While Modi professes concern for the jobless, his government’s budget escalates class war

Kranti Kumara

The first budget of Narendra Modi’s third term as India’s prime minister demonstrated—were any further proof needed—that he and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government intend to press forward with their class war agenda.

With the BJP losing its parliamentary majority in last spring’s quinquennial election, there was much press commentary claiming a politically weakened and “humbled” BJP would be forced to be more accommodating to the opposition and receptive to popular pressure. The Congress Party-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) opposition bloc, including the Stalinist parliamentary parties, made like claims.

This has all proven to be a delusion.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi displays the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) symbol, lotus, during a road show while campaigning for national elections, in Chennai, India, Tuesday, April 9, 2024 [AP Photo/AP Photo]

The reconstituted government, dubbed by the press “Modi 3.0,” is pursuing the same far-right course as its predecessors: whipping up communalism, prosecuting political opponents, expanding India’s involvement in Washington’s incendiary military-strategic offensive against China, and implementing a raft of anti-worker, “pro-investor” policies.

The 2024-2025 budget, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 23, doubled down on the pro-big business policies Modi and his BJP have been pursuing since they came to power in May 2024. These include massive corporate tax cuts, a fire-sale of government assets to billionaires like Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, austerity in social spending, and the further expansion of “business-friendly” Special Economic Zones.

The budget did see a modest shift in policy, with the government touting it as a “job-creating” budget. However, on closer examination this shift proved to be largely rhetorical and the much vaunted job-creation schemes just another mechanism for the government to provide huge subsidies to big business.

The budget’s purported focus on job creation was a crude attempt to allay mounting popular anger over mass joblessness, especially among youth. This anger was a major factor in the BJP’s loss of more than 60 seats in last spring’s election.

Although forced to make a grudging admission that unemployment is a major problem, Sitharaman tried to maintain that the Indian economy is the envy of the world. After pointing to the troubled state of the world economy, she affirmed in her budget speech, “India’s economic growth continues to be the shining exception and will remain so in the years ahead.”

She claimed that the budget expenditure was in line with the Modi’s government’s bombast of India becoming “Viksit Bharat” (Developed India) by 2047, a century after the end of British colonial rule in 1947.

The rosy picture Sitharaman presented of the Indian economy is belied by the crisis it is facing on multiple fronts. These include tepid private capital investment, falling foreign direct investment, spiraling government debt, endemic poverty, abysmal human infrastructure and mass unemployment and under-employment.

The total expenditure announced in the budget amounts to Rupees (Rs.) 48.3 trillion ($575 billion). This is in contrast to the $4 trillion 2024 budget of the government of China, the only country with a comparable sized population. A huge portion of India’s budget—Rs. 16.1 trillion ($190 billion) or 33.4 percent— is being financed through government debt.

The single biggest budgetary expenditure at Rs. 11.63 trillion ($138.45 billion), representing more than 24 percent of the whole budget, is interest payments on the accumulated government debt.

A further 13 percent of India’s budget is consigned to the military and India’s continuing push to develop a blue-water navy and a triad (land, air, and underwater) nuclear-weapons delivery capacity.

For the 2024-25 fiscal year, the military budget has been set at Rs. 6.2 trillion ($74 billion). This is a 4.4 percent increase over the amount budgeted for 2023-24, which itself was a whopping 13 percent higher than in 2022-23. India’s military expenditure is the world’s fourth largest after the US, China and Russia.

As has long been the case, the bulk of the new weapons-purchases are aimed at China. New Delhi is also hiking its spending on roads, airfields, and fortifications along the India-China border, where the two sides have been locked in a tense, border stand-off for the past four years. The Border Roads Organization is receiving a 30 percent increase.

India has long been one of the world’s largest arms importers. But a key part of the Modi government’s plans to enhance India’s economy and global power is to develop an arms-export industry, including by having Indian firms serve as cheap-labour subcontractors for US weapons manufacturers.

The sums the Modi government has budgeted for the military are almost triple its combined allocation for healthcare and education. Total spending on education—including public school education, literacy programs, and higher education institutions such as the IITs (Indian Institutes for Technology)—is Rs. 1.21 trillion ($14.3 billion). The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has been allocated Rs. 909 billion ($11 billion) or less than $8 for each Indian man, woman and child.

To applause from domestic and international capital, the Modi government once again allotted large sums to developing and improving India’s woeful infrastructure such as highways, ports, railways and electricity generation. Around Rs. 11.11 trillion ($132 billion), or more than a fifth of the budget, is to be spent on infrastructure projects. Such publicly funded capitalist “development” overwhelmingly benefits private businesses—both those who secure the lucrative contracts to build and manage the infrastructure and those who gain access to far more efficient links to domestic and global markets.

The Modi government has repeatedly slashed corporate taxes and it did so again in its latest budget, reducing the tax rate for foreign-owned companies to 35 percent from 40 percent.

