Alarm bells as London bus driver tests positive for COVID-19

Laura Tiernan

Bus company Metroline is forcing drivers at a London garage to report for duty despite their colleague being diagnosed with COVID-19.

Several drivers were handed “contact tracing” letters at Cricklewood garage on Thursday, stating, “We are contacting you to inform you that an employee with confirmed Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) may have come into contact with you within the last 14 days.”

The infected driver reportedly drove the 112 bus route that travels from North Finchley to Ealing Broadway, via Brentcross shopping centre.

The letter from Metroline’s Head of Human Resources Darren Hill stated, “If you are well, there is no action for you to take.”

Metroline letter from Cricklewood garage

It continued, “If you develop symptoms of cough or fever or shortness of breath, you should immediately stay indoors and avoid contact with other people” and “call NHS 111 to inform them that you are a contact of a confirmed case of COVID-19.”

As of Friday, neither Metroline nor Unite had issued any statement to alert more than 500 drivers at Cricklewood about the reappearance of COVID-19. After 33 bus workers were killed by coronavirus between March and May—including the death of Cricklewood driver Ishrit Ali—Unite’s suppression of information is criminal.

According to eyewitnesses, one driver who received the letter on Thursday immediately reported feeling unwell. He was told to book his own test and sat for more than three hours in the “output” area where drivers sign on, potentially infecting dozens more people. He had already completed part of his duty. He subsequently tested negative.

The Unite rep at the garage met with management but took no steps to protect workers’ health and safety. The union issued no demand that drivers be sent home with immediate access to COVID-19 tests, in keeping with their corporatist collusion with Transport for London (TfL) and the bus companies.

“The driver took the correct decision to go home,” a driver from Cricklewood told the WSWS, “but he was put under enormous pressure by management and also by the union to stay and finish his duty. He stood his ground and quite rightly so. If it’s happening at Cricklewood it could be happening at other garages, not just Metroline. We’ve already lost Ali, we can’t let this happen again.”

The outbreak at Cricklewood raises urgent issues. Once again drivers are being infected with COVID-19 and once again their colleagues are being kept in the dark.

On Friday, WSWS contacted TfL and Metroline asking that they confirm the number of new COVID-19 infections and hospitalisations among London transport workers. They refused to provide this information.

Last week, Andy Byford, TfL’s new transport commissioner, told the Evening Standard, “I believe passionately that the system is safe to use.” Byford’s assurances are worthless. As subway chief in New York City he presided over carnage, with at least 146 transit workers dead from COVID-19.

Refusing to answer questions from WSWS about the latest workplace infection, Metroline issued the following statement, “We have introduced extensive and comprehensive measures to ensure a COVID-19 secure workplace in accordance with Government Guidance, working closely with Unite the Union and utilising NHS Test and Trace to protect our employees and keep them safe.”

The extent of Unite’s collaboration with the bus companies was revealed in July by London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan. In a response during Mayor’s Question Time, he explained that TfL was not conducting any on-site safety inspections because “any significant concerns can be raised at regular network conference calls or separately between Unite the union and TfL.” Such meetings took place on a “day-to-day basis.”

Metroline’s “extensive and comprehensive measures” in collusion with Unite were a death sentence for workers. The company accounted for 38 percent of COVID-19 deaths among London bus drivers between March and May. The “contact trace” letters they distributed last week told drivers, “Please follow this advice until 27th August, even if your symptoms are minor”—but the letters were handed out on September 3!

Metroline refused to disclose what criteria they used to determine the risk of transmission to other employees. They have reportedly only contacted drivers on route 112, yet all drivers clock on from the same “output” area and use the same rest and toilet break facilities. The risk of widespread workplace transmission among transport workers and passengers cannot be overstated.

As with workplace outbreaks of COVID-19 among warehouse and food processing workers, the NHS Track and Trace system has proven to be dysfunctional—and this is deliberate. Employers are effectively handed unlimited discretion over who will be informed and when.

The sole concern of TfL and the transport companies is to ramp up revenue and profit. The Johnson government’s reopening of the economy, and its entire “herd immunity” strategy, is forcing millions into unsafe workplaces, public transport and schools to protect the obscene wealth of the financial oligarchy.

Brazilian postal workers wage bitter strike against wage cuts, privatization

Gabriel Lemos

Postal workers at the state-owned Brazilian Post Office (Correios) are entering the fourth week of an indefinite national strike against wage cuts and the drive by the government of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro to privatize the postal service. In addition, the company’s criminal negligence amid the COVID-19 pandemic has led to thousands of workers contracting the deadly virus and 120 reported deaths.

According to the two postal union federations—Fentect, affiliated to the Workers Party (PT)-controlled CUT union federation, and Findect, affiliated to the CTB, the union federation controlled by the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB)—70 percent of Correios’ workforce is on strike, about 70,000 workers. It is the largest strike since 1995, when all sections of federal workers struck against attacks by the neo-liberal government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

The strike began on August 17 after the company decided to withdraw 70 of the 79 provisions of the collective agreement reached last October that was to remain in effect until 2021. Among the takebacks are the reduction of maternity leave from 180 to 120 days, the slashing of night and overtime differentials, a 20 percent increase in payments for the health plan and an end to aid for children with special needs and childcare. According to the statistical institute DIESEE, this may represent a wage cut of 43 to 69 percent, depending on the salary range.

Banner reads "Postal workers on strike" (Credit: Agencia Brasil)

Correios has justified this huge attack on workers stating, “The exclusion of provisions only has the objective of adopting ... a business logic similar to that practiced in the market,” that is, to pave the way for privatization. In August 2019, the Bolsonaro government announced a sweeping privatization plan for 18 of 130 federal state-owned companies, such as the giant electricity company Eletrobrás, the telephone company Telebrás and subsidiaries and refineries of the energy conglomerate Petrobras, in addition to Correios.

Earlier this year, Bolsonaro’s minister of economy, Chicago Boy Paulo Guedes, said at the World Economic Forum that he intends to privatize Correios by 2021. In Davos, he met the president of US package delivery giant UPS. The Brazilian media has also reported since last year that Amazon, China’s Alibaba and Argentina’s Mercado Livre would also be interested in buying Correios.

