India

BRICS Bloc; Adding Members, Planning New Currency To Challenge US Dollar

June 6, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Brazil, BRICS, De-dollarization, India, Multipolar World, South Africa, Venezuela

The BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa is expanding, as its members grow in economic and political influence. Together, the five BRICS members represent more than 40% of the global population, and their share of the world economy (when measured in purchasing power parity) is larger than that of the G7. The foreign ministers of the BRICS states met in South Africa on June 1 and 2. There, they discussed a series of issues, including plans to create a new global reserve currency to challenge the dominance of the US dollar. Also present at the meeting in South Africa was a group of top diplomats from countries described as “friends of BRICS”, including Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

De-Dollarisation Clashes With India-China Border Dispute

May 27, 2023 Saheli Chowdhury, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! BRICS, China, De-dollarization, India, Russia, US Dollar, Yuan

The global de-dollarisation trend is not totally a bed of roses, or at least there are thorns in the roses that have to be taken into account. While de-dollarisation seems to be an irreversible trend on the global scale, at regional levels it is running into bilateral or regional political tensions. In this regard, one of the most prominent cases is in Asia: the India-China border dispute. In April 2023, the Chinese national currency, yuan, ranked third in international trade settlements made through the US-dominated SWIFT system. According to data from the system itself, yuan’s share in April was “record high,” although that share was only 4.72%, after euro’s 6.54%.

Kerala’s Kudumbashree: A Model To Emancipate Women

May 23, 2023 People's Dispatch. Create! Economic Security, Gender Parity, India, Women's Rights

25 years ago, in May 1998, the Left Democratic Front government of the Indian state of Kerala started the Kudumbashree program as part of the State Poverty Eradication Mission. The program aimed to socially and financially emancipate women by providing them employment opportunities and space to enter decision making bodies. Today, 25 years on, the program has been a massive success with a notable rise in women’s presence in legislative bodies, as well as a large number of women working in various micro enterprises and agricultural projects. TN Seema, a former member of parliament from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) talks about the journey of the program and where it stands today.

The Global South Is Trying To Fix The United Nations

May 22, 2023 Ramzy Baroud, MintPress News. Educate! China, Global South, India, UN Security Council

In anticipation of next month’s United Nations Security Council talks on reforming the inherently archaic and dysfunctional political body, China’s foreign policy chief, Yang Yi, stated his country’s demands. “The reform of the Security Council should uphold fairness and justice, increase the representation and voice of developing countries, allowing more small and medium-sized countries to have more opportunities to participate in the decision-making of the Council,” Wang Yi said in a statement on April 29. More specifically, the new UNSC must “redress historical injustices against Africa”.

Seymour Hersh: My Meeting With Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf

May 6, 2023 Seymour Hersh, Scheer Post. Educate! India, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, US Hegemony

During the first year of the Obama administration, I spent months in the summer and fall of 2009 reporting about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal from here in Washington; from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital; from New Delhi, the Indian capital; and from London, where Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan as well a former army chief was living in exile. The story I eventually published in the New Yorker was edited slightly in accordance with a White House request that I did not contest. The issues then and today are the same: Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation. So is India, its rival, an on-and-off ally of both Russia and America that rarely, if ever, discusses its own nuclear capability.

In The Factories There Is Wealth, But There Is No Life

May 5, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! ILO, India, Worker Rights, Working Class

In late 2022, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released a fascinating report entitled Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World, in large part encouraged by a slew of initiatives across India to extend the workday. The report accumulated global data on the time spent at work in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ILO found that ‘approximately one third of the global workforce (35.4 percent) worked more than 48 hours per week’ and ‘one fifth of global employment (20.3 percent) consists of short (or part-time) hours of work of less than 35 hours per week’, such as gig work.

Europe Pays More For Banned Russian Oil, Resold By India

May 1, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report China, Europe, European Union (EU), India, Inflation, Oil and Gas, Russia, Sanctions, US Imperialism, Wages, Wars and Militarism

The European Union heavily sanctioned Russia and pledged to boycott its oil, yet continues to buy it, and at an even higher price, albeit indirectly. India is importing record levels of discounted Russian crude, purchasing it in currencies other than the dollar. India then refines the Russian oil and exports fuel to Europe at a profit. Meanwhile, increasing energy costs in Europe have stoked inflation, causing workers’ wages to significantly decline. The real wages of workers in the Eurozone fell by 6.5% between 2020 and 2022. As of April, Bloomberg reported, European imports of refined fuel from India are approaching 360,000 barrels per day.

Death Of Over A Thousand Garment Workers In Bangladesh

April 21, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute For Social Research. Educate! Bangladesh, Capitalism, India, Worker Rights and Jobs

On Wednesday 24 April 2013, 3,000 workers entered Rana Plaza, an eight-story building in the Dhaka suburb of Savar in Bangladesh. They produced garments for the transnational commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia, through Bangladesh’s machines and workers, and on to retail houses in the Western world. Garments for famous brands such as Benetton, Bonmarché, Prada, Gucci, Versace, and Zara are stitched here, as are the cheaper clothes that hang on Walmart racks. The previous day, Bangladeshi authorities had asked the owner, Sohel Rana, to evacuate the building due to structural problems.

