At the Stroke of Midnight Hour- Phenomena

Follow most comments that immediately followed the ‘demonetisation’- news, across media, political divides: ..."at the first instance it sounds good....but...you know...", “ well counterfeit will be gone… but…”, “certainly the best move… of the times”…”revolution by government” etc. These first hand positives or hyperactive kudos, are the 'capital' that such moves garner. But this does not mean one should go sleep with pride in the magic.

What is the difference between declaring the aforesaid notes non-legal tenders, ‘at the stroke of midnight hour (not when the whole world sleeps!)’ from, saying one will have time only till end of December 2016 to get rid of/ exchange the notes. The difference I guess is in the rhetoric and surprise with a tinge of human interest that the first one has. It also comes at a time when previous surprises like bringing the wealth back from Swiss bank did not quite do the trick. Rational voices obviously asked about the domestic black money loop holes that were of a much bigger scale!

The behemoth corporate write offs, farmer suicide maintenance, exposure of the government for its treatment of/position on certain sections of people like Dalits, state repression of campuses that should be critical learning centres (and not official right wing radio stations) and the overt communal gestures; all were threatening the political continuity of the ruling order. So the timing too could not be better. By the way aren’t we soon having some state elections?

On the long run people also need to assume that all the unaccounted money held by the biggest foul players are stacked under their pillows as 500 and 100 rupee notes in year 2016. Even if some actually did, December 30 gives fair time for their already well oiled brains to work something out. Doesn’t it? So there is no surprise sell for these brainy foul players who even otherwise were blessed by aforementioned corporate write offs. The write offs, by the way, were also magical figures. The one lakh crore plus hardly has any surprise value. Probably it got accounted into the nationalism tongue.

When one thinks, there are also possibilities of many new accounts that will be opened for transactions and more will come under tax nets (also could rope in a few more in the extraordinarily imposed Aaadhaar system– which was pushed in as a Money bill!). This certainly puts some money into coffers, but also helps to make a large percentage of black money (otherwise reduced to worthless paper) accountable and white. There is an interesting article, “Here's A Simple Idea To Fix India's Black Money Problem Once And For All” in July 18, The Huffington Post. There are disturbing possibilities of ‘gives and takes’.

There is obviously a lot more…I am sure people will think beyond the rhetoric and loudness (which signify the times, but are no guarantee for better life).

TILING IN LIFE

The following are records of space ^* in Ernakulam town region that has transformed too much over the last few decades. This transformation is also an embodiment of the relations that we weave with spaces around. The life we live and the systems we give sanction to produce such spaces.

*One could always find better snaps for the older shots

The first one is a screen shot from the movie Anubhavangal Paalichakal that came out in 1971. The space shown here is the marine drive zone of Ernakulam; the lake can be seen as right next to a much narrower road.

The second is also a screen shot, this time from the movie Rajavinte Makan that came out in 1986. By now the roads have become wider and hectares of lake have been filled up. We see the slanted high rise, which was amongst the first in the big rows that soon followed (which once rivaled the only tall structures of Sea Lord hotel or LIC on the other side).

The Third is a view from the lake towards the present closely positioned row of buildings that came up on the filled up lake. They totally block the view of the lake as well as the winds from the lake towards the land. After all, by now, the wind and the view cannot be a casual privilege for ordinary travelers. They either have to be entitled in some way to one of the high rises (the ‘lake view’ or ‘sea view’ crowd) or else they have to find the’ leisure’ time to stroll on the compromise space spared as ‘promenade’ that is sandwiched between the buildings and the lake.

 

 

 

 The Fourth set of pictures (the latter two, taken by Vinay Padre a couple of days back) is representative of the fate of whatever spaces remain ‘open’/ public. Tiling is an institutional cult in the state. It is a war on earth and life. It respects no recycling of water or the life on earth (with its millions of forms). The authorities are covering up huge swaths of land.

(Another space in the Rajendra Maidan that faces the lake has now become a permanent laser show structure and half of the grassy park is now tiled in). There is an old photo and a later one that can be googled, there is the screen shot from the movie In Harihar Nagar (1990) and a current photo with the laser structure/ tiling.