In her budget speech, Sitharaman claimed the BJP’s budget was focused on assisting the “development” of India’s “four major castes,” whom she described as the poor, the women, the youth and the farmers. This new “caste” classification was a political dig at the Congress-led INDIA alliance. It has placed the call for a nationwide, Hindu-caste-based census and the extension of reservation (an affirmative action-type program for Dalits and other historically-discriminated against lower caste and tribal groups) at the centre of what it touts as a “social justice” agenda. In fact, the push for a further expansion and entrenchment of reservations is a right-wing scheme that will only serve to spread more “equitably” capitalist misery and divert working people from class struggle and the fight against the capitalist profit system into fratricidal caste conflicts.    

Predictably, Sitharaman’s bravado about assisting the poor, the women, the youth and the farmers proved to be utterly hollow.

No serious measures were announced to alleviate the grinding poverty of the at least 800 million people who live on less than $3.10 (Rs. 260) per day. Due to the jobs crisis and constant increase in prices of day-to-day food items, the social conditions of these most oppressed workers and their families have worsened dramatically since the government effectively left them to fend for themselves at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21.

The government is continuing to slash price subsidies and otherwise practice austerity, with a pledge that “fiscal consolidation” will lower the debt to GDP ratio to 4.9 percent in the current fiscal year and to 4.5 percent next year.  

Most of the schemes outlined by Sitharaman to “develop” the “four castes” involve “public-private” partnerships. Women “entrepreneurs” are to be encouraged to open measly home-businesses such as making fritters, preparing packaged meals and other such items on a small scale. This “women’s empowerment” will be financed by micro loans from the government.

Sitharaman announced that the Modi government has allocated Rs. 2 trillion ($24 billion) for job-creation, with industries offered three different subsidy schemes to hire first-time employees. She further claimed that this will provide jobs to 41 million youth, an entirely concocted figure, over the next five years.

Under the schemes, Indian big and to some extent medium-sized businesses are to be handed over billions of dollars in subsidies, with no guarantees that the companies won’t use the schemes to “rollover” employees, replacing those on their existing payrolls or laying off workers once the subsidy expires only to hire another subsidized worker.

There is certainly no shortage of jobless candidates. According to India’s Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the unemployment rate for youth aged 15 to 29, excluding students, exceeds 45 percent. Even this figure is a significant undercount as the CMIE defines a person working at least 1 hour a week as “employed.”

In order to further “incentivize” private companies to hire new employees, the government plans to provide industrial training to youth in around 1000 industrial training institutes to provide them the job-skills employers are seeking.

One of the job schemes involves the government compensating a corporation for a new employee’s first month’s salary up to Rs. 15,000 ($180).

A second scheme would compensate both employers and new hires for their contributions to the Provident Fund, the retirement savings account.

The budget does not even bother with job-creation for the desperately poor in rural areas who eke out a living by taking up whatever manual jobs are available.

The Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), enacted in 2005, is to be further starved of funds. This program guarantees 100 days of menial work, such as ditch digging, to one member of a rural family per year.

The MNREGA has repeatedly been oversubscribed, with eligible people routinely turned away despite the state’s claims of “guaranteed employment.” Yet the Modi government is allocating a mere Rs. 860 billion ($10.2 billion) to the program.

As for farmers and the poor, the other two “castes” the Modi government claims it is focused on assisting, the budget allocations that benefit these two groups have been slashed.

The allocation of Rs. 1.52 trillion ($18 billion) in the budget for agriculture and allied industries is entirely geared towards developing 109 “new high-yielding and climate-resilient varieties of 32 field and horticulture crops … for cultivation by farmers.”

On the other hand, the fertilizer subsidy which farmers desperately depend upon to reduce input costs has been cut to Rs. 1.64 trillion ($20 billion). This amounts to a 35 percent cut, not taking the massive inflation into account, from the actual expenditure of Rs. 2.51 trillion ($32 billion) in the 2022-23 financial year. It is also a noticeable decline from the estimated spending in the previous 2023-24 fiscal year of Rs. 1.9 trillion ($23 billion).

As far as the poor are concerned, the government continues to slash the allocation to the Department of Food and Public Distribution. Rs. 2.13 trillion ($25 billion) has been budgeted for 2024/25, down significantly from the estimated expenditure of Rs. 2.22 trillion ($27 billion) in 2023-24, and massively from the actual expenditure of Rs. 2.8 trillion ($36 billion) in 2022-23.  

Fully 950 million people in India, including some in the “middle classes,” are dependent upon the Public Distribution System (PDS) under which wheat, rice, sugar and kerosene cooking oil are provided at subsidized prices to families. According to several UN agencies, around 75 percent of India’s population, that is more than 1 billion people, cannot afford to eat nutritious food.

Chinese steel giant warns of “long cold winter”

Nick Beams

The statement by China’s top steelmaking firm, which accounts for 7 percent of global output, that the industry faces a severe crisis, underscores the extent of the slowdown in the Chinese economy and its global significance.

China Baowu Steel Group [Photo: AUCOTEC]

Outlining the company’s half-year position on Wednesday, Hu Vangming, chair of China Baowu Steel Group, said the “winter” would be “longer, colder and more difficult than we expected.”

In comments to Bloomberg, he said in the process of resolving it, cash was more important than profit and “financial departments at all levels should pay more attention to the security of the company’s funding.”

