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      What Happened to the Emerging Democratic Majority?

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      In November of last year, Donald Trump lost the presidential election with the highest number of votes for a Republican candidate ever and the second-highest for a presidential candidate. Only Joe Biden did better. Trump also managed to garner the second-highest share of the non-white vote, 26%. Only George W. Bush outdid him, winning 28% in 2004, as a number of commentaries, seeking to diminish Trump’s feat, have pointed out. What they fail to acknowledge, however, is the fact that the two candidates were very different. Bush had many flaws, but race-baiting was not among them.

      Against that, by the time of the 2020 election, there was a wealth of evidence that “racial revanchism” was central to President Trump’s political agenda. This, however, did not prevent a significant number of minority voters from casting their ballots for him. Whether or not this made a difference is an interesting question. In some cases, it might have, most notably in Texas.

      Trumpism After Trump: The Wrong Person at the Right Time?

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      To be sure, Biden won the vast majority of the Hispanic vote in the big cities like Dallas, San Antonio and Austin. Trump, however, did surprisingly well in the heavily Latino counties in southern Texas along the Rio Grande border with Mexico. In Starr county, for instance, which is almost completely Hispanic, Trump gained more than 55% of the vote compared to 2016. These results, as neutral observers have charged, “ended up helping to dash any hopes Democrats had of taking Texas.”

      High Hopes

      Ahead of the election, Democrats had high hopes that this time, the emerging Democratic majority was finally going to materialize. The notion goes back to the title of a book from 2002, written by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. In it, the authors argued that the future belonged to the Democrats, for a number of reasons. There was the transformation of America’s demography, there were secular ideological changes going in a progressive direction, and there was, last but not least, the growing socioeconomic and sociocultural dominance of large metropolitan areas, rooted in the growth of a postindustrial economy — what Teixeira called “ideopolises,” organized around ideas and services.  

      The idea was that the Democrats were in a better position than the Republicans to appeal to the diverse constituencies emerging from these developments: on the one hand, the growing ranks of professionals in the high-tech, finance, education, law and medical sectors, a growing number of them women; on the other, ancillary services, such as sales clerks, waiters, janitors, security personnel and teachers’ aides, a large number of them Hispanics and African Americans. Together, Teixeira suggested, they “formed powerful coalitions that now dominate the politics of many ideopolises united in their support of a politics of “tolerance and openness.”

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      In the meantime, much ink has been spilled over the crucial socioeconomic and sociocultural importance of metropolitan areas, largely confirming Teixeira’s assessment. Today’s “global cities” such as New York, London, Paris and Tokyo generate a significant part of their respective nation’s wealth. At the same time, however, they also represent quasi self-contained entities increasingly disconnected from the rest of the country.

      This is a problem, for in the process, the hinterland, which at one time played a crucial role as a supplier of myriads of inputs from small and medium-sized companies, has largely become structurally irrelevant to the metropolitan economy. With it went the middle-class labor force that was the backbone of what once was known as America’s heartland but is today disparaged as flyover country, its inhabitants dismissed as deplorable and repellent racist, sexist, homophobic ignoramuses. Proof: Why else would they have voted for somebody like Trump?

      After roughly two decades since the book was published, the emerging Democratic majority has still not fully materialized. Instead, what we have got are two antagonistic political tribes whose seemingly irreconcilable differences have polarized American politics along a wide range of fault lines: views on immigration, reproductive choice, gender, Black Lives Matter, gun control, affordable health care, social security — the list goes on. This divide’s grand signifier in today’s politics is Donald Trump. As unbelievable as it might sound — given he lost the election, given he was impeached twice, given he left the office scorned and disgraced — his legacy continues to haunt post-Trump politics and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

      Not Fade Away

      According to a recent representative survey, around 80% of Republicans continue to have a favorable view of Donald Trump; more than 70% believe that the charge that the former president incited the assault on the US Capitol on January 6 is untrue; and almost two-thirds believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. It fits that according to the most recent Quinnipiac poll, conducted after Trump’s acquittal in the Senate, three-quarters of Republican respondents said they wished Trump would continue to play a “big role” in the GOP. So much for those who think Trump will somehow fade away into oblivion.

