EU referendum overrides political homogeneity

Homogeneous is a curious word for Europe at this point of time in history. Ethnically the most homogeneous continent in the world, according to a landmark study by the Harvard Institute of Economic Research in 2002, is faced with a situation which may change the tone and tenor of future politics in Europe. The economic cooperation – then known as the Common Market following the Treaty of Rome – initiated about six decades ago as a harbinger of peace, reconstruction and prosperity in the years following the Great Wars is now the subject of a heated war of words both within Britain and across Europe.

Jeremy Corbyn voted to opt out of Europe in 1975

The referendum on whether Britain should or should not be part of the European Union (EU) has divided the island nation like never before in the immediate past, and has exhibited signs of a tumult in the conceptualisation of political homogeneity.

The hard-line left within the Labour Party, like Michael Foot and Tony Benn, may have staunchly opposed Britain’s integration with what was then called the European Community during the earlier referendum in 1975. But their present day political descendants like the Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell are campaigning vigorously so that Britain remains within the EU. The Foots and the Bens may have apprehended that the economic integration was a ‘capitalist ploy’ to keep the real wage low, but the incumbent Labour group supporting the ‘Remain Campaign, were brandishing their opponents as a “bunch of snooty Eurosceptics” who were out to compromise on job losses leading to further hardship for the working class Britons.

Interestingly, during the 1975 referendum, as a local councillor in the London Borough of Haringey, Corbyn voted 'No' to Britain's membership of the European Community. Britain, however, voted 67 to 33 to stay in. In fact, Corbyn was first elected to the House of Commons in 1983, the year Labour leader Michael Foot was defeated with a radically left-wing manifesto that included a pledge to withdraw Britain from the European Economic Community, which later became to be called the EU. Though the Labour's leadership then embraced the EU, Corbyn in 1993 voted against ratifying the Maastricht Treaty that laid the groundwork for the modern European Union.

When it comes to the Conservatives, on any day and on any issue Prime Minister David Cameron is considered to be much more centre of right than his controversial predecessor Margaret Thatcher. Those who are aware of the developments surrounding the ‘UK Rebate’ - a financial mechanism which reduces the UK's contribution to the EU budget and is in effect since 1985 - as extracted from the union by Thatcher in the 1980s, know that the ‘Iron Lady’ of British politics was more keen on negotiations to leverage benefits for Britain than an outright exit. After all, Thatcher’s political philosophy revolved around balancing the books and taking stock of her political profit and loss when it came to clinching deals and inking agreements.

Cameron may be a different brand of Tory politician as compared to Thatcher, propagating ‘compassionate Capitalism’ as against the ruthlessness of the Iron Lady, and yet he chose a similar path of negotiation, and thereby clinch a deal favourable to Britain, rather than proposing an exit from the union.    

Politics they say make strange bedfellows. It’s also true that politics makes the best of friends into worse adversaries. Nothing can be nearer to truth of this than what’s being witnessed in contemporary British politics. The party is literally in the midst of a civil war with the ‘Remain Camp’ involved in a slanging match with the ‘Leave Camp’, similar to what was witnessed by the Labour Party when its Prime Minister Harold Wilson held a referendum in 1975 on whether the UK should be or not in what was then termed as the European Community. Apart from Prime Minister Wilson the likes of Roy Jenkins and David Owen favoured Britain remaining within Europe, but it was strongly opposed by the hard-line left leaders Michael Foot and Tony Benn.

Debate on Europe divides Etonian pals 

The wedge of divide is equally pronounced within the Conservative Party this time round. Some of Prime Minister Cameron’s trusted lieutenants in government and in the party are up in arms when it concerns Britain’s position in Europe. Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Michael Gove is one of the leading figures in the ‘Leave Campaign’, but only recently as the Education Secretary he was in-charge of putting in place the prime minister’s education agenda, the biggest of all being the exam and curriculum reforms to elevate Britain’s position among the developed countries on the various aspects of school education.