His remarks were echoed by Hou Augui, the general manager at the state-owned firm, who said “the current situation in the steel industry is more severe that the downturns of 2008 and 2015.” All departments had to “pay close attention to the security of cash flows and develop long-term cash balance plans.” When companies announce their focus of attention is cash flow it is a sign they are in trouble.

The immediate source of the crisis is the slump in construction and property development, one of the chief sources of demand for steel.

According to an analysis by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, reported in the Financial Times, new construction starts in China fell 24 percent in the first half of this year on top of declines of 21 percent and 39 percent in 2023 and 2022, respectively.

The two previous downturns in 2008 and 2015 were resolved by government stimulus measures and the consolidation of steel plants out of which Baowu itself emerged in 2016. But the Chinese government has eschewed such measures in the present situation due to concerns over rising debt levels in the property and construction sectors.

There have been calls from both within China and internationally for the government to take action but apart from minor initiatives and some easing of credit by the People’s Bank of China there has been no response. The focus of the government is on investment in “high quality productive forces” concentrated in the high-tech area.

The latest data on the Chinese economy, coming in the wake of GDP growth of 4.7 percent in the second quarter down from 5.3 percent in the first, showed no signs of an upturn.

Reporting on the latest numbers, Bloomberg said: “China’s weakening economic momentum failed to pick up as sluggish confidence weighs on consumption and investment, putting the government’s annual growth target risk.”

Fixed asset investment slowed to 3.6 percent in the first seven months of the year. Spending by state-owned enterprises rose by 6.3 percent in the first seven months of the year compared to 6.8 percent in the first half, while “that of private firms stagnated from a year ago.”

Commenting on the latest data, which showed that industrial production rose by 5.1 percent in the year to July, compared to 5.3 percent the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said the economy had made “stable and steady progress” in July. However, it warned there was “an increasing negative impact from the changing external environment, while domestic demand remains insufficient. The switch from old to new growth drivers is causing temporary pains.”

A sign of those pains is that bank loans to the real economy, used for investment and productive expansion, fell for the first time in 19 years.

Reflecting the downturn in construction, the NBS said steel production volumes had fall by 4 percent year-on-year in July and cement output was down 12.4 percent.

In an expression of widely-held views, Serena Zhou, senior China economist at the Japanese financial firm Mizzuho Securities, told Bloomberg: “We believe the economy faces a significant threat from self-fulfilling deflation expectations. The government’s top priority should be to break this downward spiral early with more assertive measures.”

Ding Shung, chief economist for Greater China and North Asia at Standard Charter, said the economy’s momentum had slowed. This “posed more challenges to the goal of achieving around 5 percent growth this year.”

Problems in the steel industry are not confined to China, reflecting the wider slowdown in the global economy.

On Wednesday, the German steel company Thyssenkrupp reported that it expected to make a loss for the year ending in September in the mid-to-high, three-digit million euro range. Previously it had reported it expected a loss in the low three-digit million euro range.

In a sign of a worsening situation, the company’s announcement was the third time this year it has increased its estimates of expected losses because of lower sales.

Thyssenkrupp said reduced momentum in the automotive, machinery and construction industries had weighed on the company, and it had had to contend with lower prices and decreased volumes.

In the third quarter of the financial year—that is the three months to the end of June—it posted a net loss of €54 million, compared with a profit of €83 million over the same period a year ago, on sales that had fallen by 6 percent.

The downturn in the steel industry, generally regarded as the backbone of the industrial economy, which is most sharply reflected in China, will have major ramifications for iron-ore exporting countries, notably Brazil and Australia.

In the past three years, global prices for iron ore, Australia’s biggest export earner have fallen from a peak of $US215 per tonne to $US97 and are expected to fall even further, to $US70 or lower. This will have a major impact on government revenues that are highly dependent on the taxes from iron ore sales.

It is estimated that for every $US10 fall in the price, Australian GDP drops by $A6.5 billion and government tax revenues by $A1.3 billion.

For the past decade and half, since the global financial crisis of 2008, the Australian economy has been sheltered to some extent by the growth in the Chinese economy, in particular the construction boom promoted by the Chinese government. That period has now ended along with the super-profits enjoyed by the iron ore companies, setting the stage for major economic shocks.

The fall in prices is not confined to iron ore. The price of nickel, a key industrial metal, has fallen by more than two thirds in the past two years, down from $US50,000 per metric to around $16,500. Prices of lithium have also collapsed in the past 12 months leading to hundreds of sackings.

The fall in the ore price along with other industrial minerals will have major political ramifications as well.

There was a small foretaste of what is coming in the Labor government’s budget papers in May. While it forecast a surplus for the current year of $9.3 billion, largely on the back of iron ore revenues, the budget was expected to fall into a deficit of $28.3 billion (around 1 percent of GDP) the following year and $42.8 billion the year after.

Those estimates could well be revised down in light of the developing crisis in the global steel industry. This means that the attacks on the working class under the Albanese Labor government, which have resulted in the biggest cuts in living standards in 50 years, will be intensified by whatever government comes to power after the federal elections scheduled to be called by next May.

