LeftyProf

It worries me that cricket too is morphing into a clone of American sports culture.

Check out this article from the New York Times: it talks about American cheerleaders coming to Bangalore to hold a national cheerleader training of sorts! Don’t we have enough sexism at home? Do we have to import some more?

The problem is not in terms of the pseudo-”swadeshi” argument of the Hindutva folks and their Vanar Sena apes, but in terms of the sheer economics of it. The commercialization of American sport has had many negative effects:

1. Lured by the huge amount of money in coporate sponsorship that the leagues generate, city governments and town municipalities go out of their way to bring the leagues to their cities and towns. Huge stadiums are built at the expense of taxpayer-funded subsidies. Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal (certainly not a radical socialist newspaper!!) for more on why, and with what consequences. It tells us that, according to an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives,

Arenas put a drag on the local economy by hurting spending on other activities in the city and boosting municipal costs such as security.

Beyond what the WSJ article lays out, we can also say this: Prime seats in the stadiums are auctioned off to corporate bidders, where corporate CEOs hang out with their politician buddies. Meanwhile, the regular fan, the working-class fan of the game find the tickets priced beyond their reach, because there are fewer seats up for sale. Plus, they now pay $8-$10 for a hot dog that otherwise would cost a dollar, and $8 for a beer that otherwise would cost $4. Taxpayers are promised big returns in terms of jobs; but these jobs tend to be the lowest-paid and temporary service jobs. Meanwhile, money that could have gone for better schools, cheaper healthcare, cheaper utilities, etc., goes to the builders and developers who make big bucks in the process (no offense to builders and developers on this list!!).

2. The game itself becomes a huge advertising billboard for multinationals to sell their wares to the Indian consumer middle class. Reliance, Toyota, Infosys, make the big bucks, while we suffer through a constant barrage of advertising that makes the game into a spectacle. Where there once was a “gentleman’s” spirit behind it, the game now is transformed into what makes for the best advertisement, the best commercial for all the commodities they want us to buy. It becomes a garish, commercialised spectacle, which takes over the spirit of the game. Ruthless competition, celebrity stardom, and an emphasis on charisma rather than talent begins to ruin what used to be a showcase for talent.

(Meanwhile, we become very good consumers. While we shop in our glittering new malls and drink fizzy sugar syrup [yes, Coke] thinking it’s cool, our credit card debts go up along with our diabetes stats. )

3. The sportsmen (and women, although less so) become commodities themselves, bought and sold to the highest bidder. Nothing wrong with that, perhaps, but it has a trickle-down effect on the millions of youth who struggle to make it into the big leagues. The vast majority of them will have their hopes dashed, or dreams deferred, because only the cream of the crop will get the big bucks. The vast majority will make do with crappy, low-wage jobs, playing in some local league which struggles to even stay afloat. They won’t get lucrative contracts or endorsement deals. The result of this is still more ruthless competition, reaching down to the very lowest levels of the game’s foodchain.

Enter steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. You get the drift.

There’s a whole lot more to this, as it affects the local economy, the culture of the sport, and the popular culture as a whole, but I have neither the time nor that kind of knowledge of the business of sports to explain it here. In the Indian context, it becomes even messier, I would argue. The super-wealthy in India are already making fabulous amounts of wealth. Do they need to invade our sports as well?

Why don’t the rich and the multinationals put some money into improving the infrastructure in cities like Bangalore? Or in ridding the countryside of poverty, hunger and disease? The Tatas, the Ambanis, the Hindujas, and their ilk could wipe out rural poverty without even noticing a change in their own lifestyles. If you don’t believe me, go do the research. Find out how much the World Bank or the UNDP says is needed to eliminate rural poverty, illiteracy, healthcare, etc in India–you will be surprised at how little it would cost to do all of this. On a global scale the estimation is something of the order of $40 billion. That’s all.

