange contradiction has become the shameful reality of Palestine, and regardless of what the power struggle between Abbas and Dahlan brings, most Palestinians will find themselves facing the same dual enemy, military occupation, on the one hand, and their leadership’s own acquiescence and corruption, on the other.

Eradicating Black Economy or Encouraging Cashless Economy

Jayashubha

The announcement of withdrawal of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes is being described as a masterstroke, a surgical strike on the Black money holders and one tough decision in Indian economic history which will change the world. It is being said that this will put an end to Black money and hit the backbone of terror. The logic that is being used is – black money is held in cash usually in the form of Rs. 500 /1000 notes, are usually kept at home and not deposited in banks – this decision will make black money holders to deposit in banks – the increased bank balance will raise alarm bells – income tax authorities will track and catch hold of excess money. As some commentators have described, black money is not necessarily stored but is in circulation or may take a converted form – a property disproportionate to income, gold or other form of assets. It may also be invested in stock exchanges, businesses etc. Hence the assumption of stagnant black money does not remain valid.

The question that arises is a) whether there is a hidden agenda behind the decision leave apart its impact on reduction of black economy; b) is it being done for the sake of promotion of a cashless economy – where corporates dealing with credit cards, debit cards, ecommerce would get an opportunity to grow as consumers would be made to make shift to cashless transactions – is  a facilitative environment being created for them; c) is it being done for encouraging larger retail enterprises where cashless transactions dominate in place of smaller retailers where cash transactions dominate  –  it is to be noted that India allowed 100% FDI in retail ; d) will it lead to a change in financial behavior of middle class consumers – as they make shift from Rythu Bazaars to Reliance Fresh, Kirana stores to Big bazaars / Walmarts; e) will it affect the small traders, street vendors and large sections of poor who largely deal with cash based transactions and who will find it consumers being lesser attracted to them.

Going by the logic of surgical strike on Black Money is concerned, the following question arises: –

• Does Black Money essentially exist in the form of Rs. 500 / 1000 notes only?
• If existence of excess fake Rs. 500 / 1000 currency in the economy is the reason for the same, what is the guarantee new fake note with excess denomination (Rs. 2,000) will not emerge later?
• What if the black money has been converted into a foreign currency and invested in Banks outside? How can this decision help in bringing it back?
• What if the black money has been utilized to build assets in India or abroad or invested in businesses? How can this decision help in checking that?
• Does Black money exist only in paper form in the form of notes? Does it not exist in paperless form? Is not existence of surplus money in Banks disproportionate with cash flow a Black money? Does a shift from currency (500/1000) to a paperless form make it white?
• As per the claims of the Government, for every 10 lakh Rs. 500 notes, there are about 250 Rs. 500 notes which are fake? This is about 0.00025% of the total currency available? No doubt this too has to be definitely curbed. But will it not lead to inconvenience to large population who fall outside the Black economy
• The exchange process (Rs. 500/1000 to Rs. 100) in the coming days will mean that there has to be sufficient supply of Rs. 100 notes. Is the supply sufficient enough?
• If the black money has been accumulated due to corruption and financial misappropriation through usage of genuine currency, how can these decisions put an end to the same? Can the usage of genuine currency (with black transactions) will make it white?
• What about those who are in the list of Panama papers? Will they be targeted? Are they in the list because of fake 500 / 1000 notes?
• Will the Black money lying in Swiss Bank be brought back? This was promised during 2014 election campaign? Will the decision help in bringing it back?
• How will the tax evasions be controlled through this action? While on the one hand government incentivizes conversion of black money into white through voluntary disclosure scheme, on the other hand it talks of fighting black economy?

The current decision seems to be to make a shift to a cashless economy rather than a surgical strike on Black Money.

Australian foreign policy strategists discuss US-China nuclear war

Patrick Kelly

A public discussion in Melbourne last Thursday provided a chilling insight into the calculations of a layer within the Australian foreign policy and military establishment that now anticipates that US-China strategic rivalry is likely to trigger a war between the nuclear-armed powers.

The panel discussion was organised by La Trobe University and titled “How to respond to China’s rise?” The main speakers were Hugh White and Linda Jakobsen.

Jakobsen is formerly of the Lowy Institute and currently a visiting professor at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, which was created in 2006 to promote the US-Australian alliance and Australian involvement in US-led wars of aggression.

White has a long record within the military-intelligence apparatus, having been an advisor to former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke, a senior official in the defence department and an intelligence analyst with the top-level Office of National Assessments. More recently he has worked with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the Australian National University.

White opened the meeting by repeating the criticisms he has previously levelled at Washington’s “pivot” to Asia, which has seen an aggressive attempt to militarily and diplomatically isolate China as a means of maintaining US imperialism’s domination of the entire Asia-Pacific region.

In 2012, White wrote The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power, opposing the Australian government’s participation in the Obama administration’s reckless confrontation of Beijing. He remains the most prominent critic of the “pivot” from within the Australian foreign policy establishment. His remarks on Thursday, however, underscore the fact that this minority position within the ruling class is no less militarist and pro-war than the dominant rival camp, which backs an unwavering commitment to the US strategic alliance and Washington’s confrontation of China.

The public event was billed as a debate between White and Jakobsen, with the latter defending current US and Australian government policies. Yet far more united the two speakers than divided them.

Speaking of the pivot and the associated geostrategic calculation that the Chinese government will accept subordination to US imperialism, White declared: “Let’s be absolutely clear—I really hope this policy works… I love US primacy. It’s been terrifically good for Australia. I love the rules-based order in Asia which it has supported. It has given us the forty best years in Asia’s long history. And if it could last forever, no-one would be happier than me.”

Having whitewashed Washington’s bloody record in the region—including waging brutal wars of aggression in Korea and Vietnam, and backing countless right-wing dictatorships—White expressed regret that the situation had irrevocably changed. “Wishes don’t make policy,” he concluded.