Ukrainian troops trained in UK before attacking Kursk

Andre Damon

The UK’s Sun reported Friday that Ukrainian troops who participated in the attack on the Russian province of Kursk had trained in the United Kingdom, adding to the growing evidence of NATO’s leading role in preparing and coordinating the attack.

A destroyed Russian tank lies on a roadside near Sudzha, Kursk region, Russia, Friday, Aug. 16, 2024. [AP Photo]

“A month before they were dispatched to Kursk, some of the unit were sent to England where they underwent a few days of training alongside British soldiers,” the Sun reported. A major focus of the training was raids on high-rise buildings.

The UK, US, France and Germany have trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops on their own territory, teaching them how to operate the advanced weapons systems that have been provided to Ukraine and are now flowing into Russian territory.

The list of NATO-provided military hardware confirmed to be deployed in the Kursk offensive is growing. On Thursday, Sky News reported that Challenger 2 main battle tanks from the UK were being deployed as part of the offensive.

This follows confirmation from Voice of America that HIMARS long-range missiles had been used in the offensive.

Vladislav Seleznyov, a former spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff, told Voice of America that HIMARS were “critical to the stunning advance.

“The real scourge of the Russian army is the HIMARS, which turns into ashes a huge amount of weapons, equipment and personnel of the Russian army,” Seleznyov said.

Nikolay Patrushev, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Izvestia that the attack on Kursk was “planned with the involvement of NATO and Western special services.”

He added, “NATO countries have supplied Kiev with weapons, military instructors, and continuous intelligence while controlling the actions of neo-Nazis.”

The US media, citing unnamed American officials, has claimed that the US and NATO were not informed of the attack beforehand. However, this claim is entirely unbelievable, given the high-level coordination required to wage such a large-scale offensive using sophisticated NATO hardware.

The Guardian reported on Friday that “Western armor was at the heart of the assault, with no apparent restrictions on their use, including US Stryker and German Marder armored vehicles ... and even reportedly some of Britain’s donated squadron of 13 remaining Challenger 2 tanks.”

The Guardian also reported that “between Thursday night and Friday morning last week, Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian convoy on a highway 25 miles inside the border, in a strike whose accuracy and absence of artillery craters suggested it involved Himars rocket artillery. Dozens were probably killed.”

Nick Patton Walsh, the chief international correspondent of CNN, appeared to have walked into Russia without obtaining permission during a broadcast this week alongside Ukrainian military forces.

“This is where Russia begins,” Walsh said as he walked over the border:

It’s startling to see the steady flow of military vehicles, including what appears to be an ambulance and armor, passing through the Russian border point. That is the border post that was heavily hit when Ukraine moved in over a week ago. Russia’s borders here are completely undefended. It’s also remarkable the freedom with which the Ukrainian military are moving around here. They simply aren’t afraid of the drones that have hampered their every move for the past months.

He added, “Now this is what’s so startling about this offensive, the volume of Western-supplied armor that we’re seeing passing back and forth, their passage through here, up into Russia, unimpeded.”

On Thursday, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said that Ukrainian forces had advanced up to 22 miles during the offensive so far.

In a statement published on X on Thursday, the UK’s Ministry of Defense claimed that “since August 6, 2024, Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russia’s Kursk region to a depth ranging between 10-25km over a frontage of approximately 40 km.”

It added, “After initial disarray and disorganization, Russian forces have deployed in greater force to the region, including likely from elsewhere along the contact line. They have also begun to construct additional defensive positions in an effort to prevent Ukrainian advances.”

The state of Ukraine's Kursk incursion as of August 15 [Photo by Ecrusized / CC BY 1.0]

In its assessment of the offensive, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported that “Ukrainian forces continued to marginally advance southeast of Sudzha on August 16 amid continued Ukrainian operations in Kursk Oblast.”

The ISW also reported that Ukrainian strikes destroyed two significant bridges in Kursk Oblast using HIMARS strikes, which “will complicate Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the area.”

As a growing range of advanced weapons continue to flow into Russian territory, the pretense that NATO is not a participant in the war and that the conflict is a “defensive” war by Ukraine is falling away. The goal of the NATO powers to use the war to overthrow the Russian government and force the dissolution of Russia is being more and more openly stated.

Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, gloated about Ukraine’s offensive. “I think psychologically, this blow is tremendous to Putin, especially among elites, because he’s supposed to be the protector,” McFaul told MSNBC.

“And now for a second time in as many years, he has failed to do so,” McFaul said, referencing last year’s uprising by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group.

Kremlin expands internet censorship amid NATO escalation of the war against Russia

Maxim Zotov

In late July and early August, Russian users of the video sharing platform YouTube began complaining en masse about service disruptions. Earlier, there had already been talk of the blocking or slowing down of service on YouTube. Thus, in April, Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of the commission on information security of the Federation Council's (the upper house of the Russian parliament), suggested that YouTube be temporarily slowed down for the national holidays in May, including May Day. He justified this proposed measure by arguing that the company does not want to cooperate with the Russian authorities and continues to block channels and videos of state media.