Why don’t they put this money into high-quality free education for everyone through college? They could afford it. The government could subsidize it using taxpayer money. What’s that you say? Revenues are low? Well, how about raising the tax on capital gains?

Of course, the rich won’t like that, but the rest of India will. And it is the rest of India that the commercial world wants us to forget.

Hell, what do I know? I could be totally wrong on all of this. But check out Dave Zirin’s book Welcome to the Terrordome and his sports column, Edge of Sports. You’ll learn a thing or two about the business of American sports.

Believe me, it ain’t pretty.

So pardon me if I’m less than enthusiastic about this American-ization of cricket.

BENAZIR BHUTTO was hailed by many in the Western media as Pakistan’s last hope for democracy and a crusader against the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. Her assassination, consequently, has been talked about as a blow to Pakistan’s hopes for democracy and stability.

The media, predictably enough, was following the U.S. government’s lead. Soon after Bhutto’s death, George Bush denounced the “murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy” and called on Pakistanis to continue “the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life.”

Some Pakistani liberals have joined in. Writing for the Huffington Post, Hussain Haqqani, a Boston University professor and former advisor to Bhutto, referred to her as “the outstanding icon of Pakistan’s struggle for democracy” and “the Pakistani establishment’s nemesis.”

But even a brief look at her life and legacy yields a different story.

Read the rest of this article at Socialist Worker Online

Remember Margaret Thatcher’s sonorous declaration of TINA–There Is No Alternative (to capitalism)? Well, TINA is back!

Many moons ago (October 5, 1995, to be precise), back when Jyoti Basu was still the official party boss of the CPI(M), he had declared in very erudite terms to a New York Times reporter, that although “[a] debacle has taken place in the Soviet Union, … we don’t think it as the end of Marxism.” The “debacle” he was referring to, of course, was the collapse of the USSR, which had been understood as signaling the death of marxism. Okay, I hear you say, a leader of a communist party defended the relevance of Marxism following the collapse of the Soviet Union. What’s so remarkable about that? It’s rather mundane and predictable, isn’t it?  Hmm…. Well, read on.

The NYTimes article ends thusly:

“We are not inviting capitalism to West Bengal; we are inviting capital,” said Anil Biswas, editor of the party’s newspaper.

Reaching for a dog-eared copy of the Communist Manifesto, he turned to the section on capital and added triumphantly, “Read that, and you’ll see that capitalism and capital are two entirely different things.”

What an astute, incisive, and enlightening insight: capitalism and capital are two different things! Who knew?! Not only are they two (entirely) different “things,” but apparently you can have one without the other.

What could have prompted the editor of a supposedly “communist” newspaper to make such an asinine statement? I can only hazard a guess. For the CPI(M) and its ideologues, Communists are apparently miracle-workers, and sort of like the alchemists of yore, they can take “capital” and somehow extricate it from all the icky stuff that we call “capitalism.” So, if you are stressed out about all that exploitation and oppression that you associated with multinational corporations, banks and financial institutions, don’t worry–because the Communist State will clean it all up for you.

Well, twelve years later, the good comrades have further developed their novel thesis, only this time without the pretense at cleverness. The reason for their forthrightness this time around, of course, is the absolute disaster they have on their hands thanks to their brutal attempt to impose neoliberal policies in West Bengal. (For the best ongoing analysis, see sanhati.com.) In the wake of the protests against these policies, both at home and abroad, CPI(M) propagandists and die-hard knucklehead apologists like Vijay Prashad have taken it upon themselves to issue Stalinoid rationalizations for these policies. This is old news now.

On January 3rd, according to an article in The Hindu, party stalwart and West Bengal Chief Minister, addressing an audience on the occasion of the 42nd anniversary of the founding of their newspaper, Ganashakti (”People’s Power”) put it quite clearly: “We have to accept capitalism…. This is being realistic in a situation where there is no alternative.”

