Archive for the ‘economy’ Category

FREE Online Books by Ambedkar

Posted by samathain on April 14, 2009

(Samatha)

This is great news !!! Almost all of ambedkar books have been uploaded online for you to read freely, conveniently. Read below for details. Celebrate Amedkar Jayanthi by spreading this news through email and SMS. For various reasons, it had become difficult to get hold of ambedkar’s books. This is liberating !!!

Dr B R Ambedkar Books
I have uploaded almost all the books of Baba Saheb & other material at this blog, (http://drambedkarbooks.wordpress.com)

http://drambedkarbooks.wordpress.com/dr-b-r-ambedkar-books/

http://drambedkarbooks.wordpress.com/other-important-books/

http://drambedkarbooks.wordpress.com/about/

Posted in Ambedkar, Caste Issues, Dalit Books, Dalit Issues, Dalit Media, Dalit heroes, General, Inspiring Stories, economy | Tagged: Ambedkar, Ambedkar Books, Baba Saheb, Buddhism, Caste, Caste Issues, Constitution, Dalit, Dalit Literature, Democracy, Dlait Books, india | 8 Comments »

Need welfare, not development (of the rich)

Posted by samathain on April 10, 2009

(Samatha)
India is at cross roads. 2009 General elections present the indian voter with historic opportunity
to determine india’s destiny. Indian politicians and the intelligentsia have been carried away by the sudden riches, glitter of new shopping malls, choice of world class cars/consumer durables, roaring real estate etc. In this mad rush to “get rich”, welfare of the majority poor has been forgotten; Fragility of indian society weakened by centuries of discrimination, differences of caste / religion / languages have been ignored; Today, india is facing terrorism threats, moral policing sponsorship by state, raise of taliban like fundamentalists, growing naxalism among tribals, utter hopelessness and suicidal tendencies among the farmers, eviction of urban poor, starvation among poor families due to state’s flawed rationing based on APL/BPL criteria, ugly wealth accumulation because of open siding of state with the rich in the name of development etc.

World wide economic recession has forced people to realize that globalization and neoliberalism has driven the world’s wealth/resources to hands of few, while rendering the majority unemployed or underemployed. Left has done a service to the indian poor by slowing down this march of neoliberalists.

Main points:

Mantra of “development above politics” has blinded the leaders to the growing poverty as they were awed by the high rate of wealth accumulation. It didn’t help that politicians gained a lot of personal wealth in the name of “development” schemes.

Handing over the country’s precious resources like mines, water and land to private capitalists has enabled few to loot the country in the name of privatization. These resources belong to every citizen and hence their benefits should go to them. Instead, mantra of “privatization” has been used to reward few influential families.

Government’s withdrawal from banking institutions in the name of “private banking” has led the farmers to depend on money lenders and private banks. Every farmer suicide is direct result of this destruction of agricultural financing institutions. Waiving farmer loans is not going to help these farmers as these are victims of private banking. It will help only the rich farmers as they are the ones who could take loans from public sector banks.

Scrapping Banking Recruitment Boards, Professional College Entrance Exams etc has prevented the poor and the lower middleclass from taking up better skills and better jobs.

Development stimulus strategies are wasting huge amount of money on private capitalists, who are driven by profits, to improve job creation. Even Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects are getting misused to misallocate funds to private capitalists in the name of infrastructure development.

Urban poor has been evicted from their areas in the name of “encroachment”. It is actually “land grab” attempts to take control of precious urban real estate by vested interests.

Small traders and petty producers have been crushed by global trade, multi nationals, retail chains and raising cost.

There is an impending food shortage due to breakdown of rural agricultural economy. Rural labor is not available. High cost agriculture is not able to support the rural poor, who have been driven to the slums of the cities. This can only worsen law and order situation.

It is high time our politicians start batting for the poor. They are the majority. Misleading TV advertisments/ SMS Campaigns/ Glowering newspaper tributes is not going to fool the suffering, hungry poor. 2009 is “year of aam aadmi”.

Source: Frontline

Author: PRABHAT PATNAIK

Indian Politicians awed by flawed development slogans

Neoliberalism is in retreat and Election 2009 presents an opportunity to bury it and go for an alternative development strategy.

IN THE CENTRAL Hall of Parliament. Notwithstanding all exhortations to “keep development above politics”, a euphemism for getting a consensus around the neoliberal agenda, such a consensus proved elusive.

THE triumph of neoliberalism in India was never complete. The nationalised banks continued to remain state-owned; key public sector companies were not privatised; pension funds were not handed over to speculative finance capital; the currency was not made fully convertible; and the financial sector’s holding of foreign assets, other than the foreign exchange reserves of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), continued to remain minuscule. In short, the two interlinked and mutually reinforcing processes underlying neoliberalism, namely, the dismantling of the public sector and integration with global finance, remained arrested.

This happened not for want of trying by the proponents of neoliberalism. Every means, fair and foul, was adopted, including crash measures, for insurance privatisation for instance, by a government in its last days that had even been reduced to a minority. But they floundered in the face of stiff opposition by the trade unions, especially those in the financial sector, by the political Left, and by the progressive intelligentsia. The glee with which the neoliberal establishment greeted the break between the Left and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the alacrity with which it demanded that the neoliberal agenda should be rushed through after this break only underscore the significance of the Left’s resistance to neoliberalism. But even that resistance was not enough. Even the half-triumph of neoliberalism was enough to widen the hiatus in Indian society and shake modern Indian society to its very foundations.

The formation of a modern Indian nation out of an extraordinarily disparate population riven by millennia of caste, class, gender and other forms of oppression is one of the marvels of our times. It was made possible through the prolonged anti-colonial struggle that was founded upon an implicit “social contract”. This implicit “social contract”, which had been occasionally articulated earlier, notably in the Karachi Congress Resolution of 1931, was sought to be given expression to in the Constitution of the Republic. And central to it were: electoral democracy based on universal adult franchise, secularism, civil liberties, the end of caste and gender oppression, and the building of an egalitarian society. An economic regime that produces some of the world’s top billionaires at one end and thousands of peasant suicides on the other is a violation of that “social contract”; it endangers the foundation of the modern Indian nation. And neoliberalism constituted such a violation, above all by withdrawing state support from peasant and petty production.

Peasant and petty production can survive the onslaught of capitalism only through the active intervention of the state, and such survival must be ensured in a society like ours. The reason is not that the travails of the people in the process of transition from a declining petty production economy to an emerging capitalist one become unbearable when they are “between jobs”, and that the decline therefore needs to be fine-tuned. It does, but that is not the reason. The reason is that in the present conditions such a transition is simply not possible. The capacity of such capitalist development to generate employment is so low that not protecting peasant and petty production against displacement by such capitalist development can only produce a growing army of unemployed and underemployed paupers, that is, absolute immiserisation at one pole together with the growth of wealth at another.

Indeed the higher the rate of growth of the capitalist sector, the greater will be the scale of such absolute immiserisation, insofar as the higher growth impinges even more strongly on the petty production sector. The view that the solution to the persistence and even accentuation of poverty lies in the achievement of even higher rates of economic growth is thus erroneous; the higher growth itself can be, and has been, the cause of the accentuation of poverty.

The amelioration of poverty requires a state that prevents the decimation of petty production by capitalist development, that undertakes significant expenditure to provide welfare benefits to the entire working population and augment the social wage in both capitalist and non-capitalist sectors. The neoliberal state, by its very nature, cannot do this; indeed it does the opposite.

The term “neoliberal state” may cause surprise. After all, Nehruvian dirigisme and neoliberalism are often seen as two alternative possible policy sets that are available to the same state, that is, the same state is seen to be capable of pursuing either the one or the other. But this is a mistake. The transition from one policy to the other entails a change in the class configuration underlying the state, a change in the nature and composition of the dominant classes themselves, and hence also a change in the nature of the state. During the 1930s, for instance, when import-substituting industrialisation was undertaken in Latin America, replacing the earlier export-oriented strategy, this shift was accompanied by major political upheavals. It was not just a switch from one policy to another; this switch was part of a shift from one kind of state to another. The shift from Nehruvian dirigisme to neoliberalism in India was part of a worldwide shift from dirigiste to neoliberal regimes; in the advanced countries this shift was marked by the end of Keynesian demand management. This worldwide shift was the result of a process of “globalisation of finance”

Nation-states pursuing dirigiste policies had to bend to the caprices of international finance capital in order to prevent the flight of finance (unless they showed the political resolve to delink themselves altogether from the realm of globalised finance, which bourgeois states typically did not). Neoliberal policies, of “sound finance” (involving at best a small specified fiscal deficit); of trade and financial liberalisation; of rolling back the state from its interventionist role (except in the interests of finance capital); of privatising public sector units; and such like represented the interests and outlook of international finance capital.

Their pursuit accordingly entailed a shift in the character of the state, from one standing above classes and mediating between them (even while being a bourgeois state) to one that acted predominantly in the interests of the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie that was integrated with international finance capital. Expecting such a state to defend and protect petty production, to undertake welfare expenditure and to raise social wages, that is, to ameliorate poverty, is a chimera.

True, in India the transformation in the nature of the state was never complete. The framework of democracy constrained the march of neoliberalism, since within this framework the neoliberal agenda could never muster sufficient support for its total triumph; and yet this framework itself could not be jettisoned either. Notwithstanding all exhortations to “keep development above politics”, a euphemism for getting a consensus around the neoliberal agenda, such a consensus proved elusive. And yet even this half-triumph of neoliberalism, this semi-transformation of the state, was quite enough to do considerable damage, above all through its withdrawal of support to peasants and petty producers.

The cut in subsidies increased the input costs for the peasantry; the withdrawal from the goal of social banking reduced institutional credit to agriculture, throwing the peasantry back to the mercy of moneylenders for loans at exorbitantly high interest rates; the virtual winding up of extension services increased the peasantry’s direct exposure to, and dependence upon, multinational companies; trade liberalisation made the peasantry vulnerable to the vagaries of world market prices; the progressive dismantling of the domestic procurement mechanism removed even such protection as the growers of crops covered by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) could have got; and above all public expenditure deflation in the countryside reduced rural purchasing power drastically.

The upshot was not just agricultural stagnation and a decline in per capita foodgrain output in the period after the beginning of the 1990s; it was also a decline in per capita foodgrain absorption, which was even steeper than the output decline. The squeeze on purchasing power in rural India was so drastic that notwithstanding the declining per capita output, foodgrain stocks got built up whenever procurement operations were in force. And what was true of the peasants was equally true of other sections of petty producers as well. Squeezed between cheap imports on the one hand and rising input costs on the other, they experienced significant absolute impoverishment, to a point where their return per labour day fell below even the lowest minimum wage.

The tragedy, however, lies in the fact that the very same people who had been immiserised during the boom will get further immiserised during the crisis that is now upon us, the crisis that has been precipitated worldwide by the triumph of neoliberalism itself. The same neoliberal dispensation that had squeezed vast masses of the population during the boom has now precipitated a crisis in the course of which this squeeze will intensify.

But the crisis also spells the end of neoliberalism. It is obvious that the only way out of the global crisis is through fiscal stimuli in the form of increased government expenditures, which, to be effective, have to be coordinated across countries, and which, to be politically acceptable, have to be directed towards the welfare of the people. Such a coordinated stimulus, which would violate the tenets of “sound finance” and re-establish the proactiveness of the state, is obviously anathema for international finance capital and is being resisted by it. This resistance, however, only prolongs the crisis and strengthens the rejection of its ideology, neoliberalism, which is the cause both of the crisis and of its persistence. Neoliberalism clearly has reached the end of its tether.

In India, however, a novel effort is being made to rescue it. The government agrees that a fiscal stimulus has to be provided to get the economy out of the crisis, since all efforts at using monetary policy to revive demand have come a cropper. But in discussing the nature of this fiscal stimulus it emphasises larger “viability gap funding” for public-private-partnership (PPP) projects in the infrastructure sector. Larger government expenditure, in other words, should take the form of handing over larger amounts of funds to private capitalists in the name of developing infrastructure. Since PPP with viability gap funding was very much a part of the neoliberal agenda, this amounts to promoting neoliberalism even while apparently retreating from it, in a Keynesian direction, through having a larger fiscal deficit.