During the strike, the Bolsonaro government announced that it will send a bill to the Brazilian Congress to break Correios’ postal service monopoly, and that the Accenture consulting firm has been hired to conduct studies on its the “de-statization.” Today, only parcel delivery is open to free competition in Brazil. However, since 2018, this service is responsible for most of the revenue of Correios (52 percent), which makes 80 percent of the deliveries for small- and medium-sized online retailers.

The government has invoked Correios’ “economic and financial situation” to justify privatization, claiming that it has worsened during the pandemic. However, after losses between 2013 and 2016 amid the country’s economic decline, the company made a profit of more than 1 billion reais (US$190 million) between 2017 and 2019. In addition, during the pandemic, Correios’ delivery services increased 25 percent in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year, representing a profit of 383 million reais ($72 million).

This increase in service has further aggravated conditions for workers who for years have been overworked and subject to constant injuries. With the pandemic, the Bolsonaro government deemed Correios an essential service, making its workers among the most exposed to coronavirus infection. This has led to spontaneous walkouts over lack of personal protective equipment and unsafe conditions in the workplace.

Since the strike began, the postal workers’ actions have escalated. On August 26, about 1,000 workers occupied the Correios distribution center in the city of Indaiatuba, in the interior of São Paulo. Three days later, the state Military Police raided the facility, evicting the workers, after the Labor Court issued an injunction.

On September 2, postal workers occupied the entrance to the Brasilia Airport cargo terminal, paralyzing for one day the company’s air cargo network in the Federal District. Just as in São Paulo, the Labor Court ordered the occupation of the terminal broken up the following day.

On the same day as the airport occupation, Supreme Labor Court minister Kátia Arruda partially granted Correios’ request that the strike be considered abusive. In an attack on the right to strike, Arruda prohibited postal workers from blocking the movement of people and mail and ordered at least 70 percent of the company’s workforce to continue working. If this decision is defied, the unions can be fined 100,000 reais ($19,000).

The minister’s ruling came after negotiations mediated by the Labor Court between Correios and the union federations. In the first meeting, held on August 26, minister Luiz Philippe Vieira de Mello Filho proposed the maintenance of the 79 provisions of last year’s collective agreement, but without a wage increase. Correios rejected the minister’s proposal, which led to the continuation of the collective bargaining. It is expected that the Supreme Labor Court ministers will issue a ruling on September 21.

Unlike Correios, the Fentect union federation had accepted minister Mello Filho’s proposal. On its website, it praised him for showing “willingness and good faith,” while complaining that a settlement had been blocked by the “determination [of Correios’ president Floriano Peixoto,] to withdraw all workers’ rights.” However, even if Correios had accepted the proposal, this hardly would have ensured workers’ rights to the 70 provisions that the company wants to tear up.

For years, the union federations have been appealing to the Labor Court to counter the growing attacks by Correios management. Last year, the union federations ended a weeklong strike in which up to 80 percent after the Labor Court imposed collective bargaining.

Hailing the two-year agreement reached in the Labor Court as “strategic in the struggle against the privatization,” the union federations accepted a wage increase lower than the rate of inflation and the withdrawal of workers’ parents from the health plan. However, two months later Correios filed a request with the Federal Supreme Court to increase workers’ health plan contributions by 20 percent and make the agreement effective for only one year.

The PT-appointed Supreme Court president, Dias Toffoli, provisionally accepted Correios’ request. After the union federations asked Toffoli in July of this year to review his decision, the minister took the case to a full panel of the Supreme Court, which on August 21 upheld his decision unanimously.

The illusions promoted by the union federations in the capitalist courts have only served to betray postal workers and to prevent a unified struggle of all federal workers threatened by Bolsonaro’s privatization schemes.

Earlier this year, after strikes by workers at the Brazilian Mint and at the information technology agency DataPrev, up to 21,000 Petrobras workers also went on strike against the company’s privatization and the closure of one of its subsidiaries. After the start of the Petrobras strike, the Correios union federations twice postponed a strike, preventing workers from unifying against the same attacks by the Bolsonaro government.

The unions’ contempt for postal workers was expressed during the Correios strike by the Mato Grosso state president of the CUT, Henrique Lopes, who is also affiliated to the PT. He declared on social media that postal strikers who voted for Bolsonaro “should screw themselves” (“devem se ferrar”). This slander campaign by the PT and its apologists, blaming Brazilian workers for Bolsonaro’s election, ignores the attacks by PT governments on Brazilian workers, and postal workers in particular.

During the 13 years in which the PT was in power and the ruling elite’s preferred party for defending the interests of Brazilian capitalism, it increased the outsourcing of jobs and subcontracting of services. Workers struck almost annually, burning the PT’s party flag during a strike against the government attacks in 2011. Since the first year of Dilma Rousseff’s government in 2011, there have been no new hires, cutting the number of employees from 120,000 to 100,000. According to the UN’s Universal Postal Union, postal service in a continent-sized country requires 250,000 workers.

It was also under the PT government that the postal workers’ pension fund, Postalis, began to suffer massive losses. A combination of corruption and mismanagement of the fund has resulted today in pensioners having to pay an extra contribution of almost 18 percent.

The Correios strike takes place amid intensified attacks on all Brazilian workers, including mass layoffs in the auto industry, as well aviation giant Embraer’s announcement last week that 2,500 workers will lose their jobs, which could lead to a strike as early as next week.

At the same time, governors and mayors are advancing criminal plans to reopen schools throughout Brazil. In the state capital of Amazonas, Manaus, 36 schools reported outbreaks of COVID-19 in the first days of classes, with more than 600 teachers testing positive throughout the state. Last week, teachers occupied the headquarters of the Amazonas state education office for 30 hours to oppose the reopening of schools.

As the pandemic continues to devastate the country, with on average more than 850 people dying daily, it is urgent that workers unify their struggles to save their jobs and their lives. For this, however, they cannot rely on Brazilian unions, which have been complicit in reopening schools and are allies of Brazilian industry in imposing mass layoffs and factory closures.

Postal workers, teachers and all sections of the Brazilian working class must break with the unions and build rank-and-file safety committees to unify the struggles of workers. Moreover, because of the global character of the pandemic as well as the attacks on the working class, these committees will serve to unify workers’ struggle internationally.

In Europe, COVID-19 cases surge and deaths mount following end of lockdowns

Robert Stevens

A resurgence of coronavirus is taking place across Europe due to the decision to reopen its economies. Across the continent, governments prematurely ended national lockdowns from as early as May.