Then, as if on cue, Jyoti Basu repeated the same argument two days later. Here’s an article from The Tribune, dated January 5, and titled “Basu: We want capital; socialism not possible now”:

Veteran CPM leader Jyoti Basu today conceded that socialism and classless society were Utopian ideas. He admitted that though they were communists, they had accepted capitalism since they were living in the capitalistic system.

“It is always wise to accept the situation and accordingly take necessary steps for quickly developing the country,” Basu suggested….

Strongly endorsing CM [Chief Minister] Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s policy of rapid industrialisation with the private and corporate investments, Basu complemented the CM for taking the right step.

The party patriarch said the people would have to wait some [!] more time to see the true socialism in practice and a classless society in reality.

He said the entire nation has been running under the capitalistic system and the communists, commanding only three small states, cannot enforce [sic!] socialism in the entire country…. [full]

Well, thank goodness for the fact that they “command only three small states,” is all we can say!

(Today, I read in The Hindu that Sitaram Yechury, another  senior CPI(M) Politburo member has declared that in fact, the CPI(M) is looking for a “third alternative” to neoliberalism and communalism.) Moving on….

Well, what of those who don’t believe that we must accept capitalism? What of those who feel there is something wrong with neoliberalism and corporate globalization, and that a party that claims to stand in the tradition of Marxism ought not to enforce such policies? Well, the West Bengal Chief Minister has an answer. According to The Hindu, “The Chief Minister stressed the need for clearing the misunderstanding of ‘those who are genuinely confused.’” In other words, those who oppose the forcible acquisition of farmers’ land for the creation of tax-free Special Economic Zones for multinational mega-corporations like the Salim Group (with ties to erstwhile dictator Suharto’s family) are simply “confused,” and the party newspaper can presumably “clear” up the “misunderstanding.”

With Communists like these, who needs neocons?! And when will the Vijay Prashads of the world give up the charade, and accept that they too, like their party patriarchs, have accepted the idea that There Is No Alternative?

… in the blogosphere, I mean. Yes, I have been in hibernation through the Fall semester. And now that it’s winter, and the squirrels are scurrying back to their little cubby holes in my neighbor’s roof, I am back. Well, not really–I am still very busy with some deadlines at work, and my posts are going to continue to remain spotty and sporadic for a while.

However, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is an event of potentially seismic proportions, and I want to post some stuff about it here in the coming days and weeks. The repercussions haven’t yet begun to unveil themselves, and it is a scary prospect to consider the potential medium- and long-term ramifications of this event. What does it signify for the stability of the Pakistani state? This is, I believe, the most immediate question, although the answers to it might not be immediately forthcoming.

Nevertheless, I will try to create some sort of resource here to pool together an archive of material on what’s going on in Pakistan–and over the coming weeks perhaps fill in some of the gaps since I last posted to this blog on India’s Independence Day, August 15.

A lot has happened since then. At one point, Musharraf seemed to have accepted a U.S.-brokered power-sharing agreement with Benazir Bhutto. Most importantly, the PPP’s dynastic leader agreed to a deal with the very military that had cheered the execution of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Benazir returned to Pakistan somewhat smugly triumphant–Musharraf was being tamed by the U.S., and was being forced to accept a U.S.-brokered power-sharing deal with her.

Her rally was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing dozens and wounding hundreds more. Musharraf then imposed a state of emergency, which effectively amounted to martial law, as he got rid of the constitution, the judiciary and he jailed thousands of civil rights and human rights leaders and activists, such as Asma Jehangir, the chairperson of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission.

Musharraf’s state of emergency was imposed when Bhutto, conveniently enough, left the country for a couple of days. Musharraf then took off his uniform and went back to civilian suits, and promptly appointed a General Kiyani as his successor. Musharraf lifted the emergency December 16, as he had announced earlier, but after having stifled dissent with some extraordinarily repressive measures.

And now, Benazir has been assassinated, and all signs point to:

a) the collaboration of the Islamists and sections of the Pakistani mid-level officer-corps in carrying it out

b) a volatile and explosive future for Pakistan and perhaps the region in the coming months and years.