White reviewed both China’s economic expansion and the decline of US global power. He pointed to a series of US strategic initiatives in the past 15 years—including Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, “keeping the Russians in a box,” and “containing China”—that “all failed.” Given this, he stated, there was no legitimate grounds to expect Beijing to “back down” in the face of US threats and provocations.

He continued: “I take seriously the risk of war. A lot of people find that odd—because they think, how could this possibly come to war, how could that be in anyone’s interest? Well it wouldn’t be, just for the record, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Anyone who is very confident that escalating rivalry between the US and China, over who is the leader of the Asian order, will not result in war must be very confident that one of them will back off. And the question is: who are you expecting to back off? If neither of them does, then that’s how wars start. That’s what happened in 1914.”

After having raised the spectre of another world war, White gave short shrift to Jakobsen’s assurances that the US-China relationship was highly “stable and mature.”

He told the meeting: “There’s surprisingly little serious strategic communication [between the US and China]. Very important people can meet in very expensive rooms and drink very glamorous mineral water, and still say nothing to one another of substance. And I see very little evidence that the United States and China have had a serious discussion about their nuclear relationship.”

White repeatedly warned of the danger of a nuclear war between the two powers.

“The scary thing is that the mutual expectation [of Washington and Beijing] that the other will back down will carry up through an escalating conventional conflict to the nuclear threshold,” he stated. “One of the reasons why that’s a real danger is that nobody knows what the nuclear threshold is. This is one of the big differences between the situation in Asia today and the situation in Europe during the Cold War. Everybody [then] knew what the threshold was. It was very clear what it was you had to do—if you started up your T-72 [tank] and drove it through Checkpoint Charlie, you were going to start a nuclear war. It was geographically defined by a line down the middle of Europe, to the nearest metre.

“But nobody knows what the equivalent line in East Asia is today. And I think there is a risk that both sides in a conflict, as it starts to escalate, as it easily would, will find themselves worrying about what the other guy would do, and start to think, well maybe I have to move first…”

These remarks point to the urgent need for the working class to intervene against the rapidly escalating danger that US imperialism and its allies, including the Australian government, will trigger a third world war that would see incalculable devastation around the world.

White inadvertently pointed to the ruling elite’s conspiracy of silence on the war danger. “Australian political leaders are much more conscious of the seriousness of the strategic rivalry between the US and China than they have ever expressed publicly,” he explained. “Our political leaders don’t speak in private as they do in public. They don’t really assume that the United States and China are just getting on fine. They know this is a really serious power political rivalry, the outcome of which is far from clear.”

Confronted with the spectre of a nuclear holocaust, White’s proposed response is as reactionary as it is utopian. He advocates a vast expansion of military spending—with the additional resources inevitably paid for by the working class—to allow a more “independent” Australian imperialism to somehow pressure Washington to cede geostrategic dominance in East Asia to China.

The only realistic perspective, however, is for the working class of Australia to unite with their class brothers and sisters in the US, China, and internationally in a joint political struggle based on the perspective of socialist internationalism against war and against the capitalist system that gives rise to war.

Canadian spy agency concealed mass data intelligence-bank from courts

Roger Jordan

In a damning ruling issued last Thursday, Federal Court Judge Simon Noel sharply criticized the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country’s premier spy agency, for concealing the existence of a mass data collection program for over a decade.

CSIS established the Operational Data Analysis Centre (ODAC) in July 2006. The facility gathers metadata on a vast and unspecified number of Canadians, including email addresses, telephone numbers, and IP addresses of anyone who has been in contact with a person targeted by CSIS. This information is kept indefinitely, even after the targeted individual is no longer deemed a threat to national security.

In his ruling, Noel pointed to the extraordinary fact that, despite being tasked with authorizing CSIS warrants for data collection, the courts had no idea ODAC existed. “The Court had never before been fully informed of the existence of the program. The Court, during the hearings, learned that the program had been in existence since 2006 yet it had never heard nor seen any evidence on the matter,” he stated.

The judge emphasized that this represented the second time in three years CSIS had breached its “duty of candour,” i.e. had lied, to the courts. In 2013, Justice Richard Mosley found that CSIS systematically lied for years in a series of applications it made to the courts to secure authorization for wiretapping operations. The domestic spy agency had failed to disclose that it was collaborating with CSE (Communications Security Establishment), Canada’s foreign signals intelligence service, which is part of the NSA-led “Five Eyes” alliance and is formally prohibited from collecting information on Canadians.

CSIS director Michel Coulombe released a statement in which he insisted that politicians were informed about the work of ODAC. “The creation of ODAC ... was presented to the Minister of Public Safety in July, 2006, explaining the requirement for advanced analytics and the ability of ODAC to retain data, including metadata, for extended periods of time,” Coulombe said. “The minister was also briefed on the program in March, 2010.”

Coulombe added that all access to the illegally collected data has been halted. Significantly, however, the store of metadata has not been destroyed, but continues to be expanded because CSIS has other means of increasing its volume. Provisions in Bill C-51, passed by the Harper Conservatives with the support of the Liberals in 2015, mean that CSIS can collect data from 17 government departments without a warrant, including the Canada Revenue Agency, the border service and CSE. As Noel noted, this meant CSIS now has free access to such information as Canadians’ tax returns.

Stockwell Day, the former Conservative Public Safety Minister in the first Harper government, claimed ignorance of the program in an interview with CBC. Current Liberal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale asserted he only became aware of CSIS’ illegal activities several weeks ago when he received a version of Noel’s judgement.

Such denials are hardly credible. Concern about the indefinite holding of metadata was first raised in a Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) report issued in January. SIRC is the watchdog tasked with overseeing CSIS’ activities and is made up of government appointees. In a further report issued this fall, SIRC accused CSIS of breaching the condition that it only collect data which is “strictly necessary,” saying instead that the intelligence agency was ingesting data in bulk.