This combination of images shows logos for companies from YouTube and Facebook. [AP Photo/AP Photo]

On July 12, Rostelecom (a telecommunications company) warned about a possible deterioration of access to YouTube due to technical problems in the company’s operation. On the same day, the Russian newspaper Gazeta.Ru reported that the service would likely be slowed down in late July and early August, and blocked entirely in the fall.

The press secretary of President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, denied that the authorities intended to block YouTube and claimed that all the problems were the result of the obsolescence of equipment, which Google has not updated for more than 2 years due to sanctions. Google said that there are no technical problems on the part of the company.

Already on July 25, Alexander Khinshtein, a member of the State Duma (the lower house of Parliament), reported that the download speed of YouTube on computers may drop to 40 percent by the end of that week and up to 70 percent next week. According to him, this is due “not only to the actions of the authorities, but also to the company’s disregard for its basic infrastructure” and is directed not against users, “but against the administration of a foreign resource,” which “still believes it can violate and ignore” Russian laws with impunity.

On August 3, the news agency TASS announced that YouTube stopped uploading videos in high quality, and in the morning of August 8, many users were unable to access the service both on smartphones and computers, with more than 32,000 recorded complaints. However, five days later, YouTube resumed normal service and only some 2,000 complaints were received.

In a clear indication that the authorities are indeed seeking to limit access to YouTube by all means, Roskomnadzor began sending e-mails to the owners of sites distributing ways to bypass YouTube's slowdown, demanding that they remove this information from the internet.

Then, on July 30, Roskomnadzor proposed to block the distribution of all information about VPN [Virtual Private Network] services online. VPN services are popular in Russia among many internet users because they allow them to avoid surveillance by the authorities and to access sites that are otherwise banned.

Previously, an order prohibiting the advertisements and information seeking to popularize VPNs had been in effect since March 1. At that time, this ban did not extend scientific and technical information about VPN. Now any information, including scientific information, about VPNs is prohibited. It is assumed that the order will be in effect from March 1, 2025 to September 1, 2029. As of April this year, Roskomnadzor had already blocked about 150 VPN services. Beginning next year, the number of blocked VPN providers is likely to increase significantly.

And on August 2, the Federation Council passed a law on the “de-anonymization” of the owners of public groups and pages on social media networks and messenger apps with more than 10,000 subscribers. According to this law, the owners of such groups can no longer retain anonymity online but must report their identities to Roskomnadzor. According to Gazeta.Ru, “There is no talk of blocking channels without identification, but they will not be able to place advertising, collect donations, and other channels will not be allowed to repost from their accounts.”

Eventually, on August 9, Roskomnadzor blocked Signal, a messenger known for its security and safety, which provides end-to-end encryption, and is widely used especially in Europe and North America. The justification provided by the Russian authorities were unspecified violations of Russian law by Signal.

In Russia, various websites, social networks and messengers have already been actively blocked since the beginning of the war in 2022. Thus, many social media platforms owned by the company Meta, which is banned as “extremist” in Russia, were blocked, including Instagram and Facebook, which is banned entirely. The social network X (Twitter) was also blocked. And in March 2022, because of a law banning “fake news” websites and social media platforms, the company that owns Tik Tok suspended uploading new videos and broadcasting airings. The law providing for the ban of websites and blogs that allegedly spread “fake news” had been introduced in 2019 by the Kremlin amid a strike of 12,000 truckers in southern Russia in which social media played a central role. 

The new wave of far-reaching restrictions of internet freedom comes amid a significant escalation of NATO’s war against Russia. Last week, the Ukrainian armed forces, backed by NATO, for the first time launched a large-scale attack on Russian territory, the political goal of which is to provoke Russia into a response that could be used as a pretext to fully draw NATO into the conflict. Just prior to this incursion, NATO began delivering F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

US and European imperialism are recklessly escalating the conflict, seeking to subjugate Russia and turn the entire region into a raw material appendage of imperialism.

Schwarzman Scholars 2025/2026

Application Deadline: 12th September 2024 at 11:59 PM, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

Eligible Countries: All (except Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao)

To be taken at (country): Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (students live and study together on the campus of Schwarzman College, a newly-built, state-of-the-art facility, where all classes will be taught in English.)

Fields of Study: Masters degree programmes in one of these three disciplines:

• Public Policy
• Economics and Business
• International Studies

What will be taught: Business, Social sciences, Leadership skills

About the Award: The Schwarzman Scholars program will allow the world’s best and brightest students to develop their leadership skills and professional networks through a one-year Master’s Degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s most prestigious universities.

With a $350 million endowment, Schwarzman Scholars will be the single largest philanthropic effort ever undertaken in China by largely international donors. The extraordinary students selected to become Schwarzman Scholars will receive a comprehensive scholarship.

Schwarzman Scholars was inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship, which was founded in 1902 to promote international understanding and peace and is designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Blackstone Co-Founder Stephen A. Schwarzman personally contributed $100 million to the program and is leading a fundraising campaign to raise an additional $350 million from private sources to endow the program in perpetuity. The $450 million endowment will support up to 200 scholars annually from the U.S., China, and around the world for a one-year Master’s Degree program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s most prestigious universities and an indispensable base for the country’s scientific and technological research. Scholars chosen for this highly selective program will live in Beijing for a year of study and cultural immersion, attending lectures, traveling, and developing a better understanding of China.