It’s a crisis of a proportion that gives one pause, and that forces one to re-engage with the world and where it’s headed.

Hence, this long-winded way of saying, I’m back in the blogosphere again, even if I don’t know for how long.

Email me at leftyprof@gmail.com with links to interesting content that you want me to link to from my blog. Thanks!

This one comes from Pranav Jani over at ScarletGuju. He writes:

“Subh-e Azad” (“Dawn of Freedom”) by the brilliant Urdu Marxist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, best expresses to me the sense of tragedy and possibility of 1947 for ordinary people caught in the worldwind of historical events: an independence brokered through ethnic cleansing, refugee crisis, communalism, rape, and horrors of partition.

An excellent counterpoint–ideologically and symbolically–to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous “Tryst With Destiny” speech, “Subh-e Azad” reminds us, on this 60th anniversary of Indian/Pakistani independence, that while we all must keep seeking the “dawn of freedom,” today’s South Asian dawn for nuclear testers and global corporations, for car-owners and the wealthy with their bloated bank accounts while farmers commit suicides and poverty rates rise–this is not really what freedom was supposed to be about.
But pay attention to the last line: this is not just about despair…

“Dawn of Freedom” (August 1947)

–Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated from the Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali

Whose Nation? Whose Independence?

What, to the dalit, is the 15th of August? What, to the adivasis, have these sixty years brought? What, to working-class men and women, do today’s celebrations mean?

In 1841, the anti-slavery crusader and abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked of his white American audience, “What, to the Negro, is the Fourth of July?” In a moving section of his speech, he speaks of slavery as a phenomenon that mocks the very notion of independence.

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them…. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view…. I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery–the great sin and shame of America! … I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

Read through the eyes of India’s millions of impoverished citizens, Douglass’ words ring true in contemporary India as they did in pre-Civil War America.

Thinking about justice

This is not to say that the Indian elites are totally oblivious to the plight of the oppressed and the downtrodden. In fact, a public debate has been raging for years now about affirmative action, reservations and set-asides, quotas in hiring, and other remedial measures that the state might undertake in order to help redress centuries of discrimination.

The fact is, the presence of inequality, oppression and poverty on such a vast scale (see my previous post, “India Shining, indeed“) is an embarrassment for a ruling class that sees itself as competing on the world stage for status and prestige as a global power. So there has to be some attempt at solving these problems, right? Right.

Enter the Indian think tank.

Indicus Analytics, which calls itself “India’s leading economics research firm,” conducted a study titled “Peoples’ Expectations from the State in the Context of a Globalizing Indian Economy” for the National Foundation for India (NFI). A pdf file of the full report can be found here. The study was aimed at understanding what people expect of the government, particularly in relation to “underprivileged” sections of society. In other words, whether Indians favor government involvement in aiding dalits, so-called “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs), and other oppressed communities.

The study seems to have been conducted quite well. It’s survey sample size, and its attendant methodology seem, to my untrained eye, to be quite sound. The results of the study were fairly unambiguous. One of its major findings was that, regardless of class or caste,

majorities of the respondents are sympathetic towards the underprivileged sections of the society and favor the need for special schemes for their development. Majority of them suggest government jobs for them. Those in high-income group believe better access to health and education service is also important for their overall development. Only about 21.71 percent of respondents consider that the government should only focus on better opportunities for all. (p. 11)

So it appears that most Indians believe that oppressed castes, dalits, and other marginalized communities ought to receive special government assistance. Affirmative action (reservation) policies, one might argue, would be welcomed by a broad spectrum of Indian society.

But we know that the loudest voices are those of people who oppose quotas and reservations. Why is this so?

Well, take a look at what the head of Indicus Analytics, one Laveesh Bhandari, has to say about the issue in a recent op-ed piece in the Indian Express. Titled “Social Justice Without PhDs,” the article lauds a recent Supreme Court ruling that stayed the implementation of quotas for OBCs in higher education. The government wanted to set aside 27 percent of seats in government-funded institutions, including the prestigious IITs and IIMs, for OBCs.