The court ruling confirmed that Day was briefed on the operation in July 2006. While no information has yet been made public on what Goodale knew, even New Democratic Party (NDP) public safety critic Matthew Dubé felt obliged to note that it was highly likely he was briefed upon taking office. The NDP made a show of opposing Bill C-51 during the 2015 election, while at the same time offering to participate in a coalition government with the Liberals, who played a key role in instituting much of Canada’s draconian anti-terror legislation and backed the anti-democratic Bill C-51 at every stage during its passage through parliament last year.

Regardless of what precise details were known by politicians, responsibility for the systematic violation of the law and the privacy rights of Canadians by CSIS lies with successive governments for granting vast and unprecedented powers to the national security apparatus. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Chretien-Martin Liberal governments implemented anti-terrorist legislation that undermined longstanding democratic principles such as habeas corpus and the right to remain silent.

In relation to the collection of information, a doctrine was developed by the Conservative government that metadata from Canadians’ emails, cellphones and internet use is not constitutionally-protected private communication and is thus fair game for the intelligence services. Government spokesman repeatedly claimed that metadata is innocuous, yet it is universally recognized by computer and security analysts that the collection and analysis of metadata enables state spy agencies to construct an extremely detailed picture of the day-to-day activities and beliefs of anyone under surveillance.

Under Bill C-51 , CSIS was granted “disruption powers,” allowing the agency to break virtually any law in actively intervening to “disrupt” vaguely defined public security threats, so long as they don’t deliberately cause “bodily harm” or violate someone’s “sexual integrity.”

One of the few limitations placed on CSIS’ disruption powers is the requirement it obtain a court warrant if any of its planned disruption operations breaches the Criminal Code or Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The latest revelations only demonstrate how worthless such a provision is, given that the spy agency routinely lies and deceives the courts.

Trudeau’s Liberals, aware of the deep-seated hostility to such authoritarian powers, feigned opposition to the Bill C-51 but still voted in favour of it in parliament. Trudeau proclaimed during the election campaign that a Liberal government would repeal several of the legislation’s most controversial aspects and establish a special parliamentary committee to provide “oversight” of the intelligence agencies.

More than one year after taking power, the only concrete step the Liberals have taken toward realizing these bogus promises is to introduce a bill creating an oversight committee, staffed with carefully vetted parliamentarians, with severely limited rights to review past intelligence operations.

Any other steps have been delayed pending the outcome of the phony public consultation that Goodale announced in September. The document the government issued to guide this “consultation” fully embraces the reactionary “war on terror” narrative that successive Liberal and Conservative governments have used to justify a series of bloody military interventions around the world and attacks on democratic rights at home. It also lauds the intelligence agencies as bastions of democracy. The document’s introduction dishonestly proclaims, “National security institutions in Canada are professional, responsible and effective in the work they do. They work within a well-defined set of legal authorities and respect Canadian law.”

Goodale’s reaction to the latest revelations was decidedly low key. While issuing an obligatory slap on the wrist to CSIS, mainly for public consumption, he made no call for the removal of Coulombe or any other senior intelligence figures despite their systematic violation of the law.

Instead, he released a statement in which he suggested the Liberals may be prepared to further undermine democratic rights so as to permit CSIS’s Orwellian activities to be deemed legal. “The CSIS Act is now more than 30 years old and showing its age as global affairs, threat profiles, technology and public expectations have rapidly evolved,” Goodale wrote in his statement.

The response of SIRC makes a mockery of the Liberals’ claims that parliamentary oversight will do anything to restrain the intelligence agencies. The watchdog agency charged with monitoring CSIS activities first drew attention to the illegal holding of metadata in January 2016, i.e. almost a decade after the practice began.

In response to the court ruling, SIRC chairman Pierre Blais expressed his full confidence in Coulombe, issuing a statement declaring, “he’s doing a good job” and insisting that the head of CSIS had not deliberately misled the courts.

Auto maker Nissan given “support and assurances” by UK government

Jean Shaoul 

The European Commission (EC) has indicated a possible investigation into the deal struck last month between the UK Conservative government and Japan’s auto-manufacturer Nissan.

Nissan is to build two key models at its Sunderland plant after it was given “support and assurances” over the possible impact of Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU). Business Secretary Greg Clark confirmed that one such assurance is that the government will seek tariff-free access to EU markets for the car industry, while denying that a “cheque book” was involved. The plant employs 7,000 people.

Any such agreement may be in breach of EU rules against providing unfair state aid to companies, which govern the UK until the conclusion of Brexit. An EC spokesperson said, “The UK authorities have not notified any support to Nissan for assessment under our state aid rules and we’ve therefore not taken any formal view of this matter.”

The deal was announced just weeks after CEO Carlos Ghosn threatened that Nissan would only build the Qashqai and the X-Trail SUV models in Britain if he received a guarantee of compensation to offset the cost of any trade tariffs should Britain leave the EU’s single market. At stake is a double-figure tariff on thousands of car components imported from the EU and on the export of more than half the production lines to the EU.

The decision prompted a storm of protest from other auto manufacturers in Britain, along with the aerospace, defence and pharmaceutical industries and the financial institutions—all denouncing the “secret deal”, demanding to know what assurances had been given and insisting on similar concessions for themselves. All these companies are concerned about regulation, the ability to recruit foreign staff, access to science funding as well as trade barriers.

Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed Nissan’s announcement as “fantastic news” and a vote of confidence in the UK. It is nothing of the sort. It sheds light on the politically servile relationship between the government and major corporations and financial institutions. Post-Brexit, all of them are lobbying Downing Street, demanding promises and policies to ensure their continued and increased profitability that can only come from the increased exploitation of the working class in a global race to the bottom.

Just four days later, the government was forced to admit that it had made a written commitment to support Nissan, but denied that it had made any special concessions. It outlined some of the details of its letter to Nissan, but declined to publish the agreement because it contained “commercially sensitive information.”