This strategy is not just futile in the present context, when the inducement to invest is so low that even larger government munificence is unlikely to help in inducing larger private investment, but also undemocratic, in a double sense. First, “infrastructure” being a portmanteau concept, promoting “infrastructure” development can mean anything from building a road in a village to building a five-star hotel; typically, the projects that are promoted in the name of “infrastructure” development prioritise the latter rather than the former, thereby ignoring people’s priorities. Secondly, the expenditure of public money is better done directly through a government accountable to the public than through transfers to private capitalists, the need for which is never established and the use of which is never monitored.

An appropriate fiscal stimulus, in the form of larger government expenditure on health, education, sanitation, drinking water, rural infrastructure, agricultural development, food security, and price support for the peasants and petty producers, will necessarily require controls over cross-border financial flows to prevent capital flight. It will also require an appropriate regime of protection which defends peasants and other primary commodity producers against the crash in world prices, which defends petty producers against cheap imports, and in general against the “beggar-my-neighbour” policies of other countries, and which ensures that the “leakages” of the impact of the fiscal stimulus are minimised.

All these entail a retreat from neoliberalism. But this retreat cannot be seen only as a temporary one. Overcoming the crisis has to be linked to an alternative development trajectory, a trajectory of peasant agriculture-led growth, which requires an economic regime altogether different from neoliberalism. The neoliberal regime, in other words, has to be buried for ever, which in turn is possible only if we shake off the hegemony of international finance capital. The struggle against neoliberalism, which had restricted its triumph to only a half-triumph, now needs to get intensified to roll it back altogether.

Posted in Current Affairs, Dalit Issues, General, economy | Tagged: Current Affairs, Dalit, economoy, economy, india, politics, poor | 1 Comment »

Cultural wars by conservatives to cover up economic exploitation

Posted by samathain on February 11, 2009

Samatha : This article discusses how the conservative machinery worked to mislead workers to vote against their own interests in the name of cultural and family values, not recognizing the gradual economic exploitation. Rich became extremely rich and the poor got only poorer. When this situation acquires a critical mass, you will have less people who can afford the goods produced by the very efficient manufacturers. Economy crumbles as it has happened in the last few months all over the world. Theory that everybody is just buyer or seller in terms of market ignores the fact that society is about people earning decent living standards. Even though below article is about conservatism by american republican party, it sheds lots of insight in to what’s happening in India too. Right wing political parties in india have also been using similar strategies. Recommended for everyone interested in dalit welfare, as dalits form a major chunk of the poor.

Also read below article:
Little Modi’s Corporate Safari

Source: Community Knowledge Net

Planning the Counterattack
Against Radical Conservatism
Jerry Kloby
(Institute for Community Studies, Montclair, New Jersey)
The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America, by John Sperling, Suzanne Helburn,
Samuel George, John Morris and Carl Hunt. Sausalito, CA: PoliPointPress,
2004. 296 pp. $19.95 (paper). ISBN: 0–976021–0–0.
What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,
by Thomas Frank. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004. 320
pp. $24.00 (cloth). ISBN: 0–8050–7339–6. $14.00 (paper). ISBN:
0–8050–7774–X.
Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America, by Robert Reich. New
York: Knopf, 2004. 272 pp. $24.00 (cloth). ISBN: 1–4000–4221–6. $14.00
(paper). ISBN: 1–4000–7660–9.

Watching the best sellers list can be an interesting pastime. Over the
past few years the non-fiction category has become a bit like a horse
race. Conservatives have been producing a steady stream of books telling
Americans about the 100 people who are “screwing up” their country
and that we need to “be delivered” from the treasonous evils of liberalism.
Liberals and progressives have landed quite a few counterpunches
against these “lying liars” of the “culture wars.” Some of the leftish books
rise above the fray. They go beyond simply countering the distortions
made by the right wing to offering thought-provoking analysis of the
recent rise of the political right in the United States, and, in some cases,
proposing a strategy for corrective action. This essay examines three such
books, all of which shed some light on why the right has been so successful
and offer some ideas for a strategic counteroffensive.

Easily the most impressive of the three, at least in terms of research
and visual presentation, is The Great Divide authored by John Sperling
et al. Sperling is probably best known as the founder of the University
of Phoenix, which provides college degrees via internet-based courses.
Sperling has his hand in a number of other businesses as well, and was
named one of the top twenty-five entrepreneurs of the past twenty-five
years by Inc. magazine.
Robert Reich’s Reason is a more subdued and readable book that does
not overwhelm the reader. Reich has held numerous positions in the
federal government including secretary of labor under President Clinton.
He has authored ten books including the well-known I’ll Be Short: Essentials
for a Decent Working Society (2002).
Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? is not a businessman
or a former high-ranking government official. He is a journalist,
the founding editor of The Baffler (a magazine of cultural criticism established
in 1988), the author of One Market Under God, a frequent contributor to
The Nation, Harper’s, and Le Monde diplomatique, and a native of Kansas.