Another heavyweight in the ‘Leave Campaign’, Preeti Patel was handpicked by Cameron to don the mantle as the Minister of State for Employment and also provided her with the special privilege to seat around the cabinet table. The elevation of the minister born to a Ugandan-Indian migrant family assumes significance for a plethora of issues plaguing the British economy, including the controversy surrounding the zero-hour contracts which in effect is one of reasons behind showing lower unemployment figures despite a rise in part-time jobs and underemployment; the high youth unemployment figures and in the backdrop of the call for British jobs for the British people being one of the main planks of the hard-line Eurosceptics. Patel is also seen as a go between Cameron and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. These, however, didn’t stop Patel from shifting to the opposite camp of the British prime minister.

A fellow Etonian, Cameron and former London Mayor Boris Johnson are on the same page on a number of issues ranging from politics to governance. Despite having their fair share of differences, the two are thought to have a good rapport and they also share a few jokes. Johnson is now accusing the prime minister of scare-mongering on a possible ‘Brexit’, the slick name provided to Britain’s exit from the EU, and on his part Cameron is alleging ‘rabble rousing’ by the ‘Leave Campaign’ of which the former London Mayor is a leading light.    

When the Common Market – a predecessor of the modern EU – emerged in 1957, Britain then the largest economy in Western Europe was least interested to join force. Following a couple of unsuccessful attempts, Britain finally made it in 1973. But Britain’s relationship with the EU or its earlier forms were never beyond scepticism and doubt. The wedge has been further widened by the bitter campaign ahead of this referendum. Notwithstanding Europe’s homogeneity, the relationship between the EU and the UK will not be free from trust deficit and tribulations, even if the British people vote for Britain to remain within the EU.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
All comments are personal.

Separated at birth!

The World Economic Forum has set up a new task force in January this year with the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and his counterpart at the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, to study how rapid changes in technology affect financial stability and growth. However, there are more similarities between the two economist-governors than sharing a global task force.

Raghuram Rajan predicted the
2008 financial crisis

In 2005, during the heydays of easy money and sub-prime mortage, Rajan warned about the growing risks in the financial system and proposed policies that would reduce such risks. Rajan's comments evinced criticism from no less than the former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers who termed the warnings “misguided” and  Rajan a "luddite". However, following the 2008 economic crisis, Rajan's views came to be seen as prescient. 

Carney's actions as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, prior to donning the mantle at the Bank of England, are said to have played a major role in helping Canada avoid the worst impacts of the financial crisis that began in 2007. The most important being the decision to cut interest rates in March 2008, only a month after his appointment.

Now as the head of the Bank of England, Carney is warning against a possible British exit from the European Union. Carney's argument is straight and simple - overlooking the risks do not necessarily reduce them - a somewhat similar vein to what Rajan articulated in 2005.

Mark Carney is blamed for
scare mongering 

Carney's comments attracted severe criticism from British politicians of the 'Leave Campaign' who are alleging politicisation of institutions and that the governor is toeing the line of Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne in the fractured Tory government.

Rajan has also drawn flak from the likes of the maverick Indian politician Subramanium Swamy, who is baying for his blood in a bid to hit the incumbent Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his (Swamy) mission to grab the chair for running India's finances. A friend posted that Rajan was seen at the bustling shopping district of Oxford Street on Saturday and his wife was at the Boots, possibly getting some anti-septic cream to soothe the wounds inflicted by the bristling broadside of a desperate Dr Swamy.

Carney met his wife, Diana Fox a British economist specialising in developing nations, while at the University of Oxford, and Rajan is married to Radhika Puri Rajan, whom he met while they were both students at IIM Ahmedabad. Radhika teaches at the University of Chicago Law School.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Musing on sadness

The election campaign in West Bengal has turned out to be a slanging match. Look to your left or even to your right, it is the same mud-slinging which is having its day. The content of the campaign has been taken over by allegations and counter-allegations, that too in words matching those erupting from the gutter. Even the commentators and the civil society are so polarised that the civility in the society has been replaced by vulgar expression of might. The irony is that this is the same Bengal which was once considered to be citadel of civility and cultural conformation.

Over the past few weeks, I spent some time to be a mute observer of what’s going around only to make an effort to get to the truth behind the cumulative decadence in values that is gulping Bengal. Though not sure if I have managed to do so, but prima facie it seems that the sharp accusations are a function of the expansion of the sample space of the stakeholders.