Clark told the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show” that there had been “lots of communications between us” at the highest levels. The government’s key objective in its negotiations with the EU would be to secure continued tariff-free access to the Single Market, he stressed. His letter apparently outlined four elements of the government’s support for the auto industry: continued support for “competitiveness”, an increase in small and medium sized firms involved in the industry’s supply-chain, the backing of research and development, as well as seeking “unencumbered” trade.

Commentators have seized on this as indicating that the government, which seemed to be leaning in its public comments towards a “Hard Brexit”, including losing access to the Single Market, was in reality seeking a “Soft Brexit”, or customs union with the EU at least for key sectors.

However, this is not in the government’s power to deliver. Sectoral deals are a non-starter with the EU, since others would follow suit, presaging the collapse of the EU under a mess of protection and subsidies. Furthermore, the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) “most favoured nation principle” means that Britain would have to offer tariff-free access to the rest of the world as well.

The EU has already indicated that the primary condition for Britain’s customs-free access to the Single Market is dependent on the acceptance of the free movement of people and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. May has rejected both of these in deference to the Conservative Party’s most xenophobic right wing.

Even if the government were to accept these conditions without splitting the Tory party, it is still far from clear that it will be able to reach an agreement with the EU over access to the Single Market.

Crucially then, the government’s only bankable pledge is open-ended commitment to fund training and skills, regional relocation grants, scientific research and keeping industry “competitive.” The least that can be said of the first three assurances is that it will end up costing the earth for the taxpayer and must come at the expense of other social expenditure. This is under conditions where the Institute of Fiscal Studies has forecast lower tax receipts than expected in last March’s budget, due to weak growth and increased borrowing of £25 billion by 2019-20.

At the same time, “keeping the industry competitive” and “bringing home the supply chain” lost to international rivals means a pledge to enforce a low-wage regime, along with the removal of what remains of the social safety net to ensure the acceptance of slave labour conditions, and a dictatorial regime to enforce it.

This has done the trick for Nissan, which has said it wanted to develop Sunderland into a “super plant” that would build more than 600,000 cars a year. Didier Leroy, the chief competitive officer and executive vice-president of Toyota, which has a large factory in Derbyshire, also said that he had “trust in the UK government that it will offer fair treatment” for companies when negotiating its exit from the EU.

Jaguar Land Rover, the largest auto manufacturer in the UK, admitted that it too had been “reassured” by the government about access to the free market during private discussions.

It is believed that the government has promised to protect farmers, construction industries, care homes and the National Health Service that are dependent upon low-wage migrant workers. The big banks are also determined to retain the free movement of their staff and the ability to sell their services across Europe.

This is the real meaning of post-Brexit Britain: a bonanza for big business and financial elite, who can afford to lobby the government, via an escalating offensive against the working class, for innumerable forms of State Aid outlawed under EU law, and sweetheart deals.

The trade unions for their part have welcomed Nissan’s announcement, as did Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who made only qualified remarks, with concerns about a secret deal between the government and the corporations and the importance of equal treatment for all industries and manufacturers.

Homeland Security resumes deportation of Haitian immigrants

Jake Dean & Clodomiro Puentes

Following an announcement last month by United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson suspending the deportation of Haitians, the government has quietly resumed its policy of deportations. Already, planeloads of Haitian nationals are being flown back to Haiti.

On September 22, the US government announced that it was ending a six-year moratorium on deportations of Haitian citizens instituted in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake. While US officials claimed that this shift in policy stemmed from a supposed improvement of conditions in Haiti, there real reason was the arrival of growing numbers of Haitians on the border between Tijuana and San Diego.

Just weeks later, in the face of the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew in October, Homeland Security again reversed its policy, renewing the moratorium on Haitian deportations. The decision was then lauded from both sides of Congress and various humanitarian organizations.

In a letter to President Barack Obama signed by more than 50 members of Congress urging a reversal of his original decision to resume deportations of Haitians, the members cynically struck a pose of disinterested humanitarianism. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, called for a halt to the policy until a degree of internal normalcy could be attained in the Caribbean island nation, stating: “Haiti is a deeply impoverished country and there is no question as to the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew. Haitians living in the United States should be granted short-term relief from deportation until the situation in their home country stabilizes.”

At an event in Mexico City, Johnson first announced the decision to temporarily resume the suspension of deportations. “We will have to deal with that situation, address it, be sympathetic to the plight of the people of Haiti as a result of the hurricane,” he said. This comes from an administration that has deported upwards of 3.2 million people. Johnson did not wait long before he evinced his real intentions, stating, “But after that condition has been addressed, we intend to resume the policy change.”

Evidently, the ravages caused by the recent hurricane, not to mention the continuing effects of the 2010 earthquake, have, in Johnson’s eyes, been “addressed” in a matter of days. Such shifts in policy are part of a long-standing strategy of the Democrats to falsely pose as the friend of immigrants, and in this case were clearly calculated with the 2016 elections in mind.

The Miami Herald Tuesday quoted officials of the Haitian National Police, which is in charge of meeting deportees upon their arrival in the country, as reporting that the first planeload of Haitian immigrants who had reached the US-Mexico border arrived in Port-au-Prince last Thursday, and a second landed on Tuesday, US Election day. A police spokesman said that the Haitians had been admitted into the US solely in order to imprison them, put them through removal proceedings and then ship them back to Haiti.

These new deportations, coming just five weeks after Hurricane Matthew, with millions still facing homelessness and hunger, was initiated secretly, without any public notification.

Initially, the Department of Homeland Security had stated on September 22 that deportations would begin for those Haitian immigrants who had overstayed their temporary protected status (TPS) first granted them in 2010 following the 2010 earthquake. The Department of Homeland Security issued 18-month TPS to Haitian nationals that allowed them to live and work in the US, although it did not include a path to citizenship. Currently, there are nearly 58,000 Haitians who are living in the US under TPS.