 

These are gestures that go under the tag of cleaning. Cleanings as could be gathered from instances are about acts of distancing the human and non human. So leaves and earth and trees are problems or threats, but the production of plastic, pollution, consumption, and vehicles are fine.

There is absolutely nothing on offer in terms of health of life forms. The ground temperatures will swell due to the excess of concrete, and the blockade of water from seeping into grounds will alter the equilibrium with saline water, in lake side regions. So apart from the fact that civil works offer a good option for institutionalized corruption, there is no rationale in the ways spaces get appropriated and sealed away from life.  Nothing justifies such anti-social gestures, especially in contemporary times, when people have gotten more than exposed to urban disasters, flooding, and heat effects…

Global ‘Education!’ Meet…Kerala…

Different kinds of cities are on the rise. In the larger environment of ‘smart city’ promotions, with more than seven thousand crore pumped in by the central government, the south western state of Kerala is pitching in more. After the much advertised Kochi ‘smart city’, which in effect was an instance of pumping in capital, especially through state-land into corporate market, here comes a more problematic deal. Through the state Higher Education Council of Kerala (HEC), a Global Education Meet is on.

Once again, with the fetish of Dubai models, like the Academic City, the government seeks to throw open another (ever more!) treasure trove for private capital; education. With the self financing systems, management college dictated regimes, bribe – based ( this has fast become the norm in most place and is often known as ‘donations’ but bereft of the idea of gift or agency conveyed by the root idea ‘donare’) college intakes and ‘autonomies’; the ground was already set for such a fiasco. The officialdom uses ideas like that of hub, skill based partnerships, relevant to industry models (and concomitant rejection of the irrelevant to industries people / ideas- isn’t this the function of such ‘responsible’ governments??), and yes ideas of Special Export Processing Zones and all kinds or ‘real estate’ tongue (the higher education policy document could well be mistaken for a desktop pamphlet for DLF or Confident group of builders) to push in this totally OFF-EDUCATION agenda. There is more to this entire game, like single window clearances, PPP models…

And on top of this they project all of this as if it is about education as it happens in serious universities across the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. If things go on track, we can soon start hearing about legislations, land grabs, and gated community advertisements; all to finishing schools for private industries.

One must add that ‘models’ are a highly problematic concept unless clarified. Models are not supposed to take into consideration the formidable differences in the way things run from place to place. So there are crucial questions that arise from the Dubai model itself; like the problems with their educational zones, the different priorities in infrastructure, a highly different educational history.

If one does not keep close watch and act on such exercises like the Global Education Meet, which seeks to release the field of education for more profit mongering, with such totally un-educational ideas like repatriation of profit for the investor (by the way investments, knowledge transfers- KTs, and soft skills will now masquerade as academics) and tax exemptions for land and buildings; more disasters will follow right after autonomy-gala.

The word autonomy conveyed the idea of academic autonomy with state support as in world’s best universities or the best within the sub continent like the JNU/ or IITs (as they used to be!). Now there are only a few who manages to be innocent enough not to realize the fact that this is all about…administrative autonomy…administrative autonomy….administrative autonomy…and nothing else, and in its worst forms. Likewise the word ‘education’ in the Global Education Meet needs to come off the possible illusions.

Rubik’s Cube of Power

The winds from Koodamkulam have already stopped flowing into our porticos. For many of us the issue is closed, or so have we been trained to live the hyperreal. The first phases of power generation are already on. ‘Experts’ have ‘ensured’ us that there won’t be any leak. Even if there is, we could be told that the effect won’t cross state borders!

But even after the chapter was closed for many of us, reminders come in at intervals and press on us to see how ‘cubulets’ of power fit together. It is difficult to work back the combinations, in the way the final patterns take effect. But it will be disastrous not to do so.

Presently, the ‘biggest’ nuclear deal is in the making, through the special economic zones in the Gujarat region. But before getting into the specifics of the joint venture between Westinghouse, Reliance Infrastructure and the state, let’s pause a bit on the symbolic and exemplary connotation of ‘Gujarat’.