The books reflect their author’s biographies. The Great Divide is an oversized,
glossy, well-financed publication, by a team of writers and researchers.
In style and substance it reflects its progressive-minded business roots.
Reich’s book, Reason, is much more modest. It is written in the friendly,
engaging style of an experienced politician who has a knack for making
you feel that he is talking directly to you, not down at you. Frank’s book
makes you appreciate journalists – something that is hard to do these
days. He brings the reader’s attention to Kansas’s progressive roots, while
asking: what happened to Kansas that moved it from those progressive
roots to a place where the majority consistently votes against its class
interests? His analysis is witty, deep, and clearly focused on the class
divisions that exist in the United States, divisions that Sperling et al.,
and Reich, to some extent, gloss over.
The authors all have concerns about the direction that the United
States is headed and, for most of them, those concerns include questions
about the future of the Democratic Party. Not since Nixon’s defeat of
McGovern have the Democrats been forced to reflect so much on who
they are and where they want to go.
The Great Divide argues that American politics can best be analyzed by
seeing the United States as a divided nation. One is traditional, rooted
in the past – Retro. The other is modern and focused on the future –
Metro. Retro America’s chief characteristics include: religiosity, social
conservatism, an economic base of extraction industries, agriculture, nondurable
goods manufacturing, military installations, and a commitment
to the Republican Party. Its 25 states encompass 66 percent of the land
mass and 35 percent of the population.The term is from Ken Cook, director of the Environmental Working Group. See
Egan (2004).
Metro America, on the other hand, is loosely held together by a common
interest in promoting economic modernity and by shared cultural
values marked by religious moderation, vibrant popular cultures, a tolerance
of differences of class, ethnicity, tastes, and sexual orientation,
and a tendency to vote Democratic. Metro America has 34 percent of
the land mass and 65 percent of the population – 70 percent of the
metropolitan population.
Sperling and his colleagues claim that “culture and economics are the
major elements that determine voting behavior and, in turn, shape the
ideology and organization of the Republican and Democratic Parties”
(p. xvii). However, to a large extent they view the geographic distribution
of political power as a determining factor in shaping the electorate and
the two major parties.
Retro America is the America favored by the Republican Party and,
according to Sperling et al., Retro America is on the dole. What the
authors term “retronomics” is supported by two pillars: 1) the extraction
industries (oil, gas, mining and forestry) and agriculture, and 2) national
political power based on the alliance between the Southern, Prairie, and
Rocky Mountain states. The political alliance ensures a flow of subsidies
for the extraction industries and the siting of federal facilities – military
bases, shipyards, atomic energy, and military testing grounds. As a result
of this alliance, Retro America received US$ 800 billion more in federal
payments than it paid in taxes for the years 1991 to 2000. Conversely,
the 23 Metro states paid US$ 1.4 trillion more in taxes than they received
back from the federal government. In other words, Retro America enjoyed
an advantage of US$ 2.2 trillion over Metro America. More to the point,
perhaps, is that the excess in spending compared to tax receipts is not
due to higher federal assistance to the poor (with the exception of New
Mexico), but to the greater subsidies paid to the extraction industries
(oil, mining, lumber) and agriculture.
Many metro states pay much more in federal taxes than they receive
back from the federal government. For example, from 1991 to 2001,
New Jersey paid an excess of US$ 265.4 billion, California paid US$
253.5 billion over what it received in subsidies, Illinois paid US$ 252.7
billion more, and New York paid US$ 242.2 billion. Per family, the
biggest losers are Connecticut (US$ 116,179), New Jersey (US$ 97,559)
and Nevada (US$ 67,125). Ironically, the blue states are subsidizing Retro
America, leading some to refer to the Retro states as the “red ink”
states.
Overall, only 13 percent of those in Congress are minorities, compared to 31 percent
of the population at large.
The Great Divide is a very useful resource for documenting some telling
differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties in terms of
their representativeness. For instance, of the 278 Republicans in the 108th
Congress, 252 were male and just 26 female. In other words, only 9.4
percent of the Republicans in Congress are female, compared to18.4
percent of Democrats. In addition, 98.6 percent of Republicans are white,
compared to 79.1 percent of Democrats.2
Sperling et al., find much of the conservatism of Retro America rooted
in its Christian fundamentalist base – a base that has a significant hold
on the country at large. They cite an ABC News poll that found 60
percent of American adults believe the Bible is literally true, including
its story of the world being created in six days, and a Pew poll finding
that 36 percent believe God gave Israel to the Jews and “the state of
Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming
of Jesus.” The fundamentalists’ faith in their beliefs leads to inflexibility.
In the words of the authors: “. . . there is arrogance and a false sense
of superiority because the Bible tells humans that they are to have dominion
over all the plants and the animals and are empowered to do with
them what they will” (pp. 74–74 [??AU: check page range]).
Reading The Great Divide, one can’t help but wonder why the Democrats
did not take advantage of Bush’s poor performance record in his home
state. For example, Texas has the dirtiest air in the country, it ranks
forty-seventh in water quality, and has the seventh highest rate of release
of toxic industrial byproducts. Texas also has the greatest proportion,
nearly 25 percent, of residents without health insurance coverage (US
Census Bureau 2004:25).
The State’s Republican Party platform itself might have been enough
to deter many voters from pulling the lever for George W. Among the
planks in the state platform are:
• Nullify the separation of Church and State.
• The Census Bureau should only determine [sic] the number of people
in a dwelling.
• Repeal the 16th amendment authorizing the income tax.
• Oppose the theory of global warming.
• Oppose the Endangered Species Act.
• Repeal the minimum-wage law.
• Replace Social Security with a system of private pensions.
• Oppose women’s right to abortion.
• Abolish the US Department of Education.
• Teachers should be encouraged to teach Creationism, not Darwinian
evolutionary theory or a scientific world view (p. 69).
In terms of political strategy, The Great Divide calls for the Democrats to
present a clear identity. The authors claim that the Republicans have
established themselves as the party of Retro America and the Democrats
must respond by becoming the party of Metro America. In contrast to
the Republican values often expressed as “God, Family, and Flag,” the
Great Divide suggests the Democratic “brand” express the values of
“Inclusion, Science, and Security.” The identity can be promoted by
adopting a strategy that is “future-oriented, fair, and revives our belief
in government as the upholder of the public interests” (p. 236). Such a
strategy, they claim, will solidify the base of the party – union families,
people of color, women, and people of all ethnicities who live in cosmopolitan
areas.
How does one begin the process of establishing national policies based
on the values of Metro America? In answering this The Great Divide is
like one of those instruction manuals that leaves you scratching your
head wondering if you’re missing a few pages. Step one is to elect a
Democrat Congress and step two is to elect a Democratic President.
“Once in control of the House of Representatives, the Presidency, and
we hope, the Senate . . .”
• We must appoint judges who will respect the separation of church
and state and the right of women’s choice.
• Create a fair tax system.
• End corporate welfare, especially in agriculture.
• Preserve and improve Social Security.
• Create a system of universal health care.
• Adopt trade policies that benefit US families and workers worldwide.
• Rationalize defense spending.
• Invest in a sustainable energy future.
• Invest in the future through education and research and development
(pp. 238–242).
And so on. The Great Divide is strong in documenting a major division
in American society on cultural and economic issues and in arguing that
there is a strong geographic connection. However, the authors fail to
provide a clear and detailed strategy for electing progressive Democrats
to Congress and to the presidency. The book needs a discussion of who
will exert the necessary pressure on the Democratic Party to ensure that
it moves in a positive direction rather than continue its endless chase to
an imagined middle ground. The Great Divide does not raise the question
of how such pressure could be generated.
Thomas Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? lacks the color
and glitz of The Great Divide but it covers much of the same territory.
Frank focuses on his home state of Kansas in order to explore one of
the central questions of American politics: How do so many people keep
getting their fundamental interests wrong? They keep voting for politicians
who are dismantling the welfare state, cutting taxes on corporations
and the wealthy, eliminating regulations that hold corporations
accountable to the public interest, and accelerating the pace of deindustrialization
and capital flight. Meanwhile, conservatives never deliver
on the issues that won the support of these middle-American voters.
“Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture
industry never cleans up its act” (p. 6).
Frank argues that since the “protests and partying” of the 1960s, conservatives
have been whipping up a backlash that mobilizes voters by
exploiting explosive social issues. The cultural anger is then wedded to
pro-business economic policies. And it is the economic achievements that
are the conservative movement’s “greatest monuments.”
Kansas, like the rest of the Great Plains, has a progressive past. It
gave the country Eugene Debs and Walter Reuther, and helped spawn
the IWW, the UAW, and the Farmer-Labor Party. Social Security,
according to Frank, was “largely a product of the Midwestern mind”
(p. 15). And Kansas was strongly abolitionist in the time leading up to
the Civil War.
The “Great Backlash,” however, took hold in Kansas by the 1990s.
Frank says the push that started Kansas “hurtling down the crevasse of
reaction was provided by Operation Rescue . . .” (p. 91). During the
“Summer of Mercy” in July, 1991, Operation Rescue (a national antiabortion
organization founded in 1986 by Randall Terry) planned civil
disobedience all across Wichita. The city’s abortion clinics reacted to
these plans by closing down for a week when the protests began. In
response, Operation Rescue claimed to have stopped the abortion “industry”
in its tracks. Thousands of anti-abortion activists descended on
Wichita participating in various acts of civil disobedience and a massive
rally in the football stadium at Wichita State University.
The anti-choice activity distracted attention from the nefarious forces
undermining working families and small farmers in Kansas and elsewhere.
In 1996, the misleadingly titled “Freedom to Farm Act” was
adopted. The act effectively terminated certain price supports, opened
all acreage to cultivation, and generally brought a close to the New Deal
system of agriculture regulation (non-recourse loans were ended with
major ramifications for the food industry and the waistlines of Americans)
(Pollin 2003). It also pushed the nation’s remaining farmers into an overproduction
spiral causing prices for corn, wheat, and other crops to fall.
The principal author of the bill was Kansas Senator Pat Roberts.
The drop in prices led to federal government subsidies based on production,
which, in turn, resulted in large farms receiving the biggest
handouts. “In Kansas in 2000 and 2001, such federal handouts were
actually greater than what farmers earned from farming itself ” (p. 65).
The Freedom to Farm Act and lower crop prices were a boon for big
food processing companies such as Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra,
and Cargill.
Convincing people that it is in their interest to support politicians who
promote economic insecurity for American workers is no easy task. This
difficult undertaking can only be accomplished by a powerful media
apparatus. One of the strong points of What’s the Matter with Kansas? is
Franks’ discussion of the right’s ideological infrastructure.
The conservative propaganda mills (a.k.a. think tanks) are intricately
tied to big business, including some of Kansas’s home-grown corporate
giants. Koch industries, for example, is based in Wichita. It was founded
by Fred Koch, a charter member of the John Birch Society. His billionaire
son Charles founded the Cato Institute in 1977. Another son,
David, ran for vice president as a Libertarian. Koch money props up
the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, and Citizens for a Sound
Economy. Koch money also supported George W. Bush’s campaigns, as
well as those of conservative Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. In addition,
Koch gives money to the Democratic Leadership council.
Conservatives pretend to be working class, or part of “middle America,”
but they consistently put forth economic policies that erode the wellbeing
of workers. They want Americans to believe that liberalism is all
powerful because it gets conservative lawmakers off the hook. (At the
time of this writing, the approval rating of a very conservative Congress
is an abysmal 33 percent.) (Real Clear Politics 2005). According to Frank,
the Great Backlash is a combination of traditional Republican politicians
and working class Janes and Joes, who signed on to preserve family values.
Although the cultural backlash has been building since the 1960s,
Frank says it has “pretty much been a complete bust . . . traditional gender
roles continue to crumble. Homosexuality is more visible and more
accepted than ever” (p. 121). The conservatives harp on cultural issues
but almost never achieve results on these issues. What they are really after
is cultural turmoil. It helps solidify their base by creating an enemy that
can be targeted – the latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, liberal elite – and
takes attention away from the right’s economic initiatives, which are
undermining working families. The conservatives deny the economic basis
of social class while nurturing a cultural class war. The culture war
generates a fog that disguises the class-based nature of conservative policy
making.
Frank doesn’t seem to have much hope for the Democratic Party. He
is well aware of their corporate ties, and he notes that the Democratic
Leadership Council has been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters.
They are more interested in courting corporate interests that can
contribute significantly more cash than unions. As mentioned, even the
right-wing Koch Industries give to the DLC.
Frank puts more effort at getting class into the center of the debate,
and he is quite critical of the approach offered by The Great Divide. In
his New York Times review, Frank argues that The Great Divide substitutes
region for class and in doing so the authors neglect the important question
of why low-wage workers in “Retroland” would vote for a system
that only benefits their masters (Frank 2004). Most disheartening, according
to Frank, is Sperling’s recommendation to the Democratic Party that
it present itself as the true party of business and to denounce conservatism
as a superstition that undermines our international competitiveness.
And what does a progressive Democratic Party insider think of all
this? Robert Reich tells us in a friendly, lucid style that has made him
a widely-read author and a popular voice among those hoping to influence
Democratic strategy making. Reich’s ties to the party and to the political
establishment are deep. He served as secretary of labor under President
Clinton and he worked for the Federal Trade Commission under President
Carter. He also worked for Robert Bork in the Justice Department when
Gerald Ford was president.
Reason is a defense of the liberal political philosophy and it serves the
important function of reminding readers of the goals of liberalism and
its claimed accomplishments. The classical liberal ideas that emerged in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were to improve the well-being
of all people, not just the rich and the privileged. And Reich is a good
spokesperson for these ideals.
Reich is well aware of problems with the economic and political systems
and he takes a number of progressive positions. He points out that
the United States is the only advanced nation that doesn’t have paid
family leave and that more than a third of working parents don’t even
get holidays or sick leave from their employers. He notes that almost
every major bank in New York helped Enron commit fraud and that
corporate malfeasance is harmful to small businesses and investors. He
denounces runaway executive pay as a real scandal. Reich chides the
“Radcons” for concerning themselves with private morality but not the
public morality that leads to corporate wrongdoing or the corrosive
influence of money in politics. Reich says most campaign contributions
amount to legalized bribery and he favors a blind trust system that would
bar candidates from discovering who contributed what.
For Reich, society’s progress has come as a result of the ideas developed
by liberal intellectuals, and not from the labor movement or class
struggle. According to Reich, liberalism “led New Dealers to regulate
banking and clean up Wall Street [and] prompted them to create Social
Security, unemployment insurance and a minimum wage, rather than
resort to European-style socialism” (p. 6). Twice over the last century,
Reich claims, liberals have saved capitalism from its own excesses.
There is much that is appealing in Reich’s book but Reason is clearly
anti-socialist, it makes the labor movement historically invisible, and it
is unequivocally pro-globalization.
Reason is best when it attacks its chief target, radical conservatism.
Reich believes that Radcons hold their beliefs sincerely. They define the
world in terms of good and evil, and there is no compromising with
evil, no negotiating. It must be destroyed. Regardless of whether Radcons
are cynical or sincere, Reich does a good job of poking holes in their
arguments and bringing attention to the right’s ideological infrastructure.
He states: “Radcons have risen by means of a highly efficient, selfreinforcing
system designed to shape public opinion and politics. The
system consists of a steady stream of money from corporate executives,
wealthy ideologues, conservative family foundations, and Radcon media
tycoons . . .” (p. 9). On the other hand, “there are almost no liberal radio
or television personalities . . .” (p. 9).
Indeed, it is the right’s sustained efforts at building ideological propaganda
mills and developing their capacity to influence the established
media and lawmakers that provides one of the most direct answers to
Thomas Frank’s question of why so many people vote against their basic
interests.
Understanding the influence of the right in the mainstream media, as
well as their capacity to develop their own media outlets, is crucial to
understanding the broader ideological questions. Conservatives have built
counter-institutions and alternative professional associations. They have
set up propaganda mills that cultivate and support conservative writers,
that do pseudoscientific research and send out executive summaries, press
releases, and talking points to government officials, conservative talk show
hosts, the media, educational institutions, and on and on. They set up
pseudo-scholarly magazines. They buy radio stations. They get their distorted
word out. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
reported in 1997 that twelve conservative foundations gave US$ 120 million
to organizations promoting right-wing causes. The comparable figure
for liberal groups was significantly less at just US$ 18.6 million.
Another element of the right’s upsurge is the growth of pundits and
talk-show hosts who promote the Radcon agenda. Rush Limbaugh’s radio
show went national in 1988. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News, a national
cable TV station commanded by Republican political strategist Roger
Ailes. There is little on the left that is comparable.
Of the nationally syndicated talk shows on 691 stations in the top 120
markets, 86 percent are conservative. The top five radio station owners
broadcast 310 hours of nationally syndicated right-wing talk each week
and just 5 hours of non-conservative talk. The major right-wing propaganda
mills and Republican political committees send their talking points
by e-mail or fax to about 400 right-wing radio hosts. All of the books
reviewed here make note of the forceful presence of right-wing ideological
institutions, but unfortunately none of them offer clear ideas about
how to counter it.
Reich points out that Radcons have been remarkably effective at scapegoating
and their media infrastructure facilitates this finger pointing. But
where Reason is most problematic is when Reich perfunctorily, and without
equivocation, defends globalization in its current corporate-led form.
In fact, Reich suggests that labor’s critique of free trade is another form
of scapegoating (“meanwhile,” Reich says, “some on the left, including
organized labor, want to blame free trade”) (p. 123). He claims that
manufacturing jobs have decreased not just in the USA but in Brazil,
Japan, and China, as though the shift away from manufacturing is the
totality of the problem. And he argues against promoting international
labor and environmental standards because “it makes no sense for the
left to demand that our trade treaties with poor nations include “labor
and environmental standards,” unless such standards are pegged to what
poorer nations can afford. As poorer nations become wealthier, their
workers’ wages and their environmental standards should be expected to
improve” (p. 125).
Reich says if we want to blame anything for the loss of manufacturing
jobs then blame knowledge (talk about shifting attention away from
class!). “Everything is coming from everywhere. And any job that’s even
slightly routine is disappearing from America” (p. 126). Tell that to all
the American workers serving coffee, mopping floors, and taking care of
the elderly. The hypermobility of finance capital is not a problem, from
Reich’s point of view, “it makes perfect economic sense for Americans
to invest all over the world” (p. 138).