The patron-client relationship which is the mainstay of any political formation is now utilised to its optimum level and even beyond for the sake of distribution and redistribution of favours. In the process what they are missing out is that there is enough redistribution of favour but not adequate generation of resources. Majority of those who are pawns in the process of socio-political polarisation and degeneration are actually the stakeholders. Since their level of engagement with the stakes and dependence over them have increased with every passing day, these pawns are shouting their lungs out and often resorting to other vitriolic and vulgar means to maintain their positions of prominence and privilege.

Often the media is the favourite punching bag of every evil that engulfs the society. However unfortunate and unfair it may sound, but in this case, the media has also emerged as a powerful stakeholder with serious contention in rendering the politics of the land murky. The out of proportion media explosion has created a workforce who are inept with their knowledge, expertise, experience and insight to deal with the sharp divisions that are manifesting a fractured polity. Conventionally being the mirror of the society, the media with its inadequacies is actually projecting a rapturously vulgar imagery of an already broken state. 

Historically, the civil society was considered to be an intermediary between the state and the individual. That’s how the civil society oiled the wheels of capitalism for generations. The trade unions, the pressure groups, the intelligentsia, the media – they all are well-orchestrated tools of capitalism to contain systemic discontent. When the allegiance of the civil society shifts from the objective of sustenance of the social system and is fractured between warring factions it is the society which turns out to be the ultimate looser. 

So whatever be the outcome on the 19th of May, it is Bengal and the Bengalis who are the real losers. The decadence and the depletion in the values, lexicon, civility, reverence and imagery are gradually turning out to be irreversible. It seems that in the folly of political one-upmanship not many are bothered about the moralistic degradation. 

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
All comments are personal.

Keynesianism in action

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of John Maynard Keynes's seminal work "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". It was first published in February 1936. Keynes had expected his magnum opus to redefine economics and so it did, especially in the post-war years. Many see the demise of Keynesianism in the advent of Neoliberalism and its graduation to becoming the dominant discourse in contemporary economic thinking. Keynesianism, however, is still in action amidst the roadworks and the construction projects. 

Roadworks in Labour-controlled Hounslow Council
(Pics courtesy: alamy.com)

Hounslow Council, the place where I have been living nearly 17 years now is full of roadworks. Everytime I get past the barricades that separate the repairing pavements and parts of the road from the main way, I am reminded of John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential personalities of our time. The broken tarmac,  the guarded pavements, the helmets and fluorescent jackets of the workers of Hounslow Highway are living examples of Keynesianism in action.

Spend more to create demand was the ethos of his demand-determined model. By then J B Say's tenet that "supply creates its own demand" had been diluted as an economic principle. Keynes also underlined role of the government in generating and enhancing demand, situating the state much beyond its conventional realm of managing the finances, law and order and foreign policy. All for generating the much needed demand to boost a post-depression economic order. Our teacher Kunja Behari Kundu, or KBK as he was generally known, likened "demand" with a bride as the groom followed her during the time of their marriage.

The threat of Communism was hanging over the Capitalist world and the Great Depression of the 1930s was good enough reason to impress upon the ordinary Europeans and also the world that Communism was a force to reckon with. If it couldn't alter the political landscape of Western Europe then a large part of the credit was due to Keynes. He was almost the saviour of Capitalism against Communist onslaught, and it was a coincidence of sorts that Keynes was married to Lydia Lopokova, a ballerina of Russian decent.

Keynes with wife Lydia Lopokova (Pics courtesy: Getty Images)

"Physics was too easy for me", Keynes once told his friend and physicist Max Planck, but had "an affection for Economics", then considered to be a science of the naysayers. He along with Virginia Woolf, E M Forster and Lytton Strachey were part of the Bloombury Group, who lived, worked and studied together at Bloomsbury near the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the University College, London (UCL).

Was Keynes concerned or even bothered about his legacy? Probably not. His concern was more for the short-run. "In the long-run we are all dead", Keynes once famously said. And yet he lives and relives in the roadworks, the under-construction school buildings and new railway tracks even 70 years after his physical demise.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
All comments are personal.