By the end of July, the number of dead in Europe from COVID-19 passed 200,000. In the weeks since has climbed to almost 210,000. Total cases now stand at 3,797,904, with over 30,000 new cases being recorded daily. On Friday 35,223 cases were announced across Europe; 29,348 on Saturday. On Sunday, a further 26,021 cases were registered.

Last week, Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, warned that the virus was starting to infect as many people as it did when the pandemic started to spread exponentially in March.

“The virus did not sleep during the summer. It was not on holiday,” Ammon told Members of the European Parliament. New data showed that 46 people per 100,000 were infected in Europe. “We almost went back to the numbers we saw in March,” She noted that by the end of March, the number infected had reached around 40 infected per 100,000. This shot up by the end of April to around 70 infected per 100,000.

In some parts of the continent, the infection rate is far higher already than it was in late April. The Dubrovnik Times reported of Ammon’s statement, “The figures, relating to the 27 EU member states, Britain, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, vary widely from country to country, from two infected to 176 per 100,000 people, she said, without specifying the countries in question.”

Central to the ruling elites’ opening their economies is the return of tens of millions of pupils to class, so their parents can be forced back to work to create profits for the corporations.

On Friday, France, Spain, Italy and Britain all reported the highest numbers of coronavirus cases since the height of the pandemic in the spring, when the world was shocked by scenes of mass deaths and hospitals unable to cope with the rapid spread of the virus.

In France, according to data released by the Directorate General of Health on Saturday, 8,550 new COVID-19 cases had been identified since Friday. This was roughly the same level as the day before (8,975 cases). On Sunday, another 7,071 cases were recorded, with Public Health France noting, “In mainland France, the progression of viral circulation is exponential.”

A rapid and sustained transmission of the virus is taking place across approximately one-quarter of France’s territory, including all the largest cities: Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Strasbourg. According to lepoint, 53 new “clusters” of the virus have been detected out of 484 already identified, including 208 in nursing homes.

Seven new local regional districts have been moved into the COVID-19 “red zone” category, bringing to 28 the number of districts where enhanced measures to prevent the spread of the virus can be adopted. As 12 million children return to school in France, 22 schools have already been shut down due to COVID-19 infections (12 in mainland France and 10 schools in the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion).

Spain, with 517,133 cases, has the most per capita of any European state. Another 4,503 cases were announced on Friday—the highest level in four months. The 184 deaths registered the same day took its official death rate to almost 30,000. The Madrid region is among the epicentres of the pandemic, with around a third of Spain’s 96,000 infections recorded there over the past fortnight.

In the UK, almost 3,000 new cases (2,988) were recorded on Sunday. This was the biggest leap in cases since May 23 and a substantial rise on Saturday’s figure of 1,813 infections. Total cases stand at 344,164.

The death toll, according to the official figures, stands at 41,549, the fifth highest of any country in the world. These figures are highly manipulated as thousands more have died according to statistical analysis based on excess deaths. Those country with higher death tolls (the US, India, Brazil and Mexico) all have significantly larger populations than Britain.

The Johnson Conservative government, which declared in favour of a herd immunity policy at the outset of the pandemic, fully ended the national lockdown from July 4. Such is the rampant spread of COVID-19 since then that a large area of northern England, as well as the city of Glasgow, and the regions of West Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire in Scotland are under local lockdowns. From August 11, over 10 million pupils and 1.5 million education staff returned to classrooms in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales. By Sunday, this homicidal policy had already resulted in coronavirus infections in at least 1 40 schools.

In Italy, where 35,534 have died of COVID-19, the number of daily cases is edging towards 2,000. Last week, former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was hospitalized in Milan after testing positive for COVID-19.

During the first week of September, intensive care hospital admissions for COVID—a key figure, both for hospital capacity and for the likely future virus death toll—rose by 62 percent nationally, with 1,733 new cases. A report published by Italy’s evidence-based medicine foundation, GIMBE, said these statistics are a key indication that the epidemic has returned to Italy on the eve of the crucial moment of the reopening of schools.

In the face of the resurgence, Franco Locatelli, president of Italy’s Higher Health Council and a member of the government’s technical scientific committee, declared, “We will reopen the schools at any cost.”

A survey by Save the Children found that seven out of 10 parents are worried about the consequences of sending their children back to school. Italy’s health minister Roberto Speranza, who participated in a World Health Organization video conference with 53 countries on August 31, tweeted, “Right to health and right to education must go together. Today, representing Italy, I promoted a conference with WHO on the safe reopening of schools. This is the real priority for the coming weeks in all countries of the world.”

In Rome, St. George’s School delayed opening due to the high number of reported coronavirus cases within the school community, and Marymount school was forced to close, and go online instead, after 60 of their students and staff had to be quarantined because of a massive outbreak on campus.

In Germany, health authorities reported 988 new infections in one day, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) early Sunday morning. Experience has shown that on Sundays the reported case numbers are often lower because not all health authorities transmit data to the RKI over the weekend.

On Sunday, the district of Oldenburg in Lower Saxony reported another coronavirus outbreak involving 14 people in a meat processing plant in Hatten.

New infections of students and teachers are reported daily in states that already went back to school. In Essen, the second largest city of the Ruhr, new cases were reported at two schools—at Bockmühle Comprehensive and Bertha Krupp Secondary school. In Winterhude, in Hamburg, eight classes were sent into quarantine after new cases. Since the return to school 106 students or teachers have tested positive. Schools are set to reopen in Bavaria, the second most populous German state where infection rates are among the highest.

With its recent surge in new cases and deaths, Russia has now passed 1 million cases and has 17,820 fatalities. Over 15,000 cases and almost 300 deaths were recorded in just the three days since Friday.

On Saturday, 798 cases were recorded in the Czech Republic, as Hungary reported a record 510 new cases. Slovakia, which has a population of just 5.4 million and total cases of 4,526, reported a record spike of 226 cases Saturday—the highest one-day rise since the start of the pandemic.

Facebook announces political censorship plan in advance of US presidential election

Kevin Reed

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a program of censorship measures on Thursday that the social media platform will take “to help secure the integrity of the US elections” before, during and after November 3.

In a lengthy post to his own Facebook account, Zuckerberg said that he is concerned about “the challenges people could face when voting” and “worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country.”