      Trump won in 2016 because he quite skillfully managed to articulate, appeal and respond to a range of diffuse popular grievances, accorded them legitimacy and, in the process, gave the impression that he listened and not only understood, but empathized with them — reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s well-known “I feel your pain” from 1992.  Even if Trump should miraculously disappear from the American political scene, Trumpism, as The Washington Post’s conservative commentator Gary Abernathy has recently maintained, “Trumpism is the GOP’s future.” If this indeed should be the case, it means that the chances for the emergence of a Democratic majority are likely to be as bleak as they have been over the past two decades.

      The notion of an emerging Democratic majority is premised on the idea that certain groups in society, most notably the highly educated, visible minorities, women and sexual minorities, qua their subordinate socioeconomic and sociocultural position have a “natural” affinity for a certain type of politics. Any deviation is either seen as a result of “false consciousness,” a failure “to get with the program” or, worse, simple betrayal of the cause, as the singer Madonna charged in 2016. A case in point was Barak Obama’s attack on Hispanics who voted for the incumbent in 2020, accusing them of ignoring Trump’s track record of race-baiting.  

      America Is No Longer One Nation

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      The same applies to all the white women who voted for Trump, despite his record of routinely disparaging and denigrating women. As Sarah Jaffe has put it in an article for the New Labor Forum, no single fact about the 2016 election was “more confounding than the fact that Trump’s margin of victory included a slim majority of white women voters.” Things were even worse in 2020. While Trump lost some support among white men, his support among white women remained virtually unchanged.

      Political parties, particularly in two-party systems such as the United States, have to assemble a coalition of disparate groups. A case in point was the Democratic Party, which for a long time managed to hold together two factions, one from the South and the other from the Northeast, that were fundamentally at loggerheads over major issues such as civil rights. Behind the idea of the emerging Democratic majority is the expectation that it is possible to put together a coalition on the basis of shared values and shared aspirations, derived from shared experiences of a lack of recognition, if not outright discrimination.

      Radical Nostalgia

      Twenty years ago, this was a reasonable expectation, given the direction of social, and particularly demographic, change. The populist surge that has swept over the United States during the past decade or so, however, has fundamentally altered the logic of electoral choice. Populist mobilization derives its logic not from shared values and aspirations, but from disparate grievances and the perceived unresponsiveness of the political establishment to these grievances.

      Successful populist protagonists are not successful because they come up with elaborate blueprints for profound socioeconomic change, but because they absorb and reflect myriads of disparate grievances and give them a voice. More often than not, populist politics are not about the future but a glorified past, reflecting the surge of nostalgia that has become a hallmark of the current age, further enhanced and intensified by COVID-19.

      There is nothing wrong with nostalgia. In fact, new studies show that nostalgia can be a beneficial mechanism helpful to coping with a difficult situation. It becomes dangerous, however, when it provokes an aggressive response. This, it seems, is what has happened in recent years among parts of the American public — or, at least, that is what the recent survey mentioned earlier suggests. In response to the statement that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it,” more than a third of respondents agreed either completely (11%) or somewhat (25%).

      Embed from Getty Images

      In light of the events of January 6, this is quite alarming. But it jibes with the findings of a recent study of MAGA supporters, who to a significant extent consist of white Christian males beyond retirement age. Full of resentment toward assertive women no longer willing to take shit from men, African Americans seen as not trying hard enough and immigrants accused of changing American culture for the worse, they epitomize this kind of radical political nostalgia.

      Nostalgia in terms of a yearning for the status quo ante might to a certain extent explain why a majority of white women voted for Trump. More often than not, grievances stem from changes that individuals perceive as having been imposed on them. A classic case is the construction of nuclear power plants, which in the past gave rise to massive popular resistance and contributed to the rise of Green parties. In the current situation in the United States, grievances stem to a significant extent from both demographic change and the increased visibility of minorities who refuse to remain silent.