Modimania abroad - India's growing might & democratisation of diaspora politics

The Bollywood-style grand rallies that Narendra Modi addressed in parts of the world amidst rousing welcome have caught the imagination of the intellectuals both in India and abroad. The Indian Prime Minister is going to address another such rally this Friday afternoon in the grandiose of the Wembley Stadium. For some it is like thumping his 56-inch chest amidst all the talk of unfettered arrogance, and for others it is having the rich and the powerful non-resident Indians on board for a quid pro quo.

The grand community reception at Wembley has become the talk of the town especially after the drubbing Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received at the hustings in Bihar, one of India's least developed states, ripped apart by caste relations and bloody politics. When the allegations of growing intolerance in India have crossed its shore and Modi is being blamed for his stoic silence, the caricature surrounding the Indian Prime Minister is that he speaks more when abroad than in India. His extensive and grand foreign trips even earned Modi the laurel of being branded India's non-resident prime minister.

For me, however, these grand and festive congregations are expressions of India's growing might in the fields of global politics and economics, which remained suppressed and subdued for various historical and geopolitical reasons. India might still be the home of one-third of the world’s poor and yet Indians at home and abroad want to see her more as an emerging economy. The euphoria surrounding unending opportunities often overshadow the thoughts that India is also ripped apart by stark inequality.

Globalisation of Bollywood

Modi is not the first Indian politician to use non-resident Indians to his political advantage. Katherine Frank’s book on Indira Gandhi would show how the former Indian prime minister used the Indian community in the United Kingdom to campaign against the Janata Party government when she was thrown out of power. The community of Kashmiri Pandits in London always stood rock solid with the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family in particular. This support was not without adequate compensation in the form of political and economic patronage. Those in the know of things know how the Kashmiri head of an Indian news organisation got support from successive Congress dispensations in running a highly successful business in London’s upmarket Regent Street.

Grant Thornton India Tracker 2015

The Bollywood-style festivity also stems from increased globalisation of India’s highly successful film industry. Before I came to the UK in 1999, I never knew that Bollywood was such a recognised form of entertainment industry here which strived more on the glitz and glamour of the colourful Indian society rather than its trials and tribulations with poverty, inequality and discrimination.

So what we are seeing today is not a completely new phenomenon in itself and rather a culmination of a trend which has been work in progress for decades. In fact, over the past decade or so managing the Indian community in the UK and roping them in with the representatives of the Indian government here have become much more democratic than what it was for decades since independence.

The Independence Day celebrations, which once was within the confines of the High Commission building, Nehru Centre or the official residence of the High Commissioner near Kensington Palace Gardens with the same set of invitees - with close links with the Indian establishment both here in the UK and back home - every year has now been opened to the Indian population at large since the time of High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee. Over the past few years anybody can attend the Independence Day celebrations at the Indian Gymkhana in Osterley rather than being at the good books of the “Indian Baboos” running their self-styled empire inside the India House at Aldwych.

Evenly balanced relation

The "Gujarati asmita" or the pride of the Gujarati people backing Modi abroad is nothing different from the Kashmiris backing the Nehru-Gandhi family, especially Mrs Gandhi. The symbiotic relationship between the politicians in power and the benefactors abroad is still the same. The only change that has happened over the years is democratisation of the process of engaging with the non-resident Indians in the United Kingdom. One doesn't need to be in the good books of the people at the helm to avail some of the basic facilities. The non-resident Indians are now treated with greater respect by the Indian establishment than it was during the Congress regime. Recall how Mrs Gandhi turned her back to the people of Indian origin who were thrown out of Uganda as part of Idi Amin's Africanisation Project.

The relationship between non-resident Indians and the Government of India has become evenly balanced since the days of economic liberalisation in 1991. The remittances from all around the globe and especially from the Middle East keep India's coffers full with dollars and pound sterling so as to allow the government of the day to engage in economic risk-taking and not count the pennies and the cents needed to keep the oil-pool account up and running. The 30 million Indians living abroad contribute an estimated $70 billion to the national economy each year in the form of remittances.

The suspicious attitude of the Indian establishment towards the non-residents have eased as the government now can see the benefits, including financial, economic, political and diplomatic, of a vibrant expatriate Indian community. The policy-makers in India's archaic North and South Blocks have now realised that China's strength stems not only from its financial and military muscles but also from a vibrant and effective expatriate community.

If India wishes to match China, it can hardly overlook its diaspora.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com All comments are personal.