Anti-globalists be warned, Reich cries, “you’re on the wrong side of
history . . .you’re not seeing all the new jobs” (p. 128). If this is what
progressive Democrats have to offer, why would the working class throw
its support behind the Democratic Party?
And, although Reich believes the Democrats are too dependent on
corporate contributions and that such contributions amount to legal form
of bribery, he does not hesitate to declare “I always believed it possible
to reform the nation by working within the political system – and still
do” (p. 12). As long at that system doesn’t restrict capital mobility or
redistribute the wealth, “we can’t bridge the widening gap just by transferring
wealth from the have-mores to the have-lesses. Direct redistributions
are politically treacherous” (p. 132). On the other hand, Reich
goes on to talk about how unfair the recent tax cuts are.
Reason has much in common with The Great Divide. They both offer a
liberal perspective that presents liberalism as a forward-looking set of
ideas that are detached from social class. What Reich and Sperling et
al., offer is an enlightened corporate viewpoint that recognizes that lowering
the cost of labor to third-world levels is not the only way to attract
investment and revive economically vulnerable regions of the United
States. The authors recognize the economic and social importance of an
educated public and an efficient infrastructure. And they recognize that
government has the capacity to play a constructive role in developing
both the social and the physical infrastructure. The authors are also
aware that high levels of inequality represent a threat to democracy.
They believe in democracy and they understand the threat that the
extremes of capitalism can present. “A society is different from an economy,”
Reich says, “people aren’t just buyers and sellers in a market.
They’re also citizens engaged in a joint project of improving the wellbeing
of current and future generations” (p. 144).
But Reich and Sperling et al., downplay the power of the corporate
class. They do not call for strong democratic control of the nation’s productive
resources, only improved corporate accountability to stockholders.
They marginalize the role of labor and, although they point out the
strength of the right wing’s ideological infrastructure, they do not offer
a prescription for developing a competing one. Frank’s book suffers some
of the same shortcomings but he, at least, is injecting class much more
forcefully into the discussion.
The arguments presented in all three books are best understood in
the context of two myths that present substantial stumbling blocks to the
development of a broad-based progressive movement. One is the myth
that the conflict of haves and have-nots has been supplanted by a new
cultural divide. This is a myth propagated by right-wing pundits who
rant about America’s culture wars and it is perpetuated by pollsters who
found that most voters in November 2004 were motivated by moral values.
But the term “values” is a very nebulous and subjective term. These
poll results were often interpreted as meaning that voters were motivated
by “family values” (i.e., the kind expressed by conservative Republicans),
but many people value social justice, world peace, corporate responsibility,
and honesty in government. Commentators could just as well say
that these people are also motivated by moral values. When analysis does
not look deeply at the real issues underlying general notions of a new
social divide then it does do more to obscure than to clarify.
The second myth is the need for austerity. It is the belief that the
United States can no longer afford to provide substantial benefits to its
working people. The need for austerity is usually justified by references
to the competitive nature of the global economy.
Neither of these beliefs hold true. For decades worker pay in the
United States has been increasing much more slowly than productivity.
The benefits of this productivity are conveyed upward to the investor
class. Consider the fact that the mean net worth of the richest 1 percent
of Americans grew by nearly US$ 5 million over the past two decades –
from US$ 7.8 million in 1983 to US$ 12.7 million in 2001 (in 2001 dollars).
By contrast, the mean net worth of middle class Americans increased
by less than US$ 15,000, and the net worth of the lowest 40 percent of
Americans decreased by more than US$ 2,000 (Wolff 2004). Consider also,
that in 1989 the richest 1 percent of Americans owned financial assets
(i.e., investment capital) that totaled US$ 2.4 trillion. By 2001 their
financial assets had grown to US$ 6.4 trillion (Kennickell 2003).
Globally, it’s the same story. The richest one percent own more assets
than the lowest 90 percent combined. The 1990s, in spite of economic
growth that added approximately US$ 10 trillion per year to the global
economy, left the number of people living in dire poverty basically
unchanged at more than one billion (Flavin 2002).
Any existing austerity is a surplus austerity. That is to say, it is a product
of social domination not economic underproduction. The policies of
the both the Bush Administration and Congress are clearly promoting
class interests. Federal tax “reforms” enacted since 2001 have resulted
in an average tax cut of US$ 123,592 for the nation’s seven-figure income
earners. There are approximately 250,000 households in the USA with
incomes of over a million dollars, their tax cuts cost the rest of the country
more than US$ 30 billion in 2005 alone. Middle-income households,
on the other hand, received an average tax cut of just US$ 647 (Shapiro
and Friedman 2004).

Likewise, six million workers lost eligibility for overtime pay thanks to
the Bush Administration. New rules regarding overtime pay went into
effect on August 23, 2004. These rules reclassified certain administrative
workers, learned professionals, financial service workers, and even cooks
so that they will no longer be eligible for overtime pay. The reclassification
affects workers who make as little as US$ 24,000 a year (Eisenbrey 2004).
The right wing’s ideological machinery has propagated the belief that
liberalism undermines America’s values. But both conservatives and many
liberal thinkers propagate the myth of austerity. Conservatives have gained
the upper hand by building an extensive ideological infrastructure.
Conservative media outlets blame liberals for a wide variety of social ills
and they have sufficiently confused enough voters to get a critical mass
of them believing that the policies of George W. Bush and his radical
Republican supporters are not made in the interests of a privileged capitalist
class but are made to counter the corrosive effect of liberal dominance
and to restore the collective strength of the US economy in the
context of the new global economy.
Polling data gives us an inkling to how confused many voters are.
During the 2004 election, pollsters found that a majority of the people
who voted for George W. Bush thought he favored the inclusion of labor
and environmental standards in trade agreements, that he was for US
participation in a treaty to ban land mines, that he favored US participation
in a treaty that bans the testing of nuclear weapons, that he was
for US participation in the International Criminal Court, and that he
was for US participation in the Kyoto accords on reducing global warming.
Of course, the president was (when all the qualifiers and exceptions
for the United States are considered) opposed to all of these international
efforts (Program on International Policy Attitudes 2004).
Did the Democrats differ on these issues? Yes, they did. Did they
make it clear? Well apparently they did to their supporters. Kerry voters
were much more likely to have an accurate assessment of his position.
But why were Bush supporters so wrong about their candidate?
Here we once again must return to the failure of the Democrats to wage
ideological warfare. Would it have been so hard to make people aware
of the Texas Republican Party platform described earlier in this essay?
Or to expose the deceptions practiced by the Republican right? The
problem is only partially that the Democrats don’t have the ideological
machinery. The bigger problem may be that they are too similar to the
Republicans when it comes to some core beliefs, especially their deference
to the rule of capital.
This also explains why the Reich and Sperling books almost totally
neglect labor as a force for progressive change. While leftists often harshly
3 See Critical Sociology, vol. 31 no. 3, 2005, for a further discussion of Clawson’s work.
criticize the part played by organized labor in shoring up the power of
capitalism in the United States, they usually hold out some hope that labor
can be a progressive force, as it was in the past. Gapasin and Yates
(2005), in their recent discussion of the state of labor, say unequivocally
that “governments and global lending agencies such as the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund” implemented “policies that made
workers increasingly insecure,” but they see numerous signs that sectors
of organized labor are making common cause with the antiglobalization
movement and that there are some trends toward “social justice unionism”
(Gaspin and Yates 2005:3). Likewise, Dan Clawson’s The Next Upsurge
provides evidence that the labor movement may be on the verge of a
major upsurge.3
Yes, Democrats can do a better job of framing the issues (Lakoff 2004)
and, more generally, progressives are hindered by the lack of an ideological
infrastructure (a point made well by Robert Parry in a June, 2005,
article titled “The Left’s Media Miscalculation”). But perhaps the biggest
obstacle to a truly progressive response to the surging strength of radical
conservatism is the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to take the lead
on class issues. To even expect them to do so without pressure from
progressive forces is naive. The Democratic Party will only attempt to
lead the counteroffensive if it is forced, as has been the case in the past.
The impetus for such a movement may include progressive elements of
the Democratic Party but it is more likely to come from labor, progressive
think tanks, and grassroots social-justice organizations. The development
of such a progressive counterattack will involve building multiple
counter-hegemonic frameworks, including a new ideological infrastructure
and a progressive labor movement that connects to other movements
for equity and social justice.

References

Clawson, Dan
2003 The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Egan, Timothy
2004 “Big Farms Reap 2 Harvests with Aid as Bumper Crop.” New York
Times, December 26.
Eisenbrey, Ross
2004 Longer Hours, Less Pay. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, July.
Flavin, Christopher
2002 State of The World, 2002. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Frank, Thomas
2004 “American Psyche.” New York Times, November 28.
Gapasin, Fernando E. and Michael D. Yates
2005 “Labor Movements: Is There Hope?” Monthly Review, June.
Kennickell, Arthur B.
2003 A Rolling Tide: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth in the United States,
1989–2001. The Levy Economics Institute, Working Paper No. 393.
Lakoff, George
2004 Don’t Think of an Elephant! White Rive Junction, VT: Chelsea Green
Publishing.
Parry, Robert
2005 “The Left’s Media Miscalculation.” Consortiumnews.com http://www.consortiumnews.
com/2005/042805.html, accessed April 29.
Pollin, Michael
2003 “The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity.” New York Times, October
12.
Program on International Policy Attitudes
2004 The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters. University of Maryland:
Center on International and Security Studies, October 21.
Real Clear Politics
2005 http://realclearpolitics.com/polls.html.
Reich, Robert
2003 I’ll Be Short. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Shapiro, Isaac and Joel Friedman
2004 “A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration’s Record
on Cutting Taxes.” Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, http://www.
cbpp.org/4–14–04tax-sum.htm#Distribution.
US Census Bureau
2004 Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2003.
Current Population Reports, 60–226.
Wolff, Edward N.
2004 Changes in Household Wealth in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. The
Levy Economics Institute, Working Paper No. 407.

Posted in Adivasi Issues, Caste Issues, Current Affairs, Dalit Issues, Dalit Media, General, economy | Tagged: cultural issues, Dalit, Dalit Issues, Dalit Media, economy, india, indian economy, indian media, politics | Leave a Comment »

Caste discrimination and the private sector

Posted by samathain on January 7, 2009

Source: Dalit Solidarity Network

CASTE DISCRIMINATION AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR

Employment Principles for Foreign Investors in South Asia
Dalit Solidarity Network UK Report 2005

CONTENTS:Title/Authors Page
1 Introduction David Haslam and Rodney Bickerstaffe
2 Affirmative action in the private sector: why and how?
Professor Sukhadeo Thorat
3 Reservation policy in the public and private sectors
Savio Lourdu
4 Corporate Responsibility and Dalits: a campaigning perspective
Gerard Oonk
5 The Ambedkar Principles: Employment principles to assist foreign investors
to address caste discrimination in South Asia.
6 Union Action in Denmark
Nicolas Fischer
7 Global Compact
United Nations
8 Seminar Discussion: Summary of key Points
Gina Borbas
9 Next Steps
David Haslam

1. INTRODUCTION

David Haslam (DSN Chair) and Rodney Bickerstaffe (DSN Trustee & former UNISON General Secretary)

1.1. This report outlines the main arguments and issues raised in the seminar entitled ‘Employment Principles for
Foreign Investors in South Asia’ held on September 22nd 2004 in St Ethelburga’s centre, London.The seminar
raised a number of important issues in relation to caste discrimination and foreign investment in South Asia.
Dispelling the view that the caste system is nonexistent today, the seminar and this report call for greater
attention to what is still a very live issue. Caste discrimination continues in employment, education, healthcare,
housing, land rights and the criminal justice system. In India, it affects over 260 million people, including the
tribal peoples and the ‘Scheduled Castes’, formerly referred to as ‘untouchables’, but who have now adopted a
name of their choice – ‘Dalits’1 . At least 50 million others are affected in other countries of South Asia,
Japan and several African countries. Resistance to discrimination on the basis of caste is growing2, although,
Dalits are threatened, beaten or even murdered as they defy the dominant caste structures.

1.2. Soon after the seminar, an International Consultation on caste discrimination took place in Kathmandu, Nepal,
at the end of November 20043. Whilst discussing discriminatory practices perpetrated by employers, a report
presented by Save the Children (US) showed that most international NGOs and UN-related agencies in Nepal
employ few Dalits4; and in those who do Dalits are employed at the lowest levels. The report highlighted the
obvious lack of awareness of caste discrimination, and policies to counter it, even within not-for-profit
organisations such as INGOs.

1.3. It is not surprising then that few companies, especially those moving to South Asia for the first time are aware
of caste discrimination. They are certainly not aware of the degree to which it pervades Indian society, and the
harshness with which it is practiced, especially in rural areas. Companies who do have some experience in India
claim that they are aware of caste. They state – as do employers all over the world – they do not discriminate,
but often seem unwilling to say what they do to overcome the discriminatory system in which they operate.