      When white women voted for Donald Trump, it was because what has been happening over the past years is a fundamental challenge to the existing racial hierarchy that had been taken for granted. A vote for Trump was a vote for maintaining a tenuous status quo, where white women might be second-class with respect to gender but first-class with respect to race. The same logic certainly does not apply to black voters supporting Trump, a majority of whom were black men. It also does not apply to Hispanics, whose diverse background (Mexican, Cuban, Central American, etc.) makes it even more difficult to come up with a common denominator. Religious considerations, particularly with respect to reproductive choice and gender issues, certainly played a significant role, as did the perception that neither party cares about their concerns.

      What has been emerging over the past decades is a new constellation of political contest, pitting substance-based politics grounded in reasoned deliberation and values, however flawed, against grievance-based politics fueled by anger and resentment. This is hardly confined to the United States. Western Europe has been struggling with this phenomenon and its fallout for decades. Yet given its peculiar system, the United States is in a unique position to serve as a laboratory to see how these dynamics play themselves out. One might wish that the vision behind the notion of the emerging Democratic majority will ultimately carry the day.

      Nietzschean skepticism informed by the notion of “human, all too human” calls for caution. Trump might be finished politically. His spirit, however, is alive and well, capable of causing mischief to no end. Trump’s recent full-front attack on Mitch McConnell is a foretaste of things to come. It portends an attempt to completely transform the GOP into a radical right-wing populist party, devoid of any kind of real substance — in other words, a replica writ large of the Great Leader.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Fault Lines in Biden’s Approach to China

      by

      So far, the White House has undertaken a flurry of activity designated to back up President Joe Biden’s pledge to be tough-minded on China. He has warned that Beijing will face “extreme competition” from the United States. Taiwan’s top representative was invited to the presidential inauguration on January 20 and the Biden team has promised to continue US arms sales to Taipei.

      Is China the New Champion of Globalization?

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      Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he agrees, conceptually at least, that former President Donald Trump “was right in taking a tougher approach to China” and that he supports the prior administration’s finding that Beijing’s treatment of Uighur minorities in Xinjiang constitutes “genocide.” In early February, the new administration conducted naval maneuvers to contest Chinese dominance in the South China Sea and reaffirmed the US security commitment to defending the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.

      Veterans of the Obama Administration

      Yet all of this cannot conceal the two major fault lines threatening to undermine President Biden’s promise. The first centers on the heavy presence of Obama-era veterans on his national security team, particularly those associated with that administration’s “strategic pivot” toward the region. Two of President Biden’s top staffers were key architects of the much-touted initiative: Kurt M. Campbell, who was in charge of East Asian affairs in the State Department under President Barack Obama and is now the White House’s Asia policy czar, and Jake Sullivan, who was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is now Biden’s national security adviser.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The rhetoric of Obama’s pivot to Asia simultaneously antagonized Beijing while its actual track record largely failed to impress other Asian governments. According to one assessment, the pivot’s hype caused a marked increase in Chinese military spending at the same time that sharp cuts in the Pentagon budget were hampering US military operations in Asia. During a visit to Japan in 2013, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted that “We are going to have to think about how to remain a global power with fewer resources. I think we are going to have to find ways to accomplish almost the same things but with smaller force structures.” In early 2014, the Pentagon’s acquisitions chief publicly stated that budget constraints were forcing a reconsideration of the initiative.

      As Obama’s coordinator for North Korea policy has acknowledged, the effort “was ill conceived and bungled in its implementation.” In late 2013, the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, noted an “increasingly widely shared view in Japan and the region that the Obama administration may not have enough political capital or the financial assets to implement” the pivot. It added that some have even come to see it as no more than a “bumper sticker.” Similarly, a leading Australian analyst observed, “There is a growing perception in Asia that the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed ‘pivot to Asia’ has run out of puff.” By late 2014, a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times argued that most of Asia had concluded the pivot was nothing more than hot air.

      Memories of this track record persist. A commentator focused on Asian affairs observed last year that “Officials in Tokyo, Taipei, New Delhi, Singapore and other capitals have grown relatively comfortable with Trump and his tough approach on China. The prospect of a Biden presidency, by contrast, brings back uncomfortable memories of an Obama era that many Asian movers and shakers recall as unfocused and soft toward Beijing.”