Monsanto’s Evil Is Not Gone, It’s Just In Disguise

April 18, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Bayer, health, India, Monsanto

Monsanto has been voted the evilest corporation in the world several times over. Yet, we don’t hear anything about them now. What happened? Did they complete the evil? Did they retire after all their evil wrapped up? No, not so much. Monsanto was one of the most hated companies in the Americas. There were protests just a few years ago, attracting hundreds of thousands into the streets – which is not easy to do. The most shocking thing was that at Monsanto’s lowest point, even the mainstream media started revealing the truth. Here’s from Reuters ten years ago: Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds and the resulting crops have damaged public and environmental health and destroyed traditional farming communities all over the world.

Indian Workers And Farmers Unite Against Modi Government

April 18, 2023 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Resist! Farmers, Food and Agriculture, India, Protests, Worker Rights and Jobs

This was one out of the nearly 100,000 voices that rose in the Indian capital of Delhi on April 5 as workers, farmers, and daily wage agricultural workers from across the country came together for the landmark Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally (Workers-Farmers Rally). The demonstration was organized by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU), and the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) in rejection of the neoliberal assault on the lives and livelihoods of the Indian working class, overseen by a ruling party which they accuse of fueling sectarian and caste-based violence, while stamping out all forms of dissent.

US Invites Authoritarian Far-Right Regimes To ‘Summit For Democracy’

April 2, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Educate! Biden administration, India, Israel, Italy, Pakistan, Poland, Right wing politics, Russia, Summit for Democracy, Ukraine, US Imperialism

The US government organized a conference of its allies which it misleadingly called a “Summit for Democracy”, but which actually featured numerous anti-democratic, far-right regimes. The State Department invited 120 global leaders to participate in the summit on March 29 and 30. They did so virtually, via video calls. Several of the heads of state who spoke represent governments that even Western officials, corporate media outlets, and mainstream human rights organizations have admitted are authoritarian, including Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Andrzej Duda of Poland, and Narendra Modi of India.

2022: India’s Workers And Peasants Fight Back – And Fight On

January 3, 2023 Subodh Varma, People's Dispatch. Resist! Class Struggle, Farmers, India, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

In India, the year that has just passed started with hope but ended with anger and discontent. Hope, because it was thought that with the pandemic finally dwindling, the economy would revive and so would jobs and incomes. The mainstream media talked of a V-shaped recovery, the government again started talking of a $5 trillion economy (whatever that means). Although there was no reason to do so, working people, desperate after two years of extreme hardship, hoped against hope. The victory of the farmers’ movement in forcing the government to back down on the three agricultural laws also boosted the morale – perhaps, the government was finally beginning to listen to the people. However, this dream broke down in short order.

The Rise Of India’s Dystopian Surveillance State

October 15, 2022 Aparajita Ghosh, Waging Nonviolence. Educate! Democracy, Facial Recognition, India, Surveillance

A few months after Narendra Modi was re-elected in 2019, India’s Parliament passed a discriminatory bill extending citizenship to refugees from six religious minority communities, except for Muslims from the neighboring countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Following the controversy, a series of protests erupted across the country. The capital city of Delhi witnessed ghastly communal riots, as members of the minority Muslim community were targeted by far-right groups that rallied in support of the bill. To identify the alleged “rabble rousers and miscreants,” including the protesters, law enforcement officials acknowledged using what they called the Automated Facial Recognition System.

Will The Samarkand Spirit Revive The Word ‘Mutual’ In World Affairs?

September 22, 2022 Vijay Prashad, People's Dispatch. Create! China, Global Economy, India, Pakistan, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Uzbekistan

In mid-September 2022, the nine-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for its 22nd Meeting of the Council of Heads of State. Because China, India, and Pakistan are members of the SCO, the organization represents about 40% of the world’s population; with the addition of Russia, the SCO countries make up 60% of the Eurasian territory (the other member states of the organization are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and now Iran). In its Samarkand Declaration, the final declaration of this meeting, the SCO represented itself as a “regional” organization, although the sheer scale of the SCO would allow it to claim to be a global organization with as much legitimacy as the G-7.

Mining Mafias Ruin Livelihoods Of Farmers And Pastorals, Spread Terror

September 17, 2022 Bharat Dogra, Popular Resistance. Educate! Environment, Farmers, India, Mining

In Kolawalpur village of Banda District (state of Uttar Pradesh), many farmers complained bitterly that the miners of river sand had destroyed their farms and standing crops. What is more, threat of floods in the rainy season and the river drying up in the dry season had increased due to the excessive extraction of sand from the river using heavy machines. Workers who were employed in sand mining had not been paid the wages due to them. In Mahawa and Bhirala villages of Sikar district (state of Rajasthan) the farmers and pastorals had been devastated by mining of stone and the use of dynamite for this. Water sources were drying up. Not just workers but even other villagers had fallen prey to stone dust related health problems including silicosis disease. After blasting work, stones were hurled here and there and could hurt anyone.

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