1.4. Moreover, few international companies in the region employ Dalits. Apart from human rights arguments,
organisations may be missing out on real ability. A US journalist recently described going to a Dalit
community, getting into a typing competition with an eight year-old Dalit girl, and being left defeated, much to
the delight of her classmates. However, despite such potential, an article in the ‘Observer’ in late 2004
mentioned that although the Dalits interviewed for the article had degrees in economics and commerce, they
were forced to take up their caste jobs as road sweepers.

1.5. To advance the interests of Dalits, especially in their access to employment, the Consultation put forward a set
of Employment Principles, and agreed to entitle them the ‘Ambedkar Principles’, named after the most wellknown
and prestigious Dalit leader, Dr B.R. Ambedkar.

1.6. Dr. Ambedkar rose from being the son of a railway worker, but supported by a wealthy patron, he obtained
doctorates in London and New York, and became a key participant at the London ‘Round Table’, which decided
the future of India. He drafted the country’s Independence Constitution.

1.7. The Ambedkar Principles included in this report list employment principles which aim to assist foreign investors
to address caste discrimination in South Asia. The Principles are open to discussion and amendment. It is hoped
a final version will emerge during 2005 and that employers, including international agencies, foreign companies
and even Indian-based national and international companies will be courageous enough to sign them.

A monitoring system is built into the Principles7, to monitor their impact and support their wider adoption.
1 The word ‘Dalit’ comes from Sanskrit – meaning crushed and downtrodden.
2 In April 2005 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights passed an historic resolution appointing two ‘special rapporteurs’ to
investigate discrimination on the basis of work and descent internationally.
3 See the IDSN website to download the report – www.idsn.org
4 Save the Children US and INSEC Nepal (2004) Is there room enough? Dalit recruitment Policies and Practices in selected I/NGOs and
Bi/Multilateral Organizations of Nepal.
5 See appendices. Untouchables in new battle for jobs Observer (03.10.2004)
6 The Principles are currently open for consultation and comment. Please refer to www.idsn.org for further information.
7 See Ambedkar Principle no. 8 – Develop effective monitoring and verification mechanisms of progress with effect to the above at the level of
the individual company, and also co-operate in monitoring at the levels of sector and the state, involving Dalit representatives, including
women, in these mechanisms.

1.8. What became very clear in South Africa under apartheid, and in the racially discriminatory climate of Europe and
the United States, is that unless there is intervention, nothing changes. It is wholly insufficient for actors in these
contexts to say ‘we do not discriminate’, because if they are involved in a discriminatory system they can only
not discriminate by challenging the prevailing culture. The Dalit Solidarity Network (DSN-UK), along with the
International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), stands ready to work with all those involved in employment in
the countries of South Asia to address the shameful system of caste discrimination, which suppresses so much
of the region’s human potential.

1.9. A comment from Bernadette Fisher, UNIFI National Officer – The Dalit Solidarity Network would like to
gratefully acknowledge UNIFI (now merged with AMICUS) for sponsoring the employment principles
seminar.

1.9.1 Between 2003 and 2004, UNIFI has not only been securing agreements with our major employers –
Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds TSB (RBS Natwest is not off-shoring work) – to ensure alternative jobs are
found for those displaced by the transfer of work (mainly to India,) but as part of these agreements, we
have negotiated a range of commitments by the banks to adhere to international labour standards in
their off-shored enterprises, be they direct or third party. The DSN Employment Principles are a welcome
next step in developing a more just and sustainable employment relationship in off-shored enterprises.

1.9.2 Apart from seeking agreement to these principles by the major finance sector employers, UNIFI is
committed to seeking support from other unions and confederations of unions, such as UNI, to raise the
profile of Dalit solidarity.We recognise that there is a lot to do, to give Dalit Rights the profile it deserves.
With UNIFI’s merger with Amicus, we will seek to ensure that the concern for caste discrimination is
carried forward into the new organization.

2.Affirmative action in the private sector: why and how?

Professor Sukhadeo Thorat, Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi & international Institute of Dalit Studies.
Summarised by Nidhi S Sabharwal.

2.1. Faced with the intense discrimination and inequalities associated with the caste system and untouchability, the
Indian state has made explicit use of affirmative and positive action (or what is called ‘Reservation policy’) in
employment, education and other spheres with respect to discriminated groups such as Scheduled Castes (SC),
Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Castes (OBC).

2.2. Unlike in some other countries however, this policy is confined to the government sector in India; the vast
private sector that includes agriculture, private industry and tertiary activities has remained outside its scope.
Consequently over 90% of the SC/ST population which is engaged in the private sector, has remained without
protection against discrimination. In several other countries, including the US, the UK and South Africa, various
types of affirmative action policies have been used in both the private and public sectors.

2.3. There are traditionally three unique features of the caste system in India: (a) fixed occupation (property rights)
for each member of caste by birth, and its hereditary continuation, (b) unequal distribution of economic and
social rights related to occupation, property, employment, wages and education among different caste groups,
and (c) the provision of a strong system of penalties for enforcement of the system. Exclusion and
discrimination in occupation and labour employment is therefore an inevitable outcome of the caste system.

2.4. By putting restrictions on mobility of labour across caste occupation and thereby not permitting re-adjustment
of employment opportunities, caste becomes a direct cause of much “voluntary unemployment” among high
castes and ‘involuntary unemployment” among the low castes.

2.5. Is discrimination only an equity issue, or does it also involve economic costs to society?
Mainstream theories suggest that market discrimination slows economic growth due to less than optimal
allocation of labour among firms in the economy. Discrimination, particularly in the labour market, brings
income losses to discriminated groups due to wages/salaries lower than their productivity. Pre-market
discrimination in access to education and skill development also keeps the discriminated group at a lower level
of development and reduces opportunities for employment.

2.6. Evidence of economic discrimination and deprivation: wage labour as a traditional occupation continues to
constitute the main occupation of SC population in India. SC workers suffer from a higher incidence of
unemployment and under-employment, and a higher incidence of poverty, malnutrition, under-nutrition and
higher mortality.

2.7. Remedies against discrimination: The theoretical perspective sees the erosion of profit following sub-optimal
allocation of labour due to discrimination as a self-correcting dimension of discrimination. However, this
approach has serious limitations. The adoption of various types of affirmative and positive action policies is
necessary to overcome these limitations.

2.8. Methods and procedures used to implement the policy of anti-discrimination and affirmative action:
1) Equal Employment Opportunity Legislation (EEOL), which provides legal safeguards against discrimination;
2) Just participation, which is viewed in term of fixed quotas (similar to India), while elsewhere it is expressed in
terms of racial/religious minority balance, and/or ‘appropriate candidate pools’, with numerical goals and
timetables without quotas;
3) ‘Reparation or compensation’, which emerges as payment for the denial of property rights and other rights in
the past, having caused an intense deprivation to a particular group.
All the three measures are essential for resolving market and non-market discrimination in the Indian context.

2.9. At present the Indian government has used special measures, of which some are in the nature of positive actions
and others of a compensatory nature. The measures of compensatory nature include setting up of special
financial institutions like SC/ST Finance Corporations to support minority businesses.

2.10. For the private sector, in the private capital market it is necessary to develop affirmative action policy to improve
the access of marginalized groups to private capital as well as to employment opportunities. This can be
achieved by ensuring a specific and well-defined affirmative action policy in the private financial institutions to
improve the access of minority social groups to regular financial capital. Likewise, to develop a compensatory
policy which would increase the access of the SCs to capital markets; this in turn will lead to an increase in their
share in business and in corporate capital.

2.11. In the industrial and service sectors there is a need to use both the strategies of legal safeguards in terms of
equal employment opportunity legislation and of affirmative action very similar to the present Reservation
policy in public sector employment.

2.12. The United Nations has also laid down certain guidelines and ‘Business Norms’ for transnational companies,
particularly in employment, in the countries of their location. The Global Compact is a voluntary corporate
citizenship initiative, which aims to strive towards a more sustainable and inclusive global economy.

2.13. At the core of the Global Compact are ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour and the environment.
Principle 6 of the Global Compact is especially relevant in the context of caste system. This requires the supporting
companies to make an effort for ‘the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation’.

2.14. The Global Compact and its principles have been supported by as many as 1,775 companies. Participating
companies have set in motion changes in their business operations so that these principles become a part of
strategy, culture and day-to-day operations.

2.15. A few of the companies that have participated in the Global Compact are Cadbury Schweppes, Chrysler, H&M,
Gap, HSBC and L’OREAL. In India, companies engaged in providing IT services in consulting, chemicals and in
textiles have committed themselves to supporting the Global Compact and its principles.

2.16. The Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development has also offered guidelines in the area of
corporate responsibility and some companies have signed up to the Global Sullivan Principles which emphasize
the importance of human rights and equality of opportunity.

2.17. In conclusion, it has to be recognised that low-caste ‘untouchables’ suffer from societal discrimination in
multiple economic and social spheres. Therefore, the legal safeguards and affirmative action policies for the
private sector should cover not only the employment market but also the capital market.The Indian government
could develop an understanding with transnational companies to follow positive policies initially on a voluntary
basis in their employment and capital lending policies.Transnational companies themselves might adopt certain
employment principles which if operated jointly might send a helpful signal to the authorities in all countries
where caste discrimination exists.

2.18. Note: The former ‘untouchables’ are referred to by the Indian Government and other authorities as ‘Scheduled
Castes (SCs), as the groups concerned were cited in certain Schedules attached to the Indian Constitution.These
groups increasingly refer to themselves as ‘Dalits’, a word meaning broken, crushed, oppressed, but which they
are now imbuing with a new meaning of resistance to a system which places them at the very bottom of
society. Dalits, or those discriminated against ‘by work and descent’ as the UN puts it, are also found in Nepal
and the other countries of South Asia, and similarly affected groups exist in Japan, Somalia, Senegal, Nigeria and
a number of other countries. There are some 180 million Dalits in India, another 90 million ‘Scheduled Tribes
(STs), who suffer similar problems and are sometimes classed with the Dalits, altogether some 300 million
people are affected worldwide by this form of discrimination. It is one of the major human rights issues in the
contemporary world.

2.19. Social Indicators for Dalits (1998-1999)
Dalits Non-Dalits
Infant Mortality Rate 83 61.8
Child Mortality Rate 39.05 22.2
Undernourishment 54 41.1
Life Expectancy (Years) 62 66
Source: Thorat & Nidhi Sadana (2002:99)

2.20. Economic indicators for Dalits (1999-2000)
Rural Rural Non Urban Urban Non
Dalits (%) -Dalits (%) Dalits (%) -Dalits (%)
Self-Employment 16 41.11 3.28 4.3
in Agriculture
Self-Employment 10.18 14 27.76 38.7
in Non-Agriculture
Wage Labour 61 29 64 15
Employment Rate 46 48.4 45.8 50
Unemployment Rate 5 3.5 5.2 3.5
Poverty Rate 35.4 20 39 21
Source: NSS Employment Survey, 1999-2000, CSO, Delhi
* The full report, Affirmative Action in the Private Sector:Why and How, by Prof. Thorat is available
from the DSN office.

3. RESERVATION POLICY IN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS

Savio Lourdu, Dalit Community Activist

3.1. In the 1950s and 1960s because of the Civil Rights Movement the US Government started to desegregate
schools and remove economic discrimination against African-Americans through ‘affirmative action’
programmes. This included promoting employment legislation in the employment corporate sector, and aiding
minority businesses and professions.

3.2. In India, minority rights are dealt with in a Reservation Policy for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Dalits)
in the Indian Constitution. A particular portion of public sector jobs and political positions are reserved for SCs
and STs in proportion to their percentage in the population, which is around 27 percent. However, in recent
years, liberalisation has led to the government privatising an increasing number of government sector jobs.

3.3. Whilst, reservation policy is clearly spelt out for the public sector in the Indian Constitution under Articles 334
and 335, liberalising the economy does not by itself advance the interests of minority groups in private sector
employment. The present policy of reservation should therefore be extended to the private sector.