Far from helping the impoverished Haitians, a mere 75 people are accepted each day into the US as more than 300 arrive daily into Mexico, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission. Upon arriving at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border, Haitians are given a paper slip with a due date to appear for processing, many having dates forcing them to wait up to five weeks. More than 40,000 Haitians are expected to make the dangerous trip to the US-Mexico border.

Some 85,000 Haitians migrated to Brazil in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. At the time, the Brazilian economy benefitted from a commodities boom fueled in large part by Chinese demand. Just as Brazil sought to play a leading role in the UN’s MINUSTAH “peacekeeping” mission in Haiti, the better to bolster its international prestige and consolidate its role as a regional power, the Brazilian ruling elite was eager to snap up a new supply of lower-paid immigrant workers and began offering work visas to Haitians in 2012 under the guise of humanitarian good will.

Jean Veniel, a 38-year-old construction worker and painter, spoke to WSWS reporters in Tijuana on the dismal prospects facing Haitian workers and youth. “The corrupt [Haitian] government isn’t offering any help. For professionals, there’s nothing for them, no careers waiting for them, there’s no place for them in Haiti. The lack of work, education, healthcare – all these things that we don’t have are basic and important for the country’s development.”

Brazil’s newly installed president, Michel Temer, also played the humanitarian card at a UN summit in New York in late September, claiming to have taken in 95,000 refugees, the vast bulk of whom were Haitians fleeing the devastation of their country. This is all for public consumption. That the government began issuing visas at all after a two-year delay is telling. Far from a benevolent humanitarian gesture, the basic indifference of the Brazilian ruling class, as much as the American, was underscored in the squalid living conditions that the Haitian immigrants were provided upon arriving in 2010, as well as the hundreds of cases of Haitians working in conditions of slave labor reported by Brazil’s Ministry of Labor.

Where once it was able to absorb and exploit Haitian labor under a humanitarian guise, the blows of Brazil’s own ongoing economic crisis have forced the Brazilian ruling class to dispel with this pretense and now mercilessly expel Haitian immigrants from the workforce.

As a result of layoffs, lack of job prospects and absence of any significant social programs to assist them, the tens of thousands of Haitian migrant workers initially taken in are left with few other options than to leave Brazil and make the more than 7,000 mile trip to the US.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, US officials reportedly entered into discussions with Brazil’s President Temer on the possibility of forcibly deporting the Haitians now gathered on the US border back to Brazil.

WSWS reporters spoke to Haitian immigrants in Tijuana on the conditions that compelled them to take this costly and perilous journey.

“Nicaragua was really tough,” a former 19-year-old soldier told WSWS reporters. “All I remember is being on a boat for nine hours in the middle of the night, it was freezing, it was disorienting. And in Guatemala the police there saw me and would demand money, it was corruption, corruption, corruption… I’ve been here waiting to cross into the United States for about two months. I’ve spent thousands of dollars trying to get here. My father sold his house, my friends got money together just to send me over here.”

Vicent, 30, a construction worker, said: “I’ve been here for three weeks. Like everyone else here, I’m looking for a better life, looking for work. After the 2010 earthquake, everything was destroyed and there was no work anywhere. I lost my three-year-old in the earthquake. I was in Brazil for about three years, working in construction, but after a while there was no work in Brazil and I had to leave. I’m hoping I can find work in the United States. A roof, a house, being able to share a meal with your family without trouble -- that’s all we’re looking for.”

The stranding of Haitian workers at the US-Mexico border is a product of the ongoing worldwide economic crisis. The misplaced hopes in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as a base for capitalist stabilization has been largely abandoned. The economies of the US, Mexico, Brazil and Haiti, although in many respects differing in quality and magnitude, remain in a general slump, and the immigration policies of all the major nation states have grown increasingly punitive. In the end, it is the international working class that is made to pay for the irrationality of such a political and economic set-up.

Layoffs, fare hikes coming to Washington, D.C. transit system

Nick Barrickman

In late October, Washington, D.C. Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld released a proposed fiscal budget for the year beginning July 1. The proposal would see the layoff of over 1,000 of the D.C. transit system’s 13,000 workers while imposing fare hikes and cuts to services.

The Washington D.C. Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) faces a fiscal deficit of $290 million due to a steady loss of ridership in the D.C. region. The public increasingly avoids traveling on the nation’s second largest public transit system due to numerous delays, hazardous rail conditions and prohibitive fare rates.

Under the plan, nearly 300 train operators and mechanics would be laid off, with an additional 700 positions being slashed. Calling for the need to “rationalize services for today’s ridership,” Wiedefeld stated, “This plan has Metro doing everything in our power to get major expense categories under control while improving safety and making the trains run on time.”

The average bus fare would increase by 25 cents to $2 a ride while the minimum and maximum metro fees would jump from $2.15-$5.90 to $2.25-$6, respectively. Parking fees would rise at a similar rate. MetroAccess shuttle services, which primarily serve disabled riders, would also increase to over $4 a ride.

WMATA also announced that it was considering the closure of over a dozen “low-ridership” bus routes and metro stations throughout the system. There will be increased waiting times between trains and buses, as busier stops near the center of the city would receive trains every two to four minutes while less-centralized stops would see a 15 minute off-peak hour waiting period. Wait times for buses would increase at a similar rate.

In addition, WMATA is requesting increases in localized funding from the different jurisdictions it serves--Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Such funding increases would further impact budget shortfalls throughout the region.

Such additional costs threaten to exacerbate Metro’s loss of customers. The Washington Post reported last month that an estimated 1 to 4 percent of metro and bus riders would stop using public transit if the proposed fee hikes were imposed.

The proposal to slash services and lay off workers comes as Metro has enacted scheduled delays on its rail services due to safety issues. Enforced single-tracking (SafeTracking), which last month was conducted on the Red Line, the District’s busiest route, has led to massive delays and an additional drop in ridership as commuters seek to avoid onerous wait times.

The SafeTracking program was enacted after a series of equipment failures and other safety issues, which have led to tragedies in the city’s transit system. Nearly two years ago, a commuter died from asphyxiation and several more were hospitalized when an electrical fire caused a train to stall in a tunnel near L’Enfant Plaza in downtown D.C.