Starting from the cover up campaigns following the communal riots that killed thousands, through ‘Vibrant Gujarat’, there have been concerted attempts to sell the state as a brand. Million dollar contracts were given to PR companies to do this clean up. The resultant model was a nexus of violence and wealth. It inaugurated the new algebra of growth. So there is a white wash on all the miserable social indices and histories of caste and communal violence from the region. Instead the ‘lion-brand’ is etched atop. The Weiden Kennedy’s Indian subsidiary along with Coke and Nike manufactured, for a lump sum, the logo for the nationalistic gimmick of the government. The model from Gujarat now casts a pall over the entire nation state; voted in thanks mostly to the combination of a miserable and corrupt system that left office and for the serious lack of any alternative.

Koodamkulam, in ways, represented the model that left office. Manmohanomics and state, tackled the crucial questions raised by people with GDP figures (something which the present ones also are not averse to) and personnel from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS). As Praful Bidwai, then wrote, so “arrogant is India’s nuclear establishment that it brazenly brands its critics insane and in need of psychiatric treatment. It has asked the state-run National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS) to "counsel" the tens of thousands protesting against the Koodankulam nuclear power station in Tamil Nadu that it’s perfectly safe”. For the state, the whole resistance was nothing but a neurotic problem.  Elsewhere, like in and around the mining regions in Chattisgarh, Jharkhand or Odisha, where people have been further off the state, paramilitaries or militaries were deployed: the Salwa Judums, the Cobras, the Greyhounds (literally to hunt the ‘small creatures’ in the hills!).

The present state works in a different way, there is much more professionalism involved in cover-up campaigns (with or without ‘vibration’) and brand selling.  The state, the corporate, and finance capital, have been entering into dialogues at an increased pace throughout the 90s, albeit with some remaining, probably ‘unintentional’, checks and balances from a planned-developmental state. These checks and balances have now been totally gotten rid of.

Government out…Governance in: Read this with the efforts to formulate new land policies, to do away with social impact assessments, public private ventures through smart city networks, promotion of private ports and SEZs, private military arrangements, corporate farming and agreements with agribusiness companies (Monsantos…Cargills…the kind that was involved in illegal BT trials and food price inflations), as well as favourable terms set in patents and intellectual property agreements. It is not for nothing that the entrenched media celebrates and writes travelogues from New York to Nairobi or from Kremlin to Lahore.

So there won’t anything positive on the human front. The Koodamukulams will go on, and worse, there will be more in the offing. Agreements with companies like Areva from France, with very bad track records on safety, are on.  The French state gave shape to Areva mostly to export its nuclear technology, especially after the leaks and ‘small’ issues in its own backyard! After all who expects safety from private companies that seek ONLY profit and after such accidents like Fukushima? It is learned that the French government aimed to reduce its reliance on nuclear power by a third after Fukushima. So wouldn’t they love a warm hug from India!

Now, Westinghouse Electricals will enter into joint ventures with the Reliance Empire, with support of the state, in order to set up networks of nuclear reactors across Bavnagar area. Reliance infra founded in 2002 has revenue nearing 200 billion Indian rupees.  If one goes a bit back in history, there was the Pipavav- the first ‘private corporate facility’ to get clearance to be involved in military infrastructure. Not that state involvement and increased investment in military infrastructure in itself, was too nice or safe. But corporate involvement means something significant and something profoundly insecure.

Pipavav came in the scene towards the end of 90s, and thus exemplifies the impact of post nineties financial reforms. Even otherwise, the 90s end started working against people; not the least in the agricultural sector.

Bhavnagar, the early diamond cutting centre with some of the most precarious labour conditions, by 2003-2005 periods had the most number of agreements signed with huge private companies. In 2007, after the bloody- state -mediated pogroms in Gujarat, it was raised as an exemplar for development and that too with a totally privatized port. It went well along with the already burgeoning empires by other corporate vampires.  By 2015 beginning Reliance Infrastructure went on to acquire major shares of Pipavav, and later Anil Ambani took charge of the company. An ever more energized an entrenched Reliance is now getting together with United States based giant Westinghouse in the nuclear sector.