3.4. Reservation is not tokenism – it does not ask for jobs for the less able; jobs are for qualified candidates. It does
not also compromise the working standards set by the company. Moreover, ‘corporate social responsibility’ is
partly about private companies giving back to communities a share of their income obtained from the people,
and the land.

3.5. To illustrate why the time is ripe for extending the reservation policy to the private sector: according to the
Ministry of Labour in 1999 the total workforce in the organised private sector was close to 9 million. Low skilled,
semi-skilled and unskilled workers constitute more than three-quarters of this.The majority are Dalits, who now
face the threat of becoming wage labourers due to privatisation.

3.6. Current Government Initiatives: In June 2003 President Kalam stated in a speech ‘the government is
sensitive to the issue of “affirmative action” including reservations in the private sector, and is committed to
faster socio-economic and educational development of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes’. In August, the
Manmohan Singh Government announced that it would constitute a group of ministers to examine private
sector reservation. The Confederation of Indian Industry however opposed it, and in June 2004 it stated that the
government should ‘work to upgrade skills of the weaker sections of society’ to make them more employable.
The Justice Venkatachaliah Commission, which was appointed to review the working of the Indian Constitution,
has said any statute should cover all aspects of reservation, including the setting-up of tribunals to adjudicate
cases and disputes pertaining to reservation in posts and vacancies in government, public sector, banks and other
financial institutions. The Commission reports said it should be stipulated in the memoranda of understanding
that reservation policy should be continued even after privatisation or divestment, as it exists in the public
sector. The Government however has recently back-tracked on this issue (June 2005).

3.7. Local Initiatives in favour of Private Sector Reservation: In Chennai the Dravidar Kazhagam Party (DK)
organised demonstrations in front of the Government office in Tamil Nadu, demanding a reservation policy for
SC/ST’s, but opposing it for the so-called ‘backward classes’. Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) President
Sunil Kant Munjal said ‘Merit cannot be compromised. We are not quiet (on the issue of Reservation in private
sector) … we cannot afford to compromise competitiveness in corporations. Rather than a patchwork approach,
government should try to upgrade the skills of the backward section’

3.8. Others are of the view that combating caste discrimination is not just the work of the government it is also the
responsibility of the private sector. Tata Industries, one of India’s largest Corporations, supports caste-based job
reservations in the private sector. Tata is said to be developing its own affirmative action plan and will share it
with the Government in due course. International organisations are also now taking up a lobbying role with the
private sector both inside India and outside it, on the issue of private sector reservation.

4. CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND DALITS:
A CAMPAIGNING PERSPECTIVE

Gerard Oonk, Director, India Committee of the Netherlands

4.1. The India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) is an independent NGO campaigning on human rights issues in
India in a global context8. For the last ten years ICN has been working on corporate social responsibility (CSR),
especially on child labour and labour rights, and since about six years on caste discrimination. ICN is an active
member of the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), the European ‘Stop Child Labour’ campaign and
the Dutch CSR Platform.

4.2. Although, previously aware of caste discrimination’s existence, this was not an integral part of ICN’s socioeconomic
analysis, and more specifically the analysis and action on the implementation of labour rights. Only
in the past few years has ICN looked more closely at the human and labour rights implications of caste, fully
realising the enormous importance of caste discrimination for the (lack of) realisation of labour rights. Decent
corporate behaviour should therefore also include an active and affirmative policy to counter caste
discrimination in the workplace.

4.3. Footballs and Dalits: Let’s take two examples to illustrate the point. ICN has been working intensively on child
labour in the Indian football industry, including in the Euro 2000 and World Cup Campaign9.The latter was a joint
campaign with the Global March Against Child Labour. Most football stitchers in India are very poor – almost half
of them live below the poverty line – while at the same time more than 90% of the stitching households are
Dalits. This is not a co-incidence as footballs used to be made from leather, an animal product, which only the
Dalits could come in contact with. It is therefore difficult to distinguish between pure economic exploitation
and subjugation based on caste , but undoubtedly both factors work in tandem for football stitchers. This keeps
them at the bottom of the economic and social hierarchy.

4.4. A report published in 2000 notes that discrimination because of caste, including in school, might be a more
important factor for young football stitchers to drop out of school and start work than the often cited financial
reasons. For adult football stitchers it is very often difficult for them to organise themselves into groups , as they
are economically exploited and separated from each other in the sub-contracting chain (they often work at
home, selling the finished goods to intermediaries). Besides, their low caste status also puts them in a weak
bargaining position.

4.5. 80.000 victims: There are many children, mainly girls, working in hybrid cotton seed cultivation in the Indian
state of Andhra Pradesh10. In 2004 they numbered more than 80.000 of which more than 12,000 working for
multinationals like Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer. These children work long hours, do not go to school, are
exposed to pesticides, and are often bonded to the employers because of debt . Those who are bonded do not
usually live at home, but instead live in accommodations such as an employer’s cowshed, and therefore become
extremely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Most of these children are Dalits while others belong to
backward castes including Muslims.

4.6. ICN and other organizations have been working on this issue with an Indian NGO – the MV Foundation, which
aims to get every working child regardless of caste into regular fulltime education. This organisation with more
than ten years experience in this area has shown that not poverty but tradition, exclusion, discrimination, nonfunctioning
public schools and the lack of a clear social norm against child labour continue the vicious circle of
poverty and child labour. The organization aims to support all children, including Dalit children into regular
schools.

4.7. Corporate Responsibility: In February 2004 ICN published the report ‘Corporate Social Responsibility in India
– Policy and practices of Dutch companies’. According to the companies surveyed no discrimination of Dalits
was reported in the work place. In practice however, women get less pay for the same job; they often do not get
a contract or qualified jobs; and are sexually harassed . It is well-know that Dalit women suffer the worst forms
of discrimination. One of the recommendations in the report is that companies should stimulate participation
of women and Dalits (including of course Dalit women) into higher qualified jobs by developing affirmative
action plans. It was also recommended that companies engage with local NGOs to find ways to help stimulate
education and training of women and Dalits.

4.8. Recently the instruments of corporate responsibility and accountability have been linked to situations of caste
discrimination in employment, for example in the OECD Guidelines for companies and the ILO labour
standards11. The recently published report on the ‘International Consultation on Caste-Based
Discrimination12 bears testimony to this, just like the Ambedkar (Employment) Principles to be found in this
report. This is the beginning of what will undoubtedly become a range of efforts to firmly link the fight against
caste discrimination to the existing human rights responsibilities and obligations of companies. In order to reach
that goal, Dalit organizations, development and human rights NGO’s as well as national and global trade unions
should join forces together.

5. THE AMBEDKAR PRINCIPLES: EMPLOYMENT PRINCIPLES TO ASSIST
FOREIGN INVESTORS TO ADDRESS CASTE DISCRIMINATION IN SOUTH
ASIA.

5.1. Caste discrimination remains a serious problem in the countries of South Asia. The Principles outlined below are
an attempt to address this. They are intended to acknowledge the degree of historic injustice against Dalits and
to compensate for this through affirmative action, in line with international Human Rights standards. They will
enable foreign investors or companies trading in the region to contribute to eliminating caste discrimination in
the labour market. Much has been learned from using similar principles for race equality in employment, such
as the Wood-Sheppard Principles in the UK, and from principles developed for investment in countries with
serious and structural human rights violations, such as the EU Code of Conduct and the Sullivan Principles drawn
up in relation to apartheid South Africa.

5.2. The principles are firmly rooted in and seek to build upon the labour rights that are already supported by the
international community – governments, trade unions and employers’ associations alike – in the form of the
conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). They can be seen as the practical application of a
number of these rights for a large section of the South Asian population that has been subjugated for centuries.
These people are severely discriminated against even today on the basis of being born into a particular ‘caste’
or social group.

5.3. At present the obligations of states with regard to implementing labour rights are increasingly being
complemented by instruments that call upon the corporate sector to be responsible and accountable for its
impact on the larger society, including those whom it employs or whose employment it influences through the
sub-contracting chain. One of these instruments is the UN Global Compact, of which Principle 6 requires
supporting companies to seek ‘the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation’.
Another is the Global Sullivan Principles, which state that companies will ‘work with governments and
communities in which we do business to improve the quality of life in those communities, their educational,
cultural, economic and social well being and seek to provide training and opportunities for workers from
disadvantaged backgrounds’. There are similar commitments in the OECD Guidance for Companies and the
(draft) United Nations Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business
Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights.

5.4. Companies supporting the Principles below are asked to give general endorsement to these Principles, to work
progressively towards their implementation and to make an annual report on their progress as part of their
diversity or corporate social responsibility reporting, and also to consider engaging in some form of external
audit. The Principles are built upon the urgent need in any society for positive or affirmative action for severely
and structurally disadvantaged groups.

5.5. In the Principles the term ‘Dalits’ is used, as that is the term chosen by many of the former ‘untouchables’, or
‘Scheduled Castes’ as the Indian Government refers to them. In this context it also includes indigenous people(s)
or – as they are officially called in India – ‘Scheduled Tribes’. ‘Caste discrimination’ is equivalent to
‘discrimination by work and descent’, the terminology adopted by the United Nations. The countries of ‘South
Asia’ we are referring to are primarily India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

5.6. THE AMBEDKAR PRINCIPLES
Employment Principles to Assist Foreign Investors to Address Caste Discrimination in South Asia
The Signatories of these Principles, building on existing national anti-discrimination laws and policies, and, in the
spirit of internationally recognized human rights will:
1. Include in any statement of employment policy a reference to the unacceptability of caste discrimination and a
commitment to seeking to eliminate it;
2. Develop and implement a plan of affirmative action, where appropriate with specific reference to Dalit women,
particularly where Dalits are under-represented as employees in relation to the local population;
3. Avoid any form of bonded or indentured labour and, as the victims of these are mostly Dalits, pay specific
attention to the role that caste relations might play in legitimising or covering up such forms of labour;
4. Use fair recruitment, selection and career development processes, with clear objective criteria, and ensure that
these processes are open to scrutiny from Dalit themselves as well as other civil society groups;
5. Take full responsibility for their workforce, both direct and sub-contracted, seeking to detect and remedy any
caste discrimination in employment conditions, wages, benefits or job security;
6. Evolve comprehensive training opportunities for employees and potential recruits from Dalit communities,
integrated with other staff where appropriate but separate if not, and with the aim of enabling them to full their
potential;
7. Designate a manager at appropriate level to carry out the policy, aimed at meeting business needs, maximising
the benefits of a diverse workforce, and ensuring the policy, its monitoring and the related practices are carried
through;
8. Develop effective monitoring and verification mechanisms of progress with effect to the above at the level of
the individual company, and also co-operate in monitoring at the levels of sector and the state, involving Dalit
representatives, including women, in these mechanisms;
9. Publish annually a report on progress in implementing these Principles – preferably in relation to an appropriate
section of the Annual Report and appoint a specific board member with responsibility for oversight of this
policy area.
10. Ensure that all corporate support to community development programmes and other charitable activities in
caste-affected countries or areas includes the participation of Dalits and assures their at least equal share in any
benefits.

6. UNION ACTION IN DENMARK:

Nicolas Fisher, union representative for Luftfartfunktionaerernes (LLF), Danish Union of Salaried Employees

6.1. In 2003 the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) announced they were planning to outsource some of their
operations, including passenger revenue accounting to Mumbai in India.

6.2. The union (LLF) did not want job losses in Denmark, but decided that if SAS was going ahead with this
arrangement they would insist and demand that the company in question abide by human rights obligations
and ILO conventions. Therefore, the union first wrote to the company on 9th June 2003 and followed this with
a letter to the Chief Executive on 16th June 2003. The letter drew attention to the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to which Denmark and most
other countries had committed to.
These Principles were presented in draft form to the International Consultation on Caste-Based Discrimination held in Kathmandu between
November 29 and December 1, 2004. The International Dalit Solidarity Network hopes to receive comments and suggested amendments over a
six-month period and to adopt the Principles in final form in late 2005.