In March, Metro was forced to suspend its services for a day after the discovery of several dozen instances of frayed or defective wiring, which could potentially lead to a similar tragedy as the one that occurred at L’Enfant.

Wiedefeld has sought to present his intervention in the metro system as a demonstration of his concern for a “culture of safety first.” In fact, the enforced service delays and attempts to blame transit employees for the metro system’s state of disrepair have had the effect of preparing the way for permanent service cuts and reductions in the workforce.

In October, WMATA began floating a series of proposals, which would make permanent the elimination of late-night metro service. Such policies would drastically impact workers in need of public transit at off-peak hours, such as those working multiple jobs.

Also last month, WMATA announced it would file a lawsuit against the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). The lawsuit requests that an earlier court decision allowing the union to negotiate with management over forms of punishment to be imposed on workers for alleged infractions be overturned. “The Award should… be vacated… because it is arbitrary and capricious, is irrational, is not supported by the evidence or by reason,” fumed Metro’s attorneys.

For its part, the ATU is content that rail workers should be faulted for the state of disrepair affecting the region’s infrastructure, so long as the punishments are negotiated between management and functionaries of the union.

Jackie Jeter, the president of ATU Local 689, declared to the Washington Post, “The Union does not necessarily object to establishing an authority-wide system of equitable discipline, but insists that it be negotiated.” Elsewhere, Jeter has praised Wiedefeld’s supposed concern for “safety culture,” saying to the Post in March that she was “impressed” with his conduct and management style.

Wiedefeld’s current budget proposal is based upon the expectation that labor costs for Metro will remain flat in the coming fiscal year. The ATU, which is currently in negotiations with WMATA after the labor agreement expired in June, is expected to accept additional concessions.

Statements by Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans are indicative of the attitude among metro officials. Calling for a federal takeover of the Washington, D.C. transit system last week, Evans, a Democrat, declared, “You have to have extraordinary powers--that’s the key…You have to be able to negate contracts, fire people and restructure without outside interference.”

Evans added, “[W]e have 13,000 employees who take up 70 percent of our budget… Do we have too many people? Are the pensions and retirements too generous? You change all that, you get out of the binding-arbitration situation.”

The Transport Workers Union (TWU) at the transit system in New York City, the largest in the US, has already accepted the ban on strikes and an anti-democratic binding arbitration system. In Philadelphia, where the TWU just shut down a week-long strike by nearly 5,000 workers—in order to bolster the vote for Clinton—union officials say they would prefer binding arbitration.

In addition to the comments by Evans and others, it was reported in the Washington Post in February that Wiedefeld had appointed Washington attorney Kevyn Orr to his supervisory team. Orr, a Democrat, presided over the municipal bankruptcy of Detroit, which cut constitutionally protected pensions for city workers who labored for decades to achieve decent retirements.

Commenting on the appointment of Orr, the Post quotes an anonymous WMATA official as saying, “We’ll have discussions with the jurisdictions… We might have discussions with the unions, either in the context of contracts or in the area of pensions and other benefits. There’s a potential for a lot of engagement on reducing our expenses.”

Further signs of auto slowdown as GM announces job cuts

Shannon Jones

On Wednesday, one day after the US presidential election, General Motors announced 2,000 layoffs at auto plants in Michigan and Ohio. They are the first permanent job cuts by the company since GM emerged from its 2009 bankruptcy.

The layoffs, which are scheduled to go into effect in January, will impact workers at the Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant in Lansing, Michigan and the Lordstown Assembly Plant in Warren, Ohio. GM said it would suspend third shift production at both plants.

According to a report in the Detroit News , GM will cut 810 production jobs at the Lansing plant along with 29 salaried workers. The facility employs 2,700 and builds the GM Cadillac ATS and CTS as well as the Chevrolet Camaro. At the Lordstown plant GM said it planned to axe 1,200 production jobs as well as 43 salaried employees. The Lordstown operation currently has 4,500 workers and makes the Chevrolet Cruze.

GM attempted to sugar coat the announcement by reporting plans to invest $900 million toward the upgrade of three plants for “future product programs.” The company blamed the layoffs on shifting customer tastes away from passenger cars toward light truck and SUVs.

In fact the layoffs point to a general slowdown in auto sales, which are not expected this year to match 2015’s record levels. Last month Ford announced temporary layoffs at five North American Assembly plants, including three in the United States and two in Mexico. Among the plants affected were assembly plants in Louisville and Kansas City that build the best-selling Ford F-150 pickup. Temporary layoffs also hit the Ford Flat Rock, Michigan plant and one in Hermosillo, Mexico that makes the Ford Fusion and the Lincoln MKC, and one in Cuautitlan that builds the Ford Fiesta.

At the end of October Ford said that it planned to reduce its fourth quarter production in North America by 12.5 percent from the same period one year ago. It says it will schedule more temporary layoffs, including a two-week break at the Michigan Assembly plant in Wayne that builds the Focus and C-Max.

Earlier this year Fiat Chrysler eliminated a full shift at its Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) north of Detroit with the loss of some 1,300 jobs. SHAP has only been operating intermittently this year as Fiat Chrysler phases out small car production in the United States.

The decision by GM to hold off on its layoff announcement until after the presidential election appears to have been deliberate. Michigan and Ohio are both states that figured prominently in the electoral victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who poses demagogically as a champion of blue-collar workers.

Auto workers are furious over continuous attacks on their jobs and living standards. Last year the United Auto Workers rammed through, over massive opposition, a sellout agreement that maintained in place the hated two-tier wage and contained only minimal pay increases for veteran workers whose wages had been frozen for 10 years. Now, the supposed job security contained in the agreement is being exposed as a sham.