Type: Masters Degree

Offered Since: 2015

Eligibility: The following criteria must be met by all candidates:

• Undergraduate degree or first degree from an accredited college or university or its equivalent. Applicants who are currently enrolled in undergraduate degree programs must be on track to complete all degree requirements before orientation begins on August 1, 2024. There are no requirements for a specific field of undergraduate study; all fields are welcome, but it will be important for applicants, regardless of undergraduate major, to articulate how participating in Schwarzman Scholars will help develop their leadership potential within their field.
• Age. Applicants must be at least 18 but not yet 29 years of age as of 1 August 2024
• Citizenship. There are no citizenship or nationality requirements
• English language proficiency. Applicants must demonstrate strong English Language skills, as all teaching will be conducted in English. If the applicant’s native language is not English, official English proficiency test scores must be submitted with the application. Acceptable test options are:
  • Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL PBT)
  • Internet-based Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT)
  • International English Language Testing System (IELTS)
  This requirement is waived for applicants who graduated from an undergraduate institution where the primary language of instruction was English for at least three years of the applicant’s academic program.

Number of Awardees: Up to 200 exceptional men and women will be accepted into the program each year.

Value of Schwarzman Scholars: 

• Semi-finalist interview expenses, such as economy class air or train travel, group meals, and one night in a hotel if needed, will be arranged and covered by the program.
• Expenses for successful Schwarzman Scholars are also FULLY covered by the program.
• It will include Tuition and fees, Room and board, Travel to and from Beijing at the beginning and end of the academic year, An in-country study tour,
• Required course books and supplies, Lenovo laptop and smartphone, Health insurance, and
• A modest personal stipend.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply for Schwarzman Scholars: There is no fee associated with applying to the Schwarzman Scholars program. To apply, you will need to complete and successfully submit an online application form, including all required documents and essays before the deadline date.

Visit the official website (link below) for complete information on how to apply to this scholarship programme.

Visit Schwarzman Scholars Webpage for details

As new school year opens, COVID-19 surge forces abrupt classroom closures in the US

Nancy Hanover

In the opening days of the 2024-25 school year, at least two schools were forced to shut down due to SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as 1.3 million Americans are currently being infected daily, and most US schools have yet to reopen. For instance, in New York, Michigan and many other northern states, districts typically start after Labor Day. 

On Monday, August 12, Jefferson-Abernathy-Graetz (JAG) High School in Montgomery, Alabama closed, moving to remote learning. Fifteen educators reported COVID-19 infection after last week’s two-day orientation. Officials said they would reassess the situation and possibly reopen the building by Friday, at which point they said masks and disinfectant wipes would be made available to students.

The same day as the Alabama closure, Humboldt schools in western Tennessee called off classes at Stigall Primary.  Officials informed parents by letter that the school would be closed for “sanitizing” due to an “uptick in COVID.” A later report said an undisclosed number of students and staff tested positive for COVID-19, while others were symptomatic.

“Everyone’s like, ‘COVID is back, COVID is back’,” said Jessica Williamson, a parent of a first grader at Stigall. “I just feel like it didn’t really go anywhere,” she told local media. “Those are little kids. They’re the most prone to put things in their mouths, to touch each other, to just share germs,” Willamson said.

Why, indeed, is “COVID back”? The response of the Tennessee school to the outbreak provides a partial answer.

The district said it was carrying out a “deep clean, disinfecting every surface,” according to Ginger Carver, the communications director for the school district. She added that teachers and staff would follow protocols to keep the classrooms and common areas disinfected. “When students move from class to class, teachers will be wiping down the desks, the desktop surfaces. They’ll be using disinfectants. Basically, the protocols that we were doing back when COVID was full blown,” she said. Humboldt schools reopened on Wednesday. 

In other words, COVID is returning with the new school year because no action is being taken to combat the main cause of COVID transmission, the aerosolization of the virus. Furthermore, schools are being reopened almost immediately despite high community spread.

As scientists have demonstrated and nearly five years of COVID deaths have underscored, the key to fighting COVID is disinfection of the air. Without the use of HEPA filtration in all indoor spaces and other mechanisms, including Far-UV light, schools will dramatically exacerbate the spread of the disease. Despite the use of these methodologies by the ruling elites to protect themselves—at the Davos Economic Summit or at the White House, for instance—no such measures are in place for millions of schoolchildren.

White House COVID Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha speaking at an event in 2023 with multiple UV lamps disinfecting the air. [Photo: Joey Fox/@joeyfox85 via Twitter]

The Biden administration, with the full support of the Republican Party, has deprived schools of the funds necessary to make schools safe and prioritized spending for war. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds allocated to schools beginning in 2020 were purportedly aimed at counteracting  COVID. However, they fell far short of addressing the urgently required but costly upgrading of air quality in schools. ESSER amounted to a financial band-aid to districts reeling from decades of budget cuts and inflation.