In motivating his proposed censorship actions, Zuckerberg claims that they are needed to protect “our democracy” by “helping people register and vote,” “clearing up confusion” about the elections and “taking steps to reduce the chances of violence and unrest.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on antitrust on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, July 29, 2020, in Washington. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)

Zuckerberg also says that Facebook’s leadership has learned “from our elections work over the past four years and the conversations we’ve had with voting rights experts and our civil rights auditors.” In other words, taking direction from the US government—and the intelligence agencies in particular—the social media giant has spent the last four years developing political censorship techniques aimed at ensuring that the content and dialogue on Facebook do not find a path outside of the narrow confines of the capitalist two-party system.

Among the measures that Facebook will take are refusing to accept any new political advertising in the last week before the election, removing posts that claim people will get COVID-19 by voting in person and placing an “informational label” on content that seeks to delegitimize the election outcome or any candidate or campaign that seeks to declare victory before the official results are published by Reuters and the National Election Pool, a consortium composed of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News.

That the fundamental purpose of Zuckerberg’s announcement is aimed at defending the bourgeois political setup dominated by the Democrats and Republicans and especially at blocking socialist and left-wing politics from entering the public discourse prior to the elections is revealed in the last of the proposed measures. Zuckerberg says that Facebook has already “strengthened our enforcement against militias, conspiracy networks like QAnon, and other groups that could be used to organize violence or civil unrest in the period after the elections.”

Although he does not name them, the “other groups” that Zuckerberg is talking about are those on the left that have been labeled “extremists” and amalgamated with the violence carried out by right-wing organizations and individuals against protesters as well as other crimes motivated by anti-Semitism, racism and fascism.

Zuckerberg continues, “We have already removed thousands of these groups and removed even more from being included in our recommendations and search results. We will continue to ramp up enforcement against these groups over the coming weeks.”

Making it clear that Facebook is fully collaborating with US state intelligence, Zuckerberg concludes his unprecedented statement with references to “coordinated online efforts by foreign governments and individuals to interfere in our elections.” Saying this “threat” has not gone away, Zuckerberg boasts without providing details, “Just this week, we took down a network of 13 accounts and 2 pages that were trying to mislead Americans and amplify division.”

Although Zuckerberg does not go into it, Facebook worked with its security consultant Graphika and US intelligence in an elaborate investigation and report that claimed the “13 accounts and 2 pages” were affiliated with a website called PeaceData that was purportedly set up by the Internet Research Agency and tied to Russian state intelligence. Significantly, among the articles republished by PeaceData—which has denied any connection with Russian intelligence—are those of the World Socialist Web Site .

As the WSWS analyzed on Friday, the US intelligence agencies are once again instigating anti-Russian propaganda on the basis of entirely unsubstantiated claims that Moscow is intervening in the 2020 elections and Zuckerberg and Facebook are fully collaborating in this campaign along with the corporate media.

The connection between Facebook’s attention to “election security” and the anti-Russian propaganda of the entire ruling establishment can be traced directly to a series of meetings held between the tech monopolies and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security since the 2016 elections.

The most recent of these meetings was held on August 12 and included representatives from nine Silicon Valley firms—including the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube (Google) and LinkedIn (Microsoft). No details have been published about the content of these discussions other than a brief joint industry statement that says the platforms “regularly meet” with the government agencies to discuss “trends” with those who are “tasked with protecting the integrity of the election.”

Based on the measures outlined by Zuckerberg, it is clear that Facebook and its handlers within US intelligence are anticipating that the 2020 elections will be accompanied by a significant social and political crisis. Such concerns are well-founded.

The impact of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the protests against police violence across the US for the past three months, the open incitement to violence against this movement by the White House and the moves by President Trump toward a personalist dictatorship all point to the development of an unprecedented crisis for American capitalism.

At the same time, the recent announcement by Facebook that it was changing its Terms of Service on October 1 illustrate the ongoing efforts of the social media corporation to prove itself a loyal collaborator with the state apparatus in every country.

While Zuckerberg was publishing his election security post, Facebook sent all 2.7 billion users a brief notice on Friday that said, “Effective October 1, 2020, section 3.2 of our Terms of Service will be updated to include: ‘We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook.’”

Clearly, Facebook is moving aggressively to control content in order to avoid government antitrust regulation or lawsuits that it is not policing its platform adequately.

On the one hand, the social media giant is facing a threat by the Australian government to ban all news sharing on its platform unless Facebook paid publishers like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia for its content. According to Facebook, the Australian government offered two choices: “removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits.”

On the other hand, Facebook and the other social media platforms have been threatened by the US Justice Department to have its Section 230 exemptions removed—the law that protects online services from legal liability for the content published by its users—if the company took actions deemed “censorship” by the Trump administration.

Massive speculation fueled by the Fed has driven Wall Street surge

Nick Beams

The turbulence on Wall Street at the end of last week, when markets sold off, has revealed at least some of the rampant speculation that has been at the centre of the market surge since its crash in the middle of March.

The main factor in the surge has been the $3 trillion of support provided by the Federal Reserve through its intervention as the backstop for all areas of the financial market, coupled with its commitment to ultra-low interest rates. This policy was guaranteed for the indefinite future last month when the Fed shifted the parameters of its monetary policy by removing the threat to lift interest rates if inflation rose and unemployment fell.

Its interventions have resulted in a rise in market indexes back to their all-time highs reached earlier this year. But this has been concentrated in the biggest US companies by market capitalisation—Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (the owner of Google), Microsoft and Facebook—with a combined value of more than $8 trillion.

Trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

According to the Wall Street Journal they have been trading at an average of 44 times their expected earnings, a level only exceeded by the 50 times price-to-earnings ratio which occurred during the dot.com bubble at the turn of the century.

There were reminders of the collapse of that bubble last Thursday when the tech-heavy Nasdaq index dropped nearly 5 percent, while the S&P 500 fell 3.5 percent and the Dow was down by more than 800 points or 2.8 percent. There were further, smaller, falls on Friday after the market had moved down sharply earlier in the day but then recovered somewhat in the final hours of trading.

The size of the escalation in tech stocks is indicated by Apple. Last month its market capitalisation reached more than $2 trillion—making it the first company to attain that level —having gained more than $1 trillion in just 21 weeks and $700 million in July alone.

Apple had the biggest loss on Thursday as its shares dropped by 8 percent, causing it to lose almost $180 billion in market capitalisation, the biggest one-day loss for a US company on record. But the extent of its rise is indicated by the fact that this loss was larger than the individual market capitalisation for 470 of the 500 companies listed in the S&P index.