      Just before the 2020 election, The Washington Post noted that current and former officials of the Taiwanese government and ruling party had “privately expressed concern that a return of Obama-era foreign policy advisers in a potential Biden administration could mean a U.S. approach that is more conciliatory toward China compared with the Trump administration’s — and less supportive of Taiwan.” The Financial Times also reported along similar lines.

      The personnel problem extends to Biden himself, as he is a late convert to the tough-on-China crowd. Prior to his becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, he had regularly dismissed the notion that China mounted much of a geopolitical challenge. His campaign staffers were reportedly troubled by his naivete, and one adviser later admitted that for the rest of the campaign, Biden had to be “deprogrammed” on China. While this was going on, Robert M. Gates, Obama’s first defense secretary, reaffirmed to CBS News his earlier judgment that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” 

      Standing Strong vs. Climate Change

      The second fault line running through Biden’s approach to China is the irreconcilability between maintaining a hard line and his administration’s insistence on the pressing urgency of securing Beijing’s cooperation on climate change. Biden officials claim they can somehow manage this tension and will not have to make significant concessions in other policy areas in order to fulfill its global climate ambitions.

      John Kerry, President Obama’s secretary of state when the 2015 Paris climate agreement was signed, is now Biden’s special climate envoy with a spot on the National Security Council. He insists, for example, that climate is a critical stand-alone issue that can be compartmentalized on the US–China bilateral agenda. Administration officials believe that collaboration is so self-evidently in Beijing’s interest that it will naturally sign on to Washington’s new push for significant climate action.

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      The Chinese government so far is not much impressed with this logic, with its foreign ministry stating that climate could not be separated from other issues “unlike flowers that can bloom in a greenhouse despite winter chill.” A Chinese government Twitter account also declared that “China is willing to work with the US on climate change. But such cooperation cannot stand unaffected by the overall China–US relations. It is impossible to ask for China’s support in global affairs while interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests.” 

      Given the White House’s fervor on the issue, one suspects the Biden administration will be making the concessions in the end. During the presidential campaign, Biden asserted that climate change is an “existential threat” and the “number one issue facing humanity.” Now that he is in the Oval Office, Biden believes “we can’t wait any longer.” He signed a directive making the issue the “center of our national security and foreign policy” and ordered government agencies to factor “climate considerations” into their assessment of international priorities. Kerry uses similar language, declaring that “the stakes on climate change just simply couldn’t be any higher than they are right now. It is existential.” He added that Biden “is deeply committed — totally seized by this issue.”

      In shutting down construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, as well as freezing new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands and waters, the administration has also shown it is willing to subordinate important domestic goals, such as energy security and employment stability in the middle of a job-killing pandemic, to climate priorities. It has written off large job losses as inevitable and is accepting of a backlash from important labor unions that aided its electoral victory just a few months ago.

      Susan Rice Returns

      It is also telling that Susan Rice, the national security adviser during Obama’s second term, has returned to the White House as President Biden’s top domestic affairs coordinator. Bilahari Kausikan, the former senior Singaporean diplomat widely regarded in East Asia, recently exclaimed that Rice “was among those who thought that the US should deemphasise competition to get China’s cooperation on climate change, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of international relations.” Another observer has made the same point, noting that “Obama and Rice wanted to work with China on issues such as climate change, but they did so at the cost of treating Beijing with kid gloves.” 

      Influential members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment have advocated the same thing. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of an influential think tank in Washington and a former director of policy planning in the Obama-era State Department, recently argued that “Biden should prioritize global issues over geopolitical competition” and that the president’s focus on climate “should guide his foreign policy as well.”

      Rank-and-file party members also share this view. In a recent public opinion survey, Democrats by a wide margin believe climate change to be a more critical threat than the rise of China as a peer competitor to the US. Indeed, according to Democratic respondents, China did not even rank among the top seven challenges facing the country.