A House of Representatives study prior to COVID showed that US school buildings were so antiquated and dangerously unsafe that outlays of $145 billion per year were required to modernize and maintain them. The costs of air disinfection would no doubt significantly increase that figure. For its part, the Biden/Harris administration allowed ESSER to end while funneling more than $1 trillion into its rapidly expanding wars against Russia in Ukraine and its military build-up against Iran and China. 

Death and disease have been normalized, while mitigation measures as important and effective as masking have been demonized by the right wing among both Republicans and Democrats. This is another reason COVID is back to greet returning students. 

An important new study in The Lancet has shown the critical importance of face coverings to prevent transmission in indoor spaces. As Bill Shaw reported on the WSWS: 

Face coverings dramatically reduce the load of SARS-CoV-2 in exhaled breath from infected persons. The reductions reached as high as 98 percent, with variations according to the type of face covering worn.

Despite this clear research, neither these schools nor others will require masking when they reopen, spurring new outbreaks of COVID.

Reacting to the new school-related outbreaks, healthcare expert and data analyst Greg Travis posted on X/Twitter Wednesday, “FYI since 2020 more children have died of their SARS-CoV-2 infections … than from all other infectious pathogens COMBINED Stop pretending that SARS-CoV-2 spreading in schools is only a problem for parents, teachers, bus drivers, etc. It is killing kids.”

It is killing and disabling parents, staff and family members as well. JAG High School in Montgomery was the workplace of beloved school custodian Morris Pitts, who died of COVID on November 29, 2020. Pitts was one of eight educators from Montgomery whose lives were taken over a matter of weeks. State, local and federal government officials turned a blind eye to the rampaging virus to keep students in school and parents at work.  

The criminal “let it rip” policy of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Biden’s ending of the Public Health Emergency in May 2023 has left the working class abandoned to the ravages of the disease and the growth of Long COVID.

In that vein, Montgomery parents were also instructed—in the most milquetoast language—that when their children develop symptoms, “it’s best to keep them at home.”

Education unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), have said nothing about the inevitable superspread resulting from the beginning of a new school year in the midst of a record summer surge. As their websites testify, the AFT and NEA are instead hyper-focused on getting out the vote for Harris/Walz in November in order to maintain their lucrative role as labor contractors and government partners. 

Clare, a member of the Alabama Educators Rank and File Committee who protested the unsafe conditions in schools on the Montgomery County Court House steps in October 2020, denounced the failure of schools and health authorities to protect children. She noted that she is herself currently recovering from the virus and had been told by a Veterans Administration nurse, “Just treat the symptoms.” She angrily related that the nurse “had the nerve to say the common cold is just a variation of coronavirus, an extract of COVID. She refused to test me, telling me people are not dying as before and that I’d be alright. They denied me a test. I think they just don’t want to pay for tests anymore.”

Referring to the Montgomery educators who formed “No Plan, No Personnel” and then the Alabama Educators Rank-and-File Committee, Clare said, “This was the problem from the beginning, they have no plan. They should know we might have to go remote at any time because nothing has been done to make the schools safe.”

Clare said a recent family funeral resulted in at least eight members of her family contracting COVID in the summer surge. Bitterly refuting the claims that the virus has mutated to a mild, non-threatening disease, she said, “I felt like I was dying, I never felt like this before. On my third day, it was not a headache—it felt like a migraine. I had body aches from my head through my spine to my feet. I couldn’t breathe and was nauseous. It’s been two and a half weeks now, and I’m fatigued from just doing simple things. It’s debilitating. I get so tired I can’t even pick up the phone.”

While these two schools have been forced to close, right-wing administrators around the country are vowing to keep schools running no matter the cost. On July 31, Arizona State Superintendent of Education Tom Horne told ABC News that despite the surge across his state, “If anybody talks about closing school, I will fight it as hard as I can.” He added, “Closing of the schools that occurred last time was an unbelievable disaster.” His contemptuous disdain for the health of students and their communities was buttressed by his referencing of the CDC’s prescription to treat COVID “like a common respiratory virus.” 

While the fascist right is pushing for prohibitions on school closures and outright anti-vaccination policies, the dismantling of the public health system has been bipartisan. It began with Trump but was then spearheaded by the Biden administration. Both ruling class parties insist that workers should report to work, whether or not they are sick. Under the Biden/Harris administration over 800,000 Americans died from COVID, while millions more suffered debilitating Long COVID, for which the long-term generational impacts of annual reinfections will not be fully grasped for years or decades to come.

The two schools in Tennessee and Alabama are the only sites currently reporting outbreaks, but this has more to do with lack of media coverage than lack of COVID. For instance, in a San Diego high school, the administration sent a cart around with free COVID tests (although well past their 2022 expiration dates).

Another reason for the return of COVID arises from the years of right-wing disinformation campaigns to spread confusion and conspiracy theories within the population, cultivating the most backward and fascistic conceptions. This has resulted in a terrible decline of vaccination rates for all preventable diseases, not just COVID, which will continue to worsen the impact. The share of kindergarten children with a vaccine exemption has increased in 36 states since the pandemic began. Twenty-one states have banned student COVID-19 vaccine mandates, both Republican- and Democratic-dominated states, including Michigan, Ohio, and New Hampshire.