Now, there is no doubt a lot of political opportunism involved in the debate over quotas–the ruling UPA government is hardly a champion of the poor and the oppressed. Bhandari, however, critiques the quota proposals as unfeasible and impracticable. The crux of his “argument” is:

It is quite apparent to anyone who has gone to an Indian university that there is a lack of infrastructure, there is a lack of proper management, and there is a lack of quality teaching and teachers. None of these can be addressed within a year or two.

Why not? The prosperous Indian economy is awash in freshly laundered money–why not tap into some of that and make a real turnaround in infrastructure so as to be able to provide better educational opportunities for all?

Bhandari then goes on to make the same bland assessment of the state of teaching in India. There aren’t enough quality teachers and professors, he tells us, and therefore it is unrealistic to try to increase the number of seats in higher education. He briefly considers the possibility of hiring teachers from abroad, like China has done, and dismisses this too as unrealistic.

Having dismissed all possible means of implementing quotas as “unrealistic,” what does Bhandari offer as a solution to the lack of advancement of “OBCs”?

The OBCs (and all of Indian youth) would benefit more if our politicians devoted their highly innovative minds to figure out how we could ensure vocational and skill-based training for all.

In other words, keep the elite institutions as bastions of the … well, elite. Then, provide “skill-based” training to the OBCs so as to feed the growing labor demands of a growing economy. Good, skilled cheap labor then becomes available to … the elites. Who needs quotas and reservations?

To hear Bhandari pontificate about achieving “Social Justice Without PhDs,” when he himself has a Ph.D. from Boston University, is quite amusing.

Thus the head of a firm that conducts a survey that shows widespread support for government action to boost the opportunities for OBCs writes an article that essentially goes against the spirit of that study! Astounding, isn’t it!

(The NFI, it turns out, is a “grant-making and fundraising organization” that funds NGOs in India, and is in turn funded by, among others, the ubiquitous Ford Foundation (with its shady history of collaboration with the CIA), European Christian aid missions like the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO), and the American India Foundation, whose honorary president is none other than–you guessed it–Bill Clinton.)

Thinking of Kashmir

A nation that oppresses another can never be free. This is the essence of Marx’s argument about national oppression.

What does it mean to celebrate the “independence” of one’s nation, while at the same time denying another people their right to self-determination? A recent poll showed that 87% of the people of Srinagar continue to demand independence from both India and Pakistan.* Granted, Srinagar is not Kashmir, and still less is it representative of the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir. But the sheer unwillingness of Indians to even consider an independent Kashmir shows that their own conception of national independence is hollow, shallow, and exclusivist. Our independence is a good thing, but they can never be free: Kashmir is, and must remain, a part of India. Isn’t that what the British thought about “their” India?

So what is the meaning of Independence Day to Kashmiris, who have lost some 80,000 lives while fighting for self-determination?

On this “glorious” independence day, why not take a look at what one Kashmiri has to say about his own struggle for independence–check out my January, 2004, interview with Yasin Malik.

Thinking of Partition

Good fences make good neighbors, wrote Robert Frost. He certainly didn’t have the Indian subcontinent in mind.

Bring up the issue of partition in a discussion about Indian/Pakistani Independence Day celebrations, and you will be roundly rebuked. “We must look forward, not backward,” you will be told. But the very idea of an independent “India” and an independent “Pakistan” is inconceivable without reference to the holocaust that was Partition.