The escalation of the market capitalisation of high-tech companies has given rise to what has been called a K-shaped phenomenon—the movement of a narrow group of companies away from the rest of the market.

This shift was underscored last week when the oil and energy giant ExxonMobil was removed from the list of 30 major companies that make up the Dow Jones index. It was the company with the longest tenure in the Dow, entering it in 1928, and as recently as 2011 was the largest company by market capitalisation in the world.

One of the key factors in the high-tech surge in August has been the use of financial derivatives, most notably call options. A call option is the right to buy a share at an agreed price at some point in the future. The purchaser is then able to make a gain if the share price rises above the contract level.

According to reports in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal last week, the Japanese financial conglomerate SoftBank has been a major buyer of call options in high-tech companies.

Under normal conditions, call options are to some degree balanced by put options, a contract to sell a share at an agreed price as investors seek to hedge themselves against potential falls in the market.

But as the Financial Times noted in the past few months “this has been flipped on its head for mega-cap stocks and there has been rampant buying of call options—particularly on Apple and Tesla” as investors have weighed in with bets that the market will keep on rising.

At present Softbank is reported to be sitting on trading gains so far of around $4 billion. The speculation goes beyond Softbank. According to Goldman Sachs, the overall nominal value of call options on individual US stocks reached a record high in the past two weeks, averaging $355 billion per day, triple the daily average between 2017 and 2019.

Corporate executives appear to be less confident. According to data compiled for the Financial Times some 1,042 US chief executives, chief financial officers and company directors sold $6.7 billion worth of stock in August, the highest level for any month since November 2015.

The accumulation of wealth in the hands of the financial elites is taking place as the conditions for the working class continually worsen as even the limited relief earlier provided is cut off or significantly reduced. The jobs report issued last week has been seized on to continue that policy.

The Department of Labor said employment rose by 1.4 million in August, a figure that was hailed as showing that the economy was on the improve, as Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow virtually ruled out any move to provide further assistance. “Right now the economy is on a self-sustaining recovery path in my judgement and will continue along these lines, and will continue to surprise on the upside,” he said.

The data in the report belie this assessment. There are still 11.5 million fewer jobs than there were in February and the rate of employment growth is slowing. In June employment grew by 4.7 million, falling to 1.7 million in July before dropping further to 1.4 million last month.

Moreover, many of these jobs are part-time or casual as companies cut back on the full-time workforce. The employment numbers for August were also boosted by the hiring of 238,000 temporary census data workers who will soon be laid off.

The data for August also showed that the number of workers who have been permanently axed, as opposed to being temporarily laid off, is on the increase, rising from 2.9 million in July to 3.4 million in August. A report cited in the Washington Post noted that 20 percent of the permanent sackings in May and June had been characterised as temporary a month earlier.

And this trend will continue. As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, a recent study found that “nearly half of US employers that furloughed or laid off staff because of COVID-19 are considering additional workplace cuts in the next 12 months.”

This indicates that the pandemic is being used to carry out “restructuring” operations to boost the bottom line, in combination with measures that have resulted in 10 million private sector workers either having their pay cut or being forced to work part time.

Workers employed in small businesses have been especially hard hit, with one study finding that 50 percent of them furloughed since March have still not been able to find work. The number unemployed for 15-26 weeks is now nearly double what it was in the recession of 2009.

While the billionaires continue to rake in money through speculation, with the potential to set off a financial crash as the downdraft on Wall Street at the end of last week showed, the situation in the real economy is worsening.

According to Deutsche Bank, zombie companies—those that do not earn enough to cover their interest payments—now comprise nearly one-fifth of all listed companies in the US, compared to virtually zero at the start of the century.

Protests against police violence continue across the US

Jacob Crosse

This weekend marked 100 days of protests in the US against police violence since the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police department. Large demonstrations were held in rural towns as well as major cities in the face of new instances of police brutality and murder and an increasingly virulent and violent law-and-order campaign led by the Trump administration, with the complicity of the Democratic Party.

The overwhelmingly peaceful, multiracial and multiethnic protests are being met with tear gas, stun grenades, baton charges and mass arrests by riot police for the most part mobilized by Democratic governors and mayors, while Trump and the Republicans denounce the protesters as anarchists, socialists and terrorists and incite fascistic vigilantes to attack them.

This explosive situation is only the prelude to a mass movement of the working class, driven forward by the death and poverty being meted out by the ruling elite and all of its political representatives in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ruling corporate-financial oligarchy, even as it enriches itself over the bones of pandemic victims, feels itself besieged. It is terrified at the prospect of a mass movement against capitalism, increasingly exposed before the world as a bankrupt and criminal system.

Police use chemical irritants and crowd control munitions during a demonstration in Portland, Oregon, on Sept. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

The breadth and duration of the protests express the courage and determination of millions to fight for a more egalitarian society, free of racism, repression and social inequality. But this must be elevated into a conscious struggle for socialism that brings together all sections of the working class, from educators to autoworkers, both in the US and around the world.

A recent report from the US Crisis Monitor, associated with Princeton University, noted the global nature of the protests. It stated: “In the weeks since Floyd’s killing, at least 8,700 demonstrations in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement were reported across 74 countries, including the US. Demonstrators focused their outrage on American symbols—including embassies, consulates and Trump properties—but they also rallied around local cases of police brutality and racial inequality.”

Since the protests in the US began in May, at least 19 protesters have been killed, including three within the last two weeks.

Last Thursday, a police task force headed by US marshals shot and killed Michael Reinoehl hours after an arrest warrant had been issued for him in connection with the killing of a far-right Patriot Prayer member during a protest in Portland on August 29. Right-wing vigilante and ardent Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse killed two protesters and injured another in Kenosha, Wisconsin less than two weeks ago.

The corporate media has increasingly cast the protests as violent and aggressive and portrayed the police as responding to unprovoked attacks by demonstrators. This is belied by the facts. The Princeton report points out that between May 24 and August 22 there were more than 10,600 “demonstration events,” of which over 10,100, “or nearly 95 percent” were peaceful protests, while less than 570 involved “demonstrators engaging in violence.”

The authors of the report noted that in demonstrations that did become violent, aggression was often instigated by right-wing militias and racist gangs such as the Three Percenters, the Ku Klux Klan, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo bois and the New Mexico Civil Guard.