      Something will have to give in the new administration’s approach toward China. There is already an early indication of how things will play out. Notwithstanding the protestations about Beijing’s egregious human rights abuses, the Biden team continues to support holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in that city.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Rush Limbaugh, influential rightwing talk radio host, dies aged 70

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      Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host whose nastily personal and bigoted riffs on the daily news won millions of devoted fans and altered the landscape of American media and politics, has died, according to his wife, Kathryn.Limbaugh, 70, had been diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer a year ago.“Losing a loved one is terribly difficult, even more so when that loved one is larger than life,” Kathryn Limbaugh said on his eponymous radio show, now in its fourth decade. “Rush will forever be the greatest of all time.”At the height of his influence in the mid-1990s, Limbaugh commanded a daily radio audience of millions, known as “dittoheads”, who tuned in to hear him dissect the sins of the Bill Clinton administration and wage battle against the “commie libs” he accused of plotting to destroy the country.In a 1995 Mother Jones cover story, the late columnist Molly Ivins singled Limbaugh out as a bully and called him a “major carrier” of “plain old nastiness in our political discussion”, describing the typical Limbaugh listener as a young white male without a college degree but with a firm sense that the world had done him wrong.“Limbaugh offers him scapegoats,” Ivins wrote. “It’s the ‘feminazis’. It’s the minorities. It’s the limousine liberals. It’s all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims.”The formula was wildly successful, and pointed the way for media organizations such as Fox News to satisfy the demand for opinion content that seemed devilishly honest if you identified with it – and hate speech if you did not.Limbaugh may have created something much bigger by contributing to a style of politics that, three decades after the Rush Limbaugh show was first syndicated, produced the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.Trump, who awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, midway through a State of the Union address a year ago, called into Fox on Wednesday to praise Limbaugh and mark his death.He was a “fantastic man” and a “fantastic talent”, the former president said. “Whether [people] loved him or not, they respected him.”The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, hailed Limbaugh as a “generational media trailblazer”. Former vice-president Mike Pence said “he made conservatism fun”. Senator Ted Cruz called him “a tireless voice for freedom and the conservative movement”.But not every elegy was as fond. “Rush Limbaugh helped create today’s polarized America by normalizing racism, bigotry, misogyny and mockery,” tweeted the gun safety advocate Shannon Watts. “He was a demagogue who got rich off of hate speech, division, lies and toxicity. That is his legacy.”Limbaugh was born and raised in Missouri, his father a former pilot and mother a homemaker. He worked as a disk jockey in high school and hosted radio programs in increasingly large markets in Pennsylvania, Missouri and California before landing a national gig at WABC.Limbaugh did not find his brand as a conservative lightning rod and iconoclast until 1987, when the Federal Communications Commission repealed a 1940s-era rule mandating that radio stations allot equal airtime to both sides of any controversial issue.That meant Limbaugh could go on at indefinite length, and even critics conceded his extraordinary ability to do so, hosting a three-hour radio show filled with breathless ranting, daily. In a televised spinoff, Limbaugh did what he usually did – sit in front of a microphone, smoke cigars and rant – but with the added thrill for viewers of watching the spittle fly.Limbaugh is credited with helping to invent a new style of communication, the modern talk radio format – and, as critics would have it, a new means of amplifying hatred, laying the groundwork for a conservative media sphere that would culminate 30 years later in Pizzagate and QAnon.Limbaugh was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame and National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.In 2003, he entered treatment after becoming addicted to the painkiller OxyContin following back surgery.He spent time off air and his career appeared to be idling before a comeback in the Obama years and then his full rehabilitation in the eyes of Trump and his supporters.Like Trump, Limbaugh offered listeners a blend of grievance politics, cruel humor, arrogant showmanship and privileged smugness that Trump showed could win much more than ratings wars.The style and the political pose established Limbaugh as godfather of generations of angry white men in the media, many of them on Fox News: Bill Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and their descendants, not to mention the conspiracy-minded networks that are challenging Fox for supremacy.Limbaugh insisted that racism was dead. He compared Chelsea Clinton, then 13, to a dog, and made fun of the labor secretary Robert Reich, who suffered bone disease as a child, for being short. He launched effusively sexist tirades, like this one quoted in a 1990 New York times piece:
      We know that women in groups – same office, same dormitory, same barracks – eventually have synchronized menstrual cycles. We also know that there is this thing called PMS, and we know that it turns a woman into a hellion. We know that PMS has been used as a defense against a charge of murder.”
      Ivins faulted Limbaugh as a bully in her Mother Jones profile.“He consistently targets dead people, little girls, and the homeless – none of whom are in a particularly good position to answer back,” she wrote.“Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel. It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar.” More