A passage from Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Shadow Lines expresses this paradox. In it, the protagonist marvels at the fact that national boundaries have had such a strong hold on people’s imaginations. Looking at a map, he is amazed that

there had really been a time, not so long ago, when people, sensible people, of good intention, had thought that all maps were the same, that there was special enchantment in lines; I had to remind myself that they were not to be blamed for believing that there was something admirable in moving violence to the border and dealing with it through science and factories, for that was the pattern of the world. They had drawn their borders … hoping perhaps that once they had etched their border upon the map, the two bits of land would sail away from each other like the shifting tectonic plates of the prehistoric Gondwanaland. What would they think, I wondered, when the realized that they had created not a separation, but a yet-undiscovered irony … the simple fact that there had never been a moment in the four-thousand-year-old history of that map, when the places we know as Dhaka and Calcutta were more closely bound to each other than after they had drawn their lines….

——————–

*Thanks to Naveen for drawing my attention to this poll.

Thanks also to Desi Italiana’s intrepid questioning of nationalism for inspiring this post.

Poverty and inequality continue to plague Indian society, even in these days of corporate partying. While India’s fabulously wealthy rulers are busy acquiring luxury cars and private jets, (not to mention the fact that some of this wealth comes dripping with blood) hundreds of millions continue to languish in poverty and misery.

“Oh come on, Mamu,“ I can hear my niece complain as she reads this. “We all know this, it’s nothing new.” She pouts for a bit, ponders her best line of attack, and settles for this: “Why can’t people talk about something else? Why do you always have to write about poverty?”

Yes, of course we know all this. Yes, of course we’ve seen the stats a thousand times before. And yes, to write about poverty in India is to run the risk of sounding like a broken record. But I do believe that originality in social commentary isn’t as great a virtue as it is made out to be. I think it is just as important to simply keep repeating the obvious over and over again (think Noam Chomsky or Arundhati Roy here), in order to push back against the mind-numbing nature of consumer culture.

I believe that it isn’t so much a matter of saying something original, in this context, as of finding an original pretext to say what you’ve said a hundred times before.

What’s my pretext today? A report in The Hindu refers to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, which has issued a report on “Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in Unorganised Sector.” The text of the draft report can be found here. (There are discrepancies between the figures in the Hindu article and those in the draft report, probably because the former is based on the final report, whereas the draft report was issued in April, and was clearly marked “Not to be quoted, for feedback and comments only.”)

Some of the findings of the report, as outlined by the Hindu article:

• 394.9 million workers (86 per cent of the working population) belong to the unorganized sector
• 316 million workers live on less than Rs. 20, or $ 0.49, a day.
• 88 per cent of the Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes, 80 per cent of the Other Backward Classes and 85 per cent of Muslims belong to this category of people living on less than Rs. 20 a day.
• 90 per cent of agricultural labor households are landless or have less than one hectare of holding*
• agriculture is getting feminized with 73 per cent women being associated with it compared to 52 per cent men.

Then there was this statement in the article that I couldn’t quite figure out in light of the other statistics: “In 2004-05, a total of 836 million (77 per cent) had an income below Rs. 20 a day.” This seems to contradict the second point above, which puts the figure at 316 million. Are they suggesting that the number has actually fallen by nearly two-thirds?!! It seems unlikely. I’d like to get my hands on the report itself to figure this out.

As of 2002-2003, the unorganized sector’s contribution to overall GDP was a surprisingly (to me) high 56.7 per cent, according to the draft report (p. 24).

Poorly paid, super-exploited workers, in other words, are contributing more than half of the overall growth of the Indian economy in these glorious times.

“India Shining”: Does that phrase make you want to laugh or cry? Let me know.

______

*On a different note, this statistic really throws into question the characterization of India as “semi-feudal” by Maoists. If 90 percent of agricultural labor is landless, then we are referring here to waged labor, albeit in agriculture. In other words, this is not a “peasantry” ranged against a “feudal” landholding class, but agricultural wage-labor ranged against an agrarian bourgeoisie.

This is obviously a larger debate, and will have to be dealt with separately.

Sorry for the jargon, Pooja!

Even newspapers like The Hindu sometimes screw up. Blogger Vivek shows us why it is important to not blindly accept everything you read in the papers in a recent post.