Demonstrations over the weekend included:

Rochester, New York

Saturday marked the fourth straight day of protests against police murder in upstate New York, following the release of bodycam video showing police torturing and murdering 41-year-old Daniel Prude on March 23 of this year. Over 1,500 protesters marched to the Rochester Police Department headquarters chanting, “No justice, no peace.” In the evening, the police, backed by armored vehicles, fired pepper balls and tear gas into the crowd. The police say they arrested eight people Thursday, 11 Friday and nine more on Saturday night.

Portland, Oregon

Ignoring pleas from Democratic Governor Kate Brown to end the protests, hundreds of demonstrators once again took to the streets, resulting in over 50 arrests Saturday night. Prior to protests on Thursday, Governor Brown issued a statement declaring that “the violence must stop… All who perpetrate violent crimes must be held equally accountable.”

Louisville, Kentucky

Police were nowhere to be found for several hours Saturday as protesters were confronted by over 400 heavily armed “patriots” led by Dylan Stevens, a self-described “staunch supporter of Trump, police, our troops, 2nd amendment, America and the Flag!” Stevens, who in a recent YouTube video defended the Rittenhouse slayings as “100 percent self-defense,” organized a counter-protest at Jefferson Square Park, where protesters demanding justice for Breonna Taylor have peacefully gathered since May 28 to demand the officers involved in her killing be arrested.

After several heated confrontations, including at least two instances where pistols were unholstered by associates of Stevens, the counter-protesters left the park, only to be replaced by over 24 riot police.

The Democratic Party and the presidential campaign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have remained silent on the recent murders of protesters, while condemning violent protesters and demanding that they be arrested and prosecuted.

In a CNN interview on Sunday, vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris did not mention the names of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, both murdered by Rittenhouse, nor did she comment on the police slaying of Michael Reinoehl last Thursday. When questioned by interviewer Dana Bash if she believed Kenosha cop Rusten Shesky should be charged for shooting Jacob Blake in the back seven times, Harris, a former prosecutor, backtracked on earlier statements, saying she thought “charges very much should be considered... but everyone is entitled to due process, everyone, including police officers.”

Innovative financing for women’s health becomes vital when purse strings tighten

Shobha Shukla

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of weak health systems that were ill prepared to withstand the onslaught of the pandemic. As documented by the Pulse survey of the WHO, the pandemic has resulted in disruption of essential health services, including sexual and reproductive health services, in most countries. Weak and perpetually poorly resourced health systems have escalated the woes of the public, more so in low- and lower-middle income countries. This disaster has reinforced the need for countries to not only increase their public health spending, but also explore innovative ways of financing healthcare systems.

More than 50% of countries in the Asia and the Pacific region come under the category of low- and lower-middle income countries. While there has been economic growth in the region resulting in corresponding improvements in health service delivery systems, in many countries these gains are unjustly reserved for the elite few in terms of quality and timely services, says Dr Ashish Bajracharya, Population Council’s Deputy Director for global country strategy and regional representative for South and East Asia. Large parts of our populations still have an unmet need in sexual and reproductive health and out-of-pocket expenditures continue to pay for most of the healthcare expenditures. For Dr Bajracharya, it is critical to work towards universal health coverage and to promote sustainable financing strategies, including heightening of commitments of state resources for sexual and reproductive health.

Dr Bajracharya was Chairing the sixth session of the ongoing virtual series of 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSHR10). Two interesting studies were presented in this APCRSHR10 session from Pakistan and Philippines. The first study was presented by Dr Moazzam Ali, noted epidemiologist at the World Health Organization (WHO), who shared the results of a research project on “demand side financing” implemented in two districts of Punjab province of Pakistan to meet birth spacing needs of the underserved.

What is demand side financing?

Dr Ali explains that the three key components of any demand side financing project are (i) a pre-specified target group, like, pregnant women, children under five years of age, poor households, etc; (ii) a financial transfer to the beneficiaries through the government, the private sector, NGOs or some other mechanism. It can be a direct conditional cash transfer or it can be via vouchers; and (iii) a very clear rationale for the choice of services covered, for example, immunisation, family planning, cancer screening etc. Any intervention that meets these three conditions qualifies to be a demand side financing.

This particular study was done to assess the effectiveness of free, single-purpose vouchers for increasing the uptake, use and better targeting of modern contraceptives among women from the lowest two wealth quintiles in rural and urban communities in Pakistan. The project tried to see if vouchers can contribute in achieving universal health coverage, especially in the context of sexual and reproductive health and, more specifically, for family planning.

The study was implemented across an intervention (Chakwal) and a control (Bhakkar) district in Punjab province. 1276 married women of reproductive age were enrolled in each arm. The single purpose voucher was from Marie Stopes International branch in Pakistan. Services included follow ups/ side effects management, services regarding the modern contraceptives and the removal services (for the implants and Intrauterine devices-IUDs).

Did the intervention enhance equity, especially among the poor?

Project results show that compared to baseline, use of modern contraceptive methods increased by 30% in the intervention area as against 14% in the control area. Specifically, in the intervention area IUD use increased from 2% to 20% (national level use of IUD is 1-2%) and condom use increased from 7% to 13%. Vouchers also resulted in an increase of 16% in current contraceptive use and 26% increase in modern methods use. Intervention area also reported low method-specific discontinuation (13.7%) and high method-specific switching rates (46.6%) amongst modern contraceptive users. The corresponding figures for control area were 26.8% and 13.3% respectively. Many of those who switched to modern methods, switched to IUDs, implants, injectables and pills, which are far more effective compared to the traditional family planning methods. Also, the underserved population utilized the modern methods more than their affluent counterparts.

The study outcomes prove that vouchers increase the use of modern contraception methods (especially the long acting reversible contraception methods) along with other modern methods like pills and injectables. Vouchers also decrease discontinuation and increase switching. Voucher use seemed to reduce the inequality in access to modern methods across wealth quintiles and enhanced equity by reaching out to the poor who began using them more.

“Vouchers can be a highly effective tool to increase access to, and use of, family planning and reproductive health services. Long term use of vouchers can strengthen the health system capacity and provide a pathway to the strategic purchasing power such as insurance or contracting in the long run and contributing in the context of universal health coverage in the low and middle income countries”, Dr Ali said to CNS (Citizen News Service).

The second example of innovative financing was from the Philippines on “Public-Private Partnership Bridge Funding”. Loida Almendares, Programme Manager at DKT International in Philippines, shared the concept of “bridge financing”.