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      in World Politics

      Why Are India’s Farmers Protesting?

      by

      Indian farmers have lately made international headlines. Popstar Rihanna, actor Susan Sarandon and activist Greta Thunberg have taken up their cause. Ozy, a glitzy Silicon Valley publication posed a provocative question: “Will the World Step In?”

      The story playing out in international media appears to be a simple one. Indian farmers are the noble David standing up to an evil Goliath-like government beholden to greedy billionaires. In an era of increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility, this narrative resonates. The fact that elite journalists in New Delhi or New York see the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a Hindu fascist party adds to its appeal.

      Publications such as Ozy convey that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought in agricultural reforms solely to benefit large corporations. As per this narrative, the government is in thrall to big business and against poor farmers. Is this narrative true, or is there something more complicated going on?

      The Burden of History

      Ever since the British Raj, Indian farmers have led tough lives. The colonial power imposed extortionate taxes on farmers, taking away at least 45% of harvests, often confiscating the whole yield. British imperialists took Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice to heart and patronized a new feudal class of landlords to act as their middlemen. They did the dirty work of squeezing farmers, enabling them to escape much of the blame. The British also created an extractive colonial bureaucracy to suck wealth out from India. Few realize that the primary job of the now-glamorous district collector — an elite civil servant who does the job elected mayors do in western democracies — was to collect taxes from poor Indian farmers.

      Writing in The World Financial Review last year, Kalim Siddiqui explained in some detail why famine stalked British India. Great Britain industrialized and became a great power partly through ruthless exploitation of farmers in what are now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which then comprised British India. As a result, millions died of starvation, and those who survived the famines suffered constant malnourishment.

      Indian Farmer Protests Explained

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      The first priority for independent India was feeding its people. Indian farmers were dirt poor with no access to credit, reliable irrigation or modern agricultural tools and farming methods. They were often in the clutches of predatory moneylenders. Yet farmers had experience of mass movements. Mahatma Gandhi led his first satyagraha in Champaran against exploitation by British landlords, mobilizing thousands of poor farmers. In India’s new democracy, farmers might have been poor but, for the first time in centuries, they wielded real political power.

      That power has carried over to today. Even as India has urbanized, farmers disproportionately decide elections. A staggering 83.5% of seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, still primarily comprise rural areas. The political power of farmers has given them many benefits. Since 1947, governments have formulated multiple economic policies to overcome India’s colonial-era rural poverty. India abolished zamindari, an indigenous form of landlordship, immediately after independence. It overturned centuries of tradition by abolishing income tax for farmers. A key purpose of the 1969 bank nationalization was to provide cash-starved farmers access to credit.

      The Green Revolution

      In the 1960s, India launched its famous Green Revolution, which subsidized farmers in India’s northwest region, comprising the states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. This part of the country is a flat fertile plain irrigated by Himalayan snow-fed perennial rivers and with relatively large landholdings. Inspired by the American agronomist Norman Borlaug, India’s government encouraged farmers in this region to grow high-yield varieties of wheat, rice and cotton. It also gave farmers massive subsidies for fertilizers, seeds and equipment, investing large sums of capital to build dams and a network of canals and giving farmers access to easy credit. As a result, the farmers of landholding communities in northwest India became the most prosperous in the country.

      The Green Revolution ended India’s ship-to-mouth existence. India’s population had exploded after independence in 1947. In a poor country, agriculture was inefficient and rain-fed. A bad monsoon meant poor harvests. Demand would outstrip supply and the specter of famine was never far off. Until production took off in India, the US supplied grains to Indian masses under the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, commonly known as PL–480 