The United Auto Workers responded to the GM layoff announcement with complacent indifference. The Lansing State Journal reported that Mike Green, the president of UAW Local 652 at the Lansing Grand River plant, said that he didn’t think the layoff numbers would be as high as those reported by GM and that the local would collaborate with management to “work out how much manpower is needed.

“We will get through it as we always have,” he said. “Things are slow right now, but when they ramp back up they will be good,” he continued.

As any worker knows the loss of a job is a life changing disaster, particularly for low seniority workers who may not be eligible for supplemental unemployment benefits or job transfer. Despite the assurances of Green, there is no guarantee any of those let go will ever see the inside of an auto factory again.

A veteran worker at the Lansing Michigan Delta GM plant spoke to the WSWS by phone about the layoffs. He said, “I was prepared for this. The sales of the Camaro and Cadillac were not what they would have liked.

“I believe that the layoffs will create a ripple and a domino effect. We will shut down the plant in December for the Christmas break. I believe our 461 temporary workers, some who have been here for over one year, will be laid off to make way for workers they will bring over from the Grand River plant.”

“The worst part of this is that GM has had a record year profit wise.”

He said that he felt that the election of Trump was being taken by business as some kind of a signal to carry out attacks on workers. “I wonder who will follow suit. There will be a big change, a big difference now.”

A worker at the Lordstown plant said, “I just found out about it from the news. It will indeed affect full time employees.”

She said that workers had to be full time regular employees with more than one-year seniority to be able to collect supplemental unemployment benefits.

“We knew the layoffs were coming and we believe they will eventually shutdown the whole plant and all the production will be done in Mexico. It’s the American way. Forget about the little people busting their butts.”

Earlier this year GM had cancelled the annual summer shutdown at the Lordstown plant in order to maintain production levels of the Cruze. At the time it also announced that it would use the Ramos Arizpe plant in Mexico to supplement production of the Cruze.

For its part the UAW has attempted to shift blame away from its own rotten collaboration with management by diverting anger among US workers over job losses toward workers in Mexico, a theme that Trump has also employed in his pseudo populist appeals.

Shock in Europe over Trump’s election victory

Peter Schwarz

Europe’s ruling elites responded with shock and horror to the election of Donald Trump as the next US president. Hardly any government or newspaper expected such a result. They now fear that Trump’s presidency will not only destabilise the United States, but also the rest of the world.

“The financial markets are in chaos, the political world is holding its breath,” commented German financial daily Handelsblatt. “Even if Trump implements only some of his announcements, this planet will not be the same as it once was—not geopolitically, not economically and also not culturally.”

Britain’s Financial Times saw “a moment of great peril” in Trump’s victory. After the Brexit referendum vote in Britain, it “looks like another grievous blow to the liberal international order,” the paper writes. “Mr Trump must decide, by his actions and words, whether he intends to contribute to the great unravelling, at incalculable cost to the west.”

Guardian columnist Richard Wolffe calls Trump’s victory “nothing short of a revolution. ... America and its relationship to the world has fundamentally changed overnight. ... Taken together, Trump’s victory ushers in the most tumultuous period of American history since the Great Depression and the start of world war two. It will challenge the core concepts of American identity and global security as we have known them for generations.”

Even German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, obliged to speak cautiously and respect diplomatic norms, warned of sharp conflicts in his statement on the election result. “I think we have to expect that for us, American foreign policy will be less predictable and we must expect that America will increasingly prefer to take its own decisions,” said Steinmeier. “In other words: I don’t want to put a brave face on it. Nothing will be easier, many things will be more difficult.”

Many commentators in the European press noted that the result was not a vote of confidence in Trump, but a vote against the political establishment, and that it displayed parallels to Europe.

“After the Brexit vote in Britain, this is the second time this year that a neglected and almost forgotten section of the population has won a hearing and power,” commented Stefan Kornelius in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “There are forces at work here that even Donald Trump can’t contain. He merely exploited them.” The rebellious mood goes well beyond Trump. The majority in the US wanted “a revolution. And they have got one now.”

Handelsblatt also identified social divisions in the US as the reason for Trump’s victory. Trump had “managed to mobilise forces who had long been rumbling below the surface.” His rise was “a symptom of deeper problems in American society as a whole.”

Both parties bear responsibility for this, according to Handelsblatt. The Republicans had “deeply divided the country with their tax policy” and destroyed “the credibility of the US and all its values [with] an ideological and neo-imperialist foreign policy.” The Democrats deregulated the financial markets; the “banks began to gamble,” provoked “the world financial crisis” and were rescued “thanks to massive state assistance.”

French daily Le Monde took a similar view. “The Democrat Hillary Clinton is not the only loser of this vote. A wave of protest is shaking the traditional elites on both sides of the Atlantic. The election of Donald Trump is a fundamental transformation, an historic date for Western democracies. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, like 11 September, 2001, this marks the beginning of a new world whose outlines remain as yet hard to recognise but from which one feature is already clearly visible: in this world everything is conceivable that previously seemed impossible or unrealistic.” According to Le Monde, “Europe will not be protected from the earthquake that has rocked Washington.”

This “protest wave,” which has shaken the traditional elites, this widespread social opposition, which found extremely reactionary and distorted expression in Trump’s election victory, is feared much more by the European elites than the new president himself. They are concerned that he will lose control of the spooks he has unleashed.

At the same time, they have not uttered a word on why a semi-fascist billionaire like Trump was capable of channeling widespread social anger in a right-wing direction. At most, they blame the alleged backwardness of “white” American workers.

But the real reason is the right-wing policies of the Democratic Party and President Obama, which represent the interests of Wall Street and privileged sections of the middle class, as well as the role of Bernie Sanders and his pseudo-left supporters. In the Democratic primary, the senator from Vermont won 13 million votes because he portrayed himself as a socialist and agitated against the “billionaire class”—only subsequently to lend his backing to Hillary Clinton. He thus left the way clear for Trump to present himself as the only “anti-establishment” candidate.