6.3. The company finally replied on 11th August 2003, but the union was not satisfied with the response and wrote
back raising further questions in the context of the Global Compact. The union (LFF) emphasized that whilst it
did not intend to interfere with company policy, it wanted to ensure that the Indian Constitution, which aims
to eliminate caste discrimination from the Indian society was adhered to, as well as the many international
Conventions, which India had signed.

6.4. Alhough a number of companies have signed up to the Global Compact the problem is with reporting and
monitoring the implementation of this voluntary agreement. Under the existing system, participating
companies are to communicate with their stakeholders, on an annual basis, their progress in implementing the
Global Compact through their annual financial reports, sustainability reports, other prominent public reports,
websites, and/or other communication channels.

6.5. LLF expressed the need for a monitoring system – such a system would ensure that managements achieve
specific targets in human rights, similar to business related economic and technical targets. For example, the
monitoring system will then ascertain whether the SAS partner, WNS in Mumbai employs Dalits. Or whether
a target of, say 15 percent of employees to be employed reflects the population occurrence, of say Dalits, or
Scheduled Castes/Tribes.

6.6. In August 2004 the LFF union wrote to 300 Scandinavian companies operating in India asking them a set of
questions. The union plans to publish a report on their responses in the near future.

7. THE GLOBAL COMPACT:

7.1. The Ten Principles: The Global Compact’s ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment
and anti-corruption enjoy universal consensus and are derived from:
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
The United Nations Convention Against Corruption

7.2. Global Compact – Labour Standards
Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to
collective bargaining;
Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and
Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

8. SEMINAR DISCUSSION: SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

Gina Borbas – Coordinator DSN UK

8.1. Questions raised during the discussion
8.1.1. What economic benefits will supporting the Employment Principles bring to companies? Will addressing
discrimination enhance their reputation?
8.1.2. What are the economic consequences of discrimination for a country’s economy?
8.1.3. What responsibilities do companies acting through a third party have for monitoring employment
conditions/policies of their suppliers/agents/subcontractors etc.?
8.1.4. How can we identify and prevent caste discrimination within our organisations?

8.2. What role can companies play?
8.2.1. In recognising education as singularly important for generations of social change, companies can
actively promote education to give Dalits the skills required by private companies, e.g. sponsoring of
school, college or University programmes, English language or other training schemes; this can assist Dalit
students in obtaining the qualifications needed for access to professional private sector jobs.
8.2.2. Access to jobs is crucial; there needs to be exploration as to whether companies’ diversity policies are
resulting in the recruitment of Dalits and therefore a need for diversity policies to be monitored from a
perspective of caste discrimination to ensure that recruitment is based on education and merit.
8.2.3. Companies should target Dalit communities for employment at all levels.
8.2.4. The economic and financial needs of the ‘Dalit market’ should be analysed, such as access to fixed-rate
loans, the need for micro -finance, financial training, support and assistance to co-operatives.
8.2.5. Dalit communities should be included in corporate social responsibility initiatives, e.g. sponsorship
schemes and community initiatives.
8.2.6. Goods and services for business requirements should be sourced locally, from the region instead of
importing from outside, with Dalit entrepreneurs encouraged to tender.
8.2.7. There needs to be a stakeholder approach – involving Dalit communities and employees in analysing
problems and finding solutions.

8.3. Trade Unions challenges in India:
8.3.1. It was recognised that the Trade Union system in India is very varied and quite limited in its interaction
with issues of caste discrimination; whilst there are specific trade unions for ‘Scheduled Castes and Tribes’
(SC/ST) these are only active in the public sector.
8.3.2. Many trade unions are caste-based which limits their accessibility and further segregates employees,
supporting the structures of the caste system rather than challenging them.
8.3.3. Many of the largest trade unions are Marxist and do not support privatisation which limits their
interaction with the private sector on behalf of any SC/ST members.

8.4. Trade unions in the UK:
8.4.1. Unions outside South Asia need to facilitate more efficient exchanges of information among themselves,
to ensure a wider knowledge of the effects of caste discrimination and other international economic and
social issues; the international secretariats have a role to play here.
8.4.2. UK Trade Unions should forge links with Indian trade unions to share information, education and
training.
8.4.3. Unions in the UK could give more active support to initiatives such as the Dalit Solidarity Network.

8.5. Examples of caste discrimination in practice as experienced by Dalit participants at the seminar, and
practices which prevent the employment of Dalits in companies:
8.5.1. Dalits are not seen as acceptable to be in a public leadership role – their authority will be
undermined/ignored.
8.5.2. Discrimination is visible in the public sector. e.g. a qualified Dalit journalist was not given the
opportunity to undertake television work.
8.5.3. There is under-employment of Dalits after achieving degrees at University level. Please refer to the
‘Observer’ article 3 October 2004 reprinted in the appendices which details how a Dalit student, Arvind
Vaghela, with a Masters degree in Economics, is unable to gain employment in the private sector
commensurate with his educational qualifications as a result of caste discrimination.
8.5.4. In recruitment processes personal interaction is crucial, people recruit from their own caste groups.
8.5.5. In interviews candidates are asked indirect questions related to caste, e.g their full name, whether they
are vegetarian, where exactly they are from, their parents’ occupation, etc.
8.5.6. There is always a fear of the issue of caste being raised which intimidates potential applicants.
8.5.7. If a Dalit is employed through an affirmative action/reservation system – the assumption is always made
that s/he is unfit for the job on basis of merit and education.

9. THE NEXT STEPS

9.1. Private Sector Companies which are operational in, or are outsourcing to India, Nepal or other countries of
South Asia should: Endorse the Global Compact; endorse the Ambedkar Employment Principles as an
outworking of the Global Compact in the context of South Asia; require employment agencies whom they use
to apply the Principles and encourage their suppliers to also do so.

9.2. Trades Unions should seek to bring pressure to bear on international companies, where they have members,
and which are investing in South Asia, to endorse the Ambedkar Principles and work with the DSN to achieve
this end.

9.3. The Governments of South Asia should:
9.3.1. adopt anti-discrimination legislation, ensure it is applied, and include all those in caste-affected
communities, of whatever faith, in that legislative protection;
9.3.2. introduce the equivalent of reservation policy into private sector employment, at least until such time as
Dalits and all caste-affected communities have achieved a high degree of parity in the field of
employment.

9.4. The UK and other EU Governments should:
9.4.1. include discussions of caste discrimination in all their contacts with the countries of South Asia as an
essential element in the battle against poverty and for human rights;
9.4.2. adopt the Ambedkar Principles in their development and other operations in South Asia; encourage
international companies operating within the EU and South Asia to also adopt the Principles.
9.5. The Dalit Solidarity Network (UK) and other solidarity bodies should actively promote the Ambedkar
Principles as a means by which awareness can be built around the issues of discrimination which Dalits face, and
by which discrimination in the employment sector can effectively be addressed.

APPENDICES:
Untouchables in new battle for jobs – India’s lowest class raises its sights from the gutter
Randeep Ramesh in Ahmedabad – Article in the Observer, October 3, 2004
Flanked by green cricket fields where he once played and
a university from which he graduated, Arvind Vaghela tries
not to notice the stream of students walking past. ‘I used
to be like them, attending lectures and going out on the
fields. But now I just hide my face,’ he said.
The reason for his shame is the broom in his hand. Despite
a masters degree in economics from Gujarat University in
Ahmedabad, the best job Vaghela, 24, could get was one
done by generations of his family: roadsweeper. ‘I wanted
to work in sales for a bank, but you needed to have your
own vehicle. I come from a poor family, so how could I
afford that? When my father died I was offered his job and
I took it,’ he said.
As a Dalit, or untouchable, Vaghela’s story is familiar in
this sprawling west Indian city. Nearly 100 of its
council sanitation workers have degrees in subjects ranging from computing to law, but cannot get better jobs because they
are Dalits. Their experience is part of an increasingly heated debate in India, where the government has announced that it will
consider extending public-sector job quotas for people from the lowest castes to the private sector.
Industrialists, who insist private-sector jobs and promotions are earned on merit, say that this will make businesses
inefficient and uncompetitive. Rahul Bajaj, who chairs a large motorcycle manufacturer, wrote in the Times of India that
public-sector job quotas had reduced the ‘effectiveness of government’ because decisions were not made on the basis of
ability.
This argument leaves Ahmedabad’s roadsweeping graduates unimpressed. Most say that they have had to face discrimination
or exploitation in the booming private sector. ‘I got a job with a firm of accountants and then had to present my qualifications.
On one school certificate it mentioned my caste. ‘The next day I was told there had been a mistake – I was not required any
more,’ said Dalit sweeper Prakash Chauhan, 32, who has a a degree in commerce. Chauhan stresses he is relatively well paid,
at 4,000 rupees (£50) a month, and his job is secure.’This is a job for life. But it was my father’s life. Our parents had a dream
that education would mean we would not have to do the jobs they did. It did not turn out that way.’
Dalits, the lowest caste, have endured centuries of discrimination and violence because of a social order that consigns them
and their descendants to jobs nobody else wants to do and a tradition that all humans are created unequal. In rural India Dalits
have been murdered for proposing to marry somebody further up the social ladder, barred from temples, forced into bonded
labour and made to carry human waste from the homes of high-caste Hindus. In the cities, where it is easier to change one’s
name and slip into the crowd, Dalits say economic exclusion is now the biggest issue.
The ingrained unfairness of the caste system has brought pressure for reform on human rights grounds against Western firms
doing business in India. Unions have written to 300 companies in Europe which outsource work to India to check that their
subcontractors do not discriminate on the basis of caste. ‘There are many parallels with the situation in South Africa in the
Sixties, when foreign companies needed to be persuaded to address the discrimination in the system of apartheid,’ said David
Haslam, the London-based chair of the Dalit Solidarity Network.
Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer who has proposed many new affirmative action programmes in India, says businesses
should look for inspiration to the United States, where firms carry out diversity audits and give contracts to firms from minority
groups. ‘About a fifth of General Motors managers are African American, Hispanic or Native American. GM actually goes out
of its way to recruit from these communities. The company also places $2 billion of business into the minority communities.
No Indian business has done the same.’ These measures helped to create a black middle class, he says, making African
Americans part of mainstream life in the US. By contrast, Prasad says, if Oprah Winfrey had been born in India she would have
remained chained to poverty rather than become one of the world’s richest women. ‘Here family connections and caste
matter more than ability. It is still the case of who you know, not what you can do. ‘In the US you have black billionaires,
industrialists, black film stars, black professors. In India university professorships are closed to us.We do not have one Dalit
millionaire. There is not one Dalit newspaper editor, nor a Dalit newscaster.’
Academics caution, however, that there is one big difference between race and Indian caste. ‘No one can tell from your
appearance that you are a Dalit. The same cannot be said for African Americans,’ says Shyam Babu, a research fellow at the
Rajiv Gandhi Institute, a think-tank in New Delhi. ‘It is more subtle. Once you know someone’s name and where they are from,
most Indians can identify your caste. The basic bigotry is the same: you assume an entire ethnic group is incompetent.’

Links

www.un.org/millenniumgoals
UK/National:
The UK government gateway to Corporate Social Responsibility – www.societyandbusiness.gov.uk
Ethical Trading initiative – www.ethicaltrade.org
The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) is an alliance of companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade
union organisations. They exist to promote and improve the implementation of corporate codes of practice which
cover supply chain working conditions. Their ultimate goal is to ensure that the working conditions of workers
producing for the UK market meet or exceed international labour standards.
Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility (ECCR) – www.eccr.org.uk/about_main.html
Working on issues of global concern, especially in regard to transnational corporations has led ECCR to develop close
international partnerships in 22 countries around the world. These links are most closely associated and expressed
through work which ECCR has promoted to establish the Principles for Global Corporate Responsibility: Bench
Marks for Measuring Business Performance which was first launched in 1995 and up-dated and further developed in
1998.
South Asian Dalit networks and information centres:
Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, Professor S.K.Thorat
D/25-D, South Extension, part II, New Delhi 110049. Phone 011 51643981/2 email: iids@dalitstudies.org
National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights – www.dalits.org
The NCDHR is part of a wider struggle to abolish “untouchability” and to “cast out caste”. “Untouchability” and caste
discrimination continue to be a brutal reality for more than 160 million Dalits living in India today, despite the fact
that more than half a century has passed since India was born as a “democratic” and independent state.
www.ambedkar.org
General information site on Dalit issues. Hosts a debate on ‘Reservations in the Private Sector’
Dalit NGO Federation – www.dnfnepal.org
DNF is a national network of Dalit organizations which fight against the caste based discrimination in Nepal.
Scheduled Castes Federation of Pakistan – www.pakdalits.tk
International Links
International Dalit Solidarity Network – www.IDSN.org
The International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) is a network of national solidarity networks, groups from affected
countries and international organisations concerned about caste discrimination and similar forms of discrimination
based on work and descent.