Mpox detected in Sweden one day after World Health Organization declares epidemic a Public Health Emergency of International Concern

Bryan Dyne

On Wednesday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) as a result of the surging mpox outbreak of the deadlier “clade Ib” viral strain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and across Africa.

A colorized transmission electron micrograph of mpox particles (red) found within an infected cell (blue), cultured in the laboratory [AP Photo/NIAID]

The declaration by WHO follows a similar one issued by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) the previous day, which marked the virus’ spread as a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security. It is the first time the spread of a disease has been categorized as such since the agency was established in 2017.

As part of the WHO announcement, Tedros commented,

The emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighbouring countries are very worrying. On top of outbreaks of other mpox clades in DRC and other countries in Africa, it’s clear that a coordinated international response is needed to stop these outbreaks and save lives.

This year alone, there have been 17,451 cases of mpox in 13 African Union member states, of which 2,822 are confirmed and 14,719 are suspected, which have resulted in 517 deaths, a case fatality rate of 2.95 percent. The total number of cases exceeds the totals for both 2022 and 2023, when mpox previously threatened to spread across the world.

In addition to the high number of cases, the location of new cases spurred on the decision to declare a PHEIC. According to the WHO press release:

In the past month, over 100 laboratory-confirmed cases of clade 1b have been reported in four countries neighbouring the DRC that have not reported mpox before: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Experts believe the true number of cases to be higher as a large proportion of clinically compatible cases have not been tested.

In addition to the outbreaks in Africa, one case involving the mpox clade I strain was reported in Sweden on Thursday. A statement from the Public Health Agency of Sweden notes, “A person who sought care at Region Stockholm has been diagnosed with mpox caused by the clade I variant.”

The statement then attempted to downplay the dangers involved, claiming that, “the fact that a patient with mpox is treated in the country does not affect the risk to the general population,” a risk which it asserts is “very low.”

In fact, no such claims can be made. Unlike the mpox clade IIb strain which was largely responsible for cases of mpox in 2022 and 2023 and which spreads primarily through sexual contact, the current strain spreads merely through being in close quarters.

While mpox is not generally contagious while a given infected person is not symptomatic, it is still critical to know precisely when they developed the infection to know how many others might have been exposed.

Arguably the most critical piece of information, currently unknown to the public, is how the patient traveled from Africa to Sweden. Did they travel via land, air, sea? In what cities did they lay over? How packed were the cars, buses, trains, ships or planes on which they traveled? Given the immense danger the current strain poses to the health of everyone who catches the disease, not performing mass contact tracing and testing for the pathogen is criminally irresponsible at best.

As part of the PHEIC declaration, the WHO also announced that it has allocated $1.45 million for “surveillance, preparedness and response activities” regarding the multi-continent epidemic. It is also asking for an additional $15 million in donations from its members to fully fund the initial stages of its response to the virus.

Among the most important immediate needs, according to the WHO, is for mpox vaccines to be sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the vast majority of current cases have been detected. Both vaccines currently in use for the virus are approved by the agency, and last week Tedros initiated an Emergency Use Listing in order to bypass any problems distributing the vaccines if a given nation has not yet had its national regulatory bodies approve them.

The unserious response by the Swedish government to the outbreak will, however, likely be mirrored by every other major world power. One of the most devastating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world’s population is the complete dismantling of public healthcare infrastructure in essentially every country, especially testing and contact tracing to find and isolate infected individuals, cutting vectors of transmission for diseases.

Mpox has also been detected in wastewater in San Fransisco. Wastewater has been among the most consistent methods for detecting the presence of COVID-19 throughout the pandemic, and the detection of mpox is extraordinarily alarming. It indicates the real possibility that the virus, possibly the more lethal clade I or IB strains, has crossed the Atlantic.

Rather than stop the spread of deadly viruses, the world’s governments have no interest in addressing the threat of COVID-19 or mpox because it cuts across the financial interests of the corporate and financial interests which these figures represent.

The work of the WHO itself suffers from this pressure. When it ended the PHEIC regarding COVID-19 last year, it was not because the pandemic was over or contained, or that a mass and effective vaccination campaign had succeeded, but due to the diktats of, above all, American capitalism to keep workers on the job to further enrich the financial oligarchs.

That world governments no longer care about public health was further exposed this week when the US provided $20 billion to Israel to continue its genocidal campaign against the population of Gaza. While Tedros must beg for $15 million to save lives, Israel is given essentially a blank check for tanks, planes, bullets and bombs to continue its slaughter of a defenseless population.

And the less said the better about figures such as the fascistic owner of Twitter/X, Elon Musk, who received a $45 billion pay package from Tesla in June.

The genocide has also made Gazans especially susceptible to diseases that had largely been suppressed or eliminated in the enclave. Since the start of the genocide 10 months ago, the population has had to deal with polio, measles, cholera, scabies, chickenpox, lice, impetigo and various skin diseases because of the squalid conditions. An mpox outbreak among the population would be catastrophic.