In Europe, the ruling elites rely on the pseudo-left to suppress social opposition. Greece’s Syriza, Germany’s Left Party and many other organisations portray themselves as opponents of capitalism so as to sabotage any struggle against capitalism, and—should they come to power—to impose even more brutal measures against the working class.

A typical representative of this policy is the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. He writes (correctly) that “Trump’s election is an unmistakable rejection of a political establishment and an economic system that simply isn’t working for most people. It is one that has delivered escalating inequality and stagnating or falling living standards for the majority, both in the US and Britain. This is a rejection of a failed economic consensus and a governing elite that has been seen not to have listened. And the public anger that has propelled Donald Trump to office has been reflected in political upheavals across the world.”

Having said this, he calls for the most complacent response imaginable.

He speaks of “some of Trump’s answers to the big questions facing America, and the divisive rhetoric around them” being “clearly wrong,” before asserting, “I have no doubt, however, that the decency and common sense of the American people will prevail, and we send our solidarity to a nation of migrants, innovators and democrats. ... Americans have made their choice. The urgent necessity is now for us all to work across continents to tackle our common global challenges: to secure peace, take action on climate change and deliver economic prosperity and justice.”

Overall, Europe’s ruling elites are responding to Trump’s election victory by shifting further rightward. On domestic issues, political representatives argue that it is possible to halt the rise of far-right parties in Europe—who all hailed Trump’s success—by adopting their policies, particularly when it comes to deterring refugees and internal security.

On foreign policy, they are responding to the expected tensions with the US by accelerating military rearmament. As German Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen remarked on the election outcome, “Europe must get used to looking after itself better.” This includes an increased defence budget. An article in Der Spiegel even went as far as calling this week for Germany to develop its own nuclear weapons.

Climate Change: India's Severe Domestic Equity Gaps

Niharika Tagotra

India's stance on the global climate change negotiations is evidently contradictory. While New Delhi argues at the international level that the developed world should effectively take responsibility for the historic emissions and cut down its 'luxury emissions' drastically, domestically, it assumes a completely contrary position that favours the interests of its historic polluters and luxury consumption over the survival interests of its poor.

The net result of the Paris Climate Change summit for India was that while it agreed to emission targets, it secured more carbon space for itself using its usual mantra of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR). This position is rooted in India’s historical stance at climate change negotiations that call for differentiating between the “luxury emissions” of the north and the “subsistence emissions” of the south. Additionally, New Delhi has strongly spoken for accounting of emissions on a per capita basis and factoring in historical responsibility. But in adhering to the age old north versus south binary, India’s stand imposes the exact same inequities domestically.

According to an estimate by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the average per capita emission in India stood at 1.6 tonnes CO2e per person per year. While the, per person, per year tonnage of carbon emission for the poorest 10 per cent stood between 0.4 and 0.8, the richest 10 per cent emitted between 3.4 and 5.1. Emissions of the richest 2 per cent in India were even higher, at between 4.6 and 6.8. This meant that the richest in India emitted 17 times more tonnes of carbon than the poorest. This is one of the clearest indicators of India's lop sided development.

In the decade spanning 2000 to 2010, 71 per cent of India’s emissions came from the energy sector, including transport and industry, while the agricultural sector contributed 18 per cent. In fact, compared to other BRICS nations, India’s per capita agricultural emissions stood at the lowest, between 0.29 and 0.54. This is significant, because, while agriculture contributes the minimum to national Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, it bears the maximum brunt of GHG induced climate change. While 53 per cent of its working population is engaged in the sector, an estimated 57.8 per cent of rural households depend on agriculture, earning less than INR 7000/- per month on an average. Effectively, a quarter of India’s population, lying higher up the economic ladder, is responsible for the maximum emissions.

According to the 2011 census figures, while only 25.7 per cent of the total households in India owned a motor vehicle, the rest used bicycles or public transport for commuting. According to the 2015 statistics, public transport used by the middle and bottom of the income pyramid accounted for a mere 12.79 per cent of diesel demand while 28.48 per cent went into private cars, SUVs and three wheelers. The figures for petrol were starker, where cars and two wheelers accounted for 95.75 per cent of the demand.

India’s argument at the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Agreement is also a case in point. It overlooks the fact that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in themselves constitute ‘luxury emissions’ emitted by appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators. While only 2 per cent of Indian households own an air conditioner, 31 per cent of households owned a refrigerator. In 2010, India emitted 13,425 thousand metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent (TMtCO2e) of HFCs contributing about 1.7 per cent to the global HFC emissions.

India’s potent HFC emissions significantly impact its own bio-hotspots, causing serious damage to its wetlands. India is already in the throes of severe climate variability manifested in erratic and falling precipitation, and rising temperatures compounded by exceptionally bad land management and heavy deforestation. The rural distress faced by the country due to three consecutive years of drought is a case in point. Rise in the country’s annual temperature by 0.7 degree Celsius and erratic climate patterns significantly impacted subsistence agriculture in the poorer rain fed areas of Marathawada and Telangana. Similarly, flooding and coastal inundation in states like Uttarakhand and Odisha have led to distress migration among marginal farmers as well as landless labourers. 

Recent incidents of urban flooding have hit low-income groups the hardest, in terms of deaths and injuries. The 2015 Chennai floods, for instance, caused a loss of INR 15,000 crores, of which less than ten per cent was insured. This meant that the bulk of economic costs were borne by bottom of the income pyramid. According to World Bank estimates, over 45 million Indians could be pushed into extreme poverty over the next 15 years due to climate change - and this does not include the social churn being exacerbated as the secondary effects of the phenomenon. 

These figures imply that while India has been projecting economic growth and demands of its low income groups as the reason behind its reluctance to cut down on carbon emissions, in reality, India’s carbon-based economic program has been subjecting that very section of its society to multiple deprivations.

In order to effectively pursue the objectives of sustainable development, India’s growth model will therefore need to factor in the climate obligations of its affluent, and redistribute the environmental responsibilities accordingly.