We welcome you to use the information in this report but would please request that you credit DSN UK and credit any
quote to its correct source in the report. For further information please contact the DSN office at the address below.
Dalit Solidarity Network UK
Thomas Clarkson House, The Stableyard, Broomgrove Road, London SW9 9TL
Tel +44 (0) 20 7501 8323 Fax +44 (0) 20 7738 4110 Email: Dalitsnuk@yahoo.co.uk
Cast out
Caste

Posted in Education Issues, General, Private Sector Reservation, Reservations, economy | Tagged: CSR, Dalit, Private Sector Reservation, reservation | Leave a Comment »

Return of “Nationalisation”

Posted by samathain on November 13, 2008

Source: Frontline

Return of the state

PRABHAT PATNAIK

The hegemony of finance capital that underlay neoliberalism is unlikely to persist in the old form.

THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY

John Maynard Keynes, who advocated “socialisation of investment”.

THE Great Depression of the 1930s was a spectacular practical demonstration of the contradictions of “laissez-faire capitalism”. John Maynard Keynes, the renowned economist, writing in the midst of the Depression, had attributed the failure of markets, especially financial markets, to their intrinsic incapacity to distinguish between “speculation” and “enterprise”, and to get dominated by the activities of speculators to a point where “enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation”. As a result, the level of employment and output in the economy, and hence the livelihoods of millions of people, became dependent on the whims and caprices of a bunch of financial speculators, “a byproduct of the activities of a casino”.

Keynes was opposed to socialism and was a defender of the capitalist system, but he saw that major repair had to be done to the capitalist system if it was to survive. The repair he recommended was “socialisation of investment”, that is, state intervention to ensure that the level of investment in the economy was such as to achieve “full employment”.

The basic argument that “laissez faire capitalism” is fundamentally irrational (insofar as it makes employment and output the byproduct of the activities of a casino), and hence needs to be replaced by state intervention, has never been successfully refuted by neoliberalism. Indeed, intellectually, neoliberalism has always been vacuous, in the most elementary sense that the assumptions required by neoliberal theory to show the salutary consequences of the unfettered operation of markets are either palpably unreal, or at palpable variance with other assumptions required for the same demonstration, making the argument logically inconsistent.

The resurgence of neoliberalism against the Keynesian position, therefore, was a result not of its intellectual persuasiveness, but of its being promoted by the new hegemonic entity in world capitalism, namely, international finance capital, whose ideology it constituted. Of course, the Keynesian prescription for capitalism, that is, state intervention in demand management, had ceased to work. But this fact did not mean that the Keynesian diagnosis was wrong, and nobody has succeeded in proving otherwise. What is more, the fact of the Keynesian medicine not working any longer was itself the result of the emergence of international finance capital.

The state whose intervention Keynes had advocated was necessarily a nation-state, and in a world where finance was globalised, that is, in a world characterised by international finance capital, the capacity of the nation-state to pursue policies of its choice was necessarily undermined: any set of policies that are not to the liking of international finance capital would provoke the flight of such capital to other shores, plunging the original host economy into dire straits. Keynes was aware of this constraint upon demand management and hence was very particular that “finance above all must be national”. But the spontaneous tendencies of capitalism, towards the concentration of finance in larger and larger blocs and its deployment all over the world in quest of speculative gains, operated even within the regime of Keynesian demand management, and ultimately undermined it from within.

Undermining the old regime, however, was not enough for finance capital. An alternative new regime had to be erected, which would facilitate the global movement of finance by removing all barriers to such movement; which would permit finance capital to pick up “for a song” profitable public sector enterprises and scarce and valuable natural resources that had been largely nationalised following decolonisation in the Third World; and which would turn the state from being a Keynesian (or for that matter a Nehruvian) state into one that was actively engaged in promoting the interests of international finance capital, of which the domestic financiers and the high bourgeoisie constituted a component. This transformation, which required not just the thwarting of Keynesianism (or of Nehruvianism or of Third World nationalism, generally) but actually transcending the latter, institutionalising an alternative regime to the ones that were in force, had to be sustained by an ideology. Neoliberalism was that ideology.

Neoliberalism had not disappeared during the heyday of Keynesianism. It had been overwhelmed, but it continued to exist, pushed to the fringes and advocated by die-hard believers like Milton Friedman who were looked upon with amused tolerance by “mainstream” economics, even as debates within the latter centred on different versions of Keynesianism. Even Richard Nixon famously said in 1971: “We are all Keynesians now.”

Neoliberalism’s emergence from the shadows was the theoretical counterpart of the emergence to dominance of international finance capital through, inter alia, the progressive removal of capital controls, which had characterised the Bretton Woods System, first in the advanced countries during the 1960s and later in the developing countries.

G.R.N. Somasekhar

Indian financial institutions have largely escaped the effects of the unfettered operation of financial markets because, thanks to the opposition of the Left and other progressive forces, financial liberalisation in the country has not proceeded far enough. Here, a May Day rally organised by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions in Bangalore in 2008.

What is occurring in world capitalism now is a reaffirmation of Keynes’ proposition that financial markets, precisely because they get dominated by speculators, function like casinos. Financial crises, resulting in severe depressions, are inherent to the functioning of this “free market” system. In fact, efforts by the state to prevent such crises, through “bailout” packages, when successful in the short run, have the perverse effect of further emboldening speculators to become even more reckless, and hence creating the potential for even more severe crises in the future. Financial crises in this sense resemble earthquakes: if they do not happen for some time, then when they do happen they are even more severe.

Government intervention to prevent such crises in an economy dominated by finance capital, and hence open to speculation, prevents a current crisis by creating the conditions for a far more severe future crisis. To say this is not to suggest that the government should allow financial crises to occur, but to argue that the neoliberal regime that permits financial crises to occur at all should be transcended. (Many, including myself, would argue that this is not possible without transcending capitalism itself, but that discussion need not detain us here.)

Keynes had said with remarkable prescience: “As the organisation of investment markets improves, the risk of the predominance of speculation does, however, increase.” One of the “improvements” in the organisation of financial markets in recent years has been the development of the “derivatives” market, the total value of trade in which in 2007 was 40 times the total gross domestic product of the world economy. And confirming Keynes’ prognosis, this has been a major stimulus to speculation and hence a major factor behind the severity of the current financial crisis.

Loans made by investment banks, for instance, are “cut up” and re-bundled for sale to others in the derivatives market. This has two important consequences: first, the risks associated with holding claims upon the ultimate borrowers get hidden from those who hold these claims. Derivatives, in short, lead to risk-concealment, which means that the euphoria of a boom in the prices of assets, against which loans are made, continues much longer than would have otherwise been the case. Secondly, even when the risks are not concealed but are known, the market ensures that the least risk-averse are left holding the maximum risk. This, too, by lowering the general level of risk-aversion in the economy, implies that speculation continues much longer than would have otherwise been the case. It follows that the development of the derivatives market has the effect of prolonging speculative booms, and hence intensifying the magnitude of the crash when it finally comes.

The Left’s resistance

All these factors have been at work in the current financial crisis. Its root cause lies in the unfettered operation of financial markets, which is an essential part of the neoliberal package and which is promoted by finance capital. The fact that Indian financial institutions have largely escaped this crisis is precisely because, thanks to the pressure of the Left, “financial liberalisation” has been somewhat checked, despite the best efforts of Manmohan Singh and the other leading luminaries of our neoliberal contingent.

Not that India will escape the consequences of the world financial crisis, but this is because the shifting of funds by the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) will result in a mutually reinforcing downward movement in the prices of stocks and of the rupee, and also because any recession in the world economy within the neoliberal regime will entail the import of unemployment into our economy and a crash in the prices of cash crops for the peasantry. (The collapse of the financial giants on Wall Street has already put a question mark over employment prospects in Business Process Outsourcing units and call centres.)

G. Moorthy

At the annual general meeting of the Madurai District Pensioners’ Association in Madurai on September 16. If pension funds had been deployed on the stock market, as the neoliberals had wanted, then the loss in their value would have meant either acute suffering for old-age pensioners or an inordinate drain on the government’s budget for rescuing pension funds.

But this transmission mechanism will, at least, not be supplemented by an additional imported financial crisis, as is happening with British and continental banks, because financial liberalisation has not proceeded far enough, and certainly not as far as our domestic neoliberals would have liked. Likewise, if capital account convertibility had gone through, as those setting up the successive Tarapore Committees had wanted, then the collapse of the stock market, and the threat to the value of the rupee in the foreign exchange market, would have been far greater than now, since it is not just FIIs but even the domestic wealth-holders who would be shifting funds out of the country. Similarly, if pension funds had been deployed on the stock market, as the neoliberals had wanted, then the loss in their value would have meant either acute suffering for old-age pensioners or an inordinate drain on the government’s budget for rescuing pension funds.

Ironically, Chidambaram has been reportedly shoring up the stock market by asking public sector banks to buy up stocks, an option that would have been denied to him if his own advocacy for privatising public sector banks had succeeded. Ironically, too, the most ardent advocate of privatising insurance in the country was the AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, which is at present in the doldrums and rescued only through a loan of $85 billion by the United States government.

The country has been spared all this because of the stout opposition mounted by the Left and other progressive forces against neoliberal policies. But it is also important to draw a salutary lesson from all that has happened. Any economy is ill-served when its affairs are entrusted to a group of persons who are wedded to an ideology that is intellectually vacuous and owes its apparent triumph only to the fact of its being promoted by the self-serving needs of international finance capital.

That ideology, however, has run its course. The solution to the crisis that its triumph has precipitated is increasingly being seen to lie in the part-nationalisation of financial institutions in the capitalist world, which represents a negation of its basic premise. Originally it was thought that an “injection of liquidity” was all that was needed to overcome the crisis. But the obvious question was: injection of liquidity where? The reason why credit has dried up all over the capitalist world is an increase in the lenders’ perception of risk, since the solvency of the borrowers has become suspect owing to the presence of a plethora of “toxic” securities in the system.

If A does not have confidence in the solvency of B so as to be willing to lend to B, then simply improving A’s access to liquidity is unlikely to make any difference. Of course, if B’s access to liquidity can be improved, then, since B is of dubious solvency and hence cash-strapped, this may help overcome the crisis, provided that this liquidity is available on a fairly long-term basis and provided that B uses it wisely. The only way that such liquidity can be made available without arousing public ire is through part-nationalisation, whereby the government injects funds in lieu of equity.

The European governments, especially the United Kingdom and Germany, have accepted this idea, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has already put it into practice. The Americans, however, have been reticent, which is why Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson’s original “bailout package” (involving simply the government’s buying out “toxic” securities) had such a rough weather (though Paulson now seems willing to consider nationalisation). Likewise, even measures such as guaranteeing inter-bank loans, which European governments have announced, are unlikely to get public support unless control over the behaviour of banks is exercised as a quid pro quo. The rescue operation from the crisis, therefore, will entail in a basic sense an abandonment of neoliberalism.

If nothing else, the extreme public anger against the international financial oligarchy will ensure this. In the face of this anger, directed against a bunch of greedy speculators who have brought the world economy to the brink of ruin, the hegemony of finance capital that underlay neoliberalism is unlikely to persist in the old form. How the crisis and its sequel unfolds remains to be seen, but the world will not go back to what it was before.

Posted in Current Affairs, General, Recent News, economy | Tagged: Current Affairs, Dalit, economy, india, india news, news | Leave a Comment »

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