What is bridge financing?

The Philippine Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law calls for engagement of the civil society by the government to address the unmet need for family planning. The Department of Health allocates funds for this purpose. However, the process of transferring government funds to private organizations is cumbersome and often results in delays in fund release.

Bridge financing is a mechanism to address this gap and to allow civil society organizations to implement family planning and reproductive health activities without unnecessary delays. It allows family planning services to be provided even while the government is yet to release project funds for the civil society organizations. Bridge financing is a “no interest loan” given to civil society organizations with existing project contracts and is to be strictly used for project implementation. It is to the tune of 30-35% of the total project fund. The money has to be returned to the Bridge Fund provider – which could be any financing entity – at the end of the project at zero interest. Philippines government laws support public and private partnerships or engagement of civil society organizations and private sectors to actively participate in the development processes of the state.

There could be different public-private partnership models utilising the bridge financing mechanism. Almendares shared the outcomes of one such model developed in the Philippines jointly by the Cooperative Movement for Encouraging No-Scalpel Vasectomy (CMEN), Pangasinan Province civil society organization and the government.

This public-private partnership with bridge financing reached more than 13000 women with unmet family planning needs. Of them, 61% were provided with long acting and permanent methods – which is more than triple the national average of 14% for these methods. For the HIV programme, the project was able to reach out to underserved populations, including LGBTIQ+ community, students, pregnant women and people who inject drugs and test 678 people in three months. Persons who tested positive for HIV were then referred to treatment hubs for immediate care. All of the loans received under bridge funding were repaid.

Almendares says that public-private partnership is important to escalate delivery of quality sexual and reproductive health services with financial resources from the government and human resources from the civil society organizations or private sector. She lists several advantages of public-private partnership through Bridge Funding: “It is an intermediate financing to address the gap due to fund delays and allows civil society organizations to provide reproductive and sexual health services to a vast number of people in communities and key populations even while the government is yet to release project funds for civil society organizations.”

COVID-19 has changed the expectations and outlook of healthcare worldwide. India’s public health expenditure is dismally low at less than 1.5% of the gross domestic product and this warrants a drastic increase. Quality healthcare should be a fundamental right of every citizen of our country as well as of other countries.

Innovative health financing makes good business sense

Zahra Fathi Geshnigani, senior gender equality advocate and former CEO of Family Health Association of Iran puts it very succinctly that health enables people to learn and earn, creates jobs, drives productivity, stimulates inclusive growth, and protects economies from the impacts of outbreaks and other emergencies. So innovative health financing that aligns with the vision of inclusive and sustainable health services makes good business sense.

A Long Term COVID Response Plan

Moin Qazi

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a massive toll on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment, failing small businesses. Much the same way it is affecting people with pre-existing health conditions more strongly, so is the pandemic-triggered economic crisis exposing vulnerable communities to greater distress. The pandemic has frozen the wheels of economy and affected every aspect of life. Lockdowns and disease distancing measures have dried up wage-work and incomes. The tragedy is as much humanitarian as economic with its cascading social implications. It is a stress-test of our ability to cooperate, learn and adapt in the face of deep uncertainties and rising risks.

This pandemic has inflicted the greatest pain on those who had already been rendered most vulnerable, spurring great hardship and growing unease among low income families and micro businesses. It has uncovered existing inequities and created new ones.

It has revealed both the fragility of our social security and welfare delivery systems and the need to come up with resilient, long-term solutions and more robust systems. The pandemic shows that our social security and welfare delivery systems are under-resourced and underserved, and we need to build long-term, resilient solutions and robust systems

Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasized that the pandemic has taught us that we need to be self-sufficient. “It has taught us that we have to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. It has taught us that we should not look for solutions outside the country. This is the biggest lesson we have learnt. Every village has to be self-sufficient enough to provide for its basic needs. Similarly, every district has to be self-sufficient at its level, every state has to be self-reliant at its level and the whole country has to be self-reliant at its level,” he said while interacting with heads of gram panchayats (village councils) through video conferencing on the National Panchayati Raj Day on April 24.

Here are some of the areas where we may have to focus for achieving better results in our relief work for those affected by the pandemic.

ECONOMIC REGENERATION

All crises are opportunities for radical reform, for realigning priorities in pursuit of the common good. As the challenges of COVID19 unfold and governments and civil society scramble to provide relief, one recurring idea is to use this disruption to reimagine the economic architecture. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are expected to suffer a mortal blow if we don’t get to grip with the systemic risks of COVID19. Many of our development gains have been jeopardized, and we must now build a new economic world order which is humane, inclusive, and sustainable.

Can the economy rebound fast enough to make life stable again? Long periods of state inaction have their economic and social costs. With thousands of migrant workers having returned to their native villages, it is extremely necessary to create additional employment to stave off social, political, economic unrest.

LEVERAGING THE SKILL ECONOMY

Some of migrant labourers are considered unskilled, but many are skilled or semi-skilled. A large-scale deskilling could take place if they do not find work quickly, because their skills will begin to rust and diminish if not used.  It all depends on how fast the state responds and what types of stimulus it uses. The first task for governments would be to map the skills of these returned migrants and then work out a long-term rehabilitation plan that uses these skills through necessary upgradation or reorientation. A marriage between their skills and the business acumen of local entrepreneurs can help a great deal.

The Union government has provided direct cash transfers to more than 300 million people in addition to similar cash transfers to famers. These efforts are a lifeboat to help businesses survive the coming months, and for households to continue to cope with daily emergencies as normal economic life stutters through the recession.

INDIAN DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT

Development in India has so far been defined by grand utopian schemes that have brought disruption to millions, wrought by the negative consequences of faulty programmes and impractical schemes. Conventional development policy has always been driven by grandiose plans, moving from one big fix to another, one set of best practices and universal blueprints to the next.

What we need instead are policy innovations tailored to local social contexts, economic circumstances and political complexities. Two critical elements are (a) local solutions, particularly in areas like infrastructure – such as local roads and local water storage solutions like check dams, basic healthcare and primary education – and (b) trust in the innate ability and intelligence of the local community to understand and harness opportunities for their social and economic well-being.

Well-crafted development plans flower from the mutual synergy of all stakeholders, and are identified, tested and sustained locally, not by career technocrats using huge sums to assemble and deliver them to “beneficiaries” as a charity handout or dole from on high.