Try to see how the Rubik’s cube of power works out its colours once again. The state of governance twists and tweaks the governmental apparatus, in steps and in procedures that becomes more and more obscure. The celebrations of machismo, communal state of affairs, the violence of fascist groups that prowl the streets as well as destroy the cultural and educational infrastructure; all create a violent haze that effectively mars vision even further.

The March Against Land and Lives

In the past few months, the government of Kerala has been doing everything under its capacity, to maintain its record as a structure that plays fiddle to private capital. In the earlier posts ( http://punctuationsbymathew.blogspot.in/2015/12/shameless-and-uninhibited-2.html; http://punctuationsbymathew.blogspot.in/2015/12/shameless-and-uninhibited.html ) the moves to regularize conversion of paddy fields as well as the synchronized moves with an even more vicious central structure was pointed at. The latter is best exemplified in the case of red carpeting given to Adanis at Vizhinjam.

There was yet another move, paralleling the central plans to do away with Social Impact assessments, in allowing licenses to quarries. These quarries, if anyone cares to travel across the foothills and Ghat terrains in Kerala, have already altered the geo-ecological equilibrium formed through thousands of years. Now with the aforesaid move the government with arbitrary fixtures of dates (2012) and cut off limits on area (small medium large quarries…) sought to do away with environmental clearances. The nexus with private capital has always been justified in terms of development (‘vikasanam’ alias ‘expansion through congestion’) and labour (even if this does not take into account the impact on millions and future).

The Kerala High Court division bench’s setting aside of the aforesaid dangerous amendment (to provisions of the Kerala Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 2015) is a small breather. Relief also comes after the Thrissur district administration, by the use of Google images proved beyond doubt that 19 acres of land in Puzhakkal, Thrissur was filled up by one of the biggest anti-people corporate in Kerala, the Shobha group. This was very much in violation of the Kerala Conservation of Paddy land and Wetland Act, 2008; an act the present government is hell bent on destroying. Clearly the system works much more for the Lulus and the Shobhas than for the populations of voters.

Earlier the Kerala government, moved to regularise the reclamation and conversion of paddy fields taken before 2008, with a proclamation to collect additional Rs 200-crore revenue. They either do not care or are ignorant of the millions of crores (even though there is no need to bring in a monetary logic to such gross social impacts) worth of impact the cascading environmental destruction will produce.

On the other hand the central government, as represented in the prime ministers burgeoning foreign trips, is moving ahead with compromising the security and well being of millions. This is well exemplified in the commitments given with respect to stricter compliance to global Intellectual Property Rights rules under the TRIPS Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Events like these happen almost on an everyday basis under the embedded media fanfare. The upcoming Nairobi meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for negotiations towards an agreement to open up global trade has to be closely followed up.  There are plans afoot to address ‘issues’ like labour and environment. After all good governance and transparency is about creation of global value chains, competition and provisions for investment.

There are many…many more instances like that of the Forest Rights, Privatisation of Commons, or the Land clauses.

Recently the Bharatiya Janata Party, under the mandatory disclosures of donations that political parties has to make to the Election Commission of India, declared that it had received Rs. 437 crore between 2014-15 ( http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/bharti-aditya-birla-top-funders-of-bjp/article7960630.ece ). One can forget such statistical figures that this is twice the combined total declared by the five other national parties or that only the details of those donations over rupees 20,000 need to be declared. One cannot forget the mind boggling figures, thanks to the preceding regime. So a tradition is on! And now with the add-ons like fatwas on food habits! What is more important are the questions that one must ask: What do you expect to logically follow when a Birla, an Ambani, or a Bharti funds the biggest parties that then goes on to establish a government.

Do we need to expect anything more than the present spectacles to cover up the slavish commitment to private capital, whether at a national or global scale (the national and global criss-cross)? Add this on to what happens closer to view in Kerala. Do we expect anything more than the filling of lakes and wetlands for the Lulus and the Shobhas or the destruction of the Ghats for the real estate barons, from this state government?