Familiarity with the local context is necessary for a lasting impact and outcomes. Several well-intentioned policies and programmes fail because they are not well grounded, and do not incorporate the perspectives of the local communities, leaving important gaps that cause enduring harm, unintentionally or otherwise.

Any development plan or initiative that seeks to respond to the social and economic damage wrought by COVID19, or to prevent its recurrence, should keep in mind the drivers that made it a pandemic.

FRESH APPROACHES

Tackling the problems of the disprivileged requires a fundamentally different approach: one that starts with the people themselves and encourages initiative, creativity and drive from below. This principle must be at the core of any strategy that hopes to transform their lives; only then that it can be lasting and meaningful.

Approaches to development that respect the inherent capabilities of the people who live in rural areas, and systematically build on their experience, have a reasonable chance of improving their lives. This can include enhancing their capacities to mobilize and manage resources effectively. If people can be given the support, they need to build their own democracies in their own ways, they can do the rest themselves. In doing so, they will not only move their own communities, they will also take the world with them.

The economic reconstruction that will follow the pandemic is the perfect opportunity to provide better nutrition and health to all. The pandemic should spur us to redefine how we feed ourselves, and agricultural research can play a vital role in making our food systems more sustainable and resilient.

Some of the specific activities that can be undertaken as part of a long-term relief plan may include the following.:

Self-help groups: Self-help groups (SHGs) are India’s most powerful conduit for incubating and empowering women to move from subsistence to sustainability. The pandemic has amplified their social and economic resilience and shown how they can effectively articulate a meaningful grassroots response to such a crisis. These groups have risen to the extraordinary challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. They have been meeting the shortfall in masks, sanitizers and protective equipment, running community kitchens, fighting misinformation and even providing banking and financial solutions to far-flung communities.

As grassroots village-based financial organizations, often comprised solely of women, SHGs have proven to be vibrant, participative, business-oriented and community-based institutions that have the potential to resurrect moribund rural economies. They are playing a crucial role in promoting a shared agenda around education, health, finance and agriculture and making affordable loans available where debt lurks in most rural homes.

Secondary agriculture: Rural India needs to prioritize secondary agriculture through integrated farming activities and a focus on sustainability of production, monetization of farmers’ produce, strengthening of farm extension services, and recognizing agriculture as enterprises.

To make farming sustainable and resilient, farmers must be encouraged to diversify into allied activities. They can be encouraged and financed to build ponds, bunds and undertake Income- generation activities that use crop residues – paddy straw, fodder blocks and crop residue briquette as raw material. The output from the farm should also be put to gainful use- either as fodder or for mulching. Cleaning, sorting and grading of agri-produce to make it saleable must also be promoted as supplementary enterprise.

Livestock economy: When farming fails, livestock can serve as fall back. Tribal communities already keep backyard poultry, ducks, goats, sheep. Bee keeping, mushroom cultivation can be managed by women farmers in the-family. Unlike more valuable operations on farms in India—crops or cattle, for example—goats and sheep are managed almost exclusively by women. They bring them out for grazing, take care of them when they’re ill, and sell them at the market. And the most critical point is that the money women earn from their goats stays in their hands.

The villages are slowly building a cadre of goat nurses known as “pashu sakhis,” which means “friends of the animals”. Pashu sakhis are poor women themselves who are given basic training in how to vaccinate, deworm, and provide other preventive care to goats in their community.

Forest produce : Another important area is forest produce such as tasar silk which is a stable source of livelihood for many tribals The Forest Rights Act is an attractive law but it is very difficult for tribals to benefit from it on account of red tape and the reluctance of forest department to concede its control over forests. Steps should be taken to make the law more roadworthy.  The tribals in the remoter belts don’t know their rights or how the market works and they get into debt with the intermediaries.

FPOs: One of the powerful ways to mitigate farm distress is through a livelihood and development strategy that collectivizes the smaller primary producers through locally-managed Food Producer Organizations (FPOs) and integrates them into an inclusive value- chain. These FPOs or mutual aid organizations, whose members pool their expertise and part of their savings, help the members achieve more together than they can alone and becomes self-propagating in course of time. It enables members see their work through an entrepreneurial lens and confers economies of scale, better marketing and distribution, greater bargaining power, access to credit and insurance, sharing of assets and costs, opportunities to upgrade skills and technology, and a safety net in times of distress.

This is a very good opportunity for Farmer Producer Organisations to make a significant contribution in rural economy. FPOs can be supported to harness the potential of farm economy extensively now. In the past decade FPO movement has gained significant momentum and has shifted the narrative of Indian agriculture to ‘value-led enterprise’ and empowering farmers through market driven initiatives. While the COVID pandemic has intensified and highlighted the challenges in the agri- value chain, it has also brought to fore new opportunities for growth in agriculture where small farmers FPOs play an important role in supporting the food systems.

If thousands of scattered small farms are systematically aggregated, it would help reduce transaction costs of the farms for accessing the value chains and make it easier for small farmers to access inputs, technology, and the market.

MSMEs: For the non-farming sector, MSMEs should come in a big way to absorb the migrant labourers. Villagers can be trained as para-veterinarians, health workers, solar engineers, water drillers, handpump mechanics, artisans, designers, masons and technicians who support the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Agro-processing needs medium-level entrepreneurs. It’s difficult for farmers with a hectare of land or 50 to 200 mango trees to set up an agro-processing unit. Entrepreneurs don’t want to go to small towns, rural areas, because of inadequate infrastructure, transport, electricity. No bank will finance them either.  It is a good time to bring primary processing facilities closer to the farm gates and help producers gather market intelligence and manage the value chain better with digital agriculture tools.

Decentralized responses: Our experience of handling such crisis inform us that community-driven development (CDD) programmes, which encourage people to design their own solutions, can be a critical part of the response to the COVID-19 crisis. We need an equitable, whole-of-society approach to tackle a crisis of this magnitude and scale. CDD programmes are usually driven by such approaches.

During a crisis of the covid-19 type, local governments are normally flooded with demands that cannot be met with their limited resources. In this context, community-driven development (CDD) programmes can play a critical role in providing consensus-driven support to prioritise and optimize the resources.

We also need multiple interventions across sectors to address the different dimensions of the crisis. CDD programmes often complement traditional safety net systems by delivering cash and in-kind transfers as well as basic services such as water and sanitation. They do so through participation from communities, people’s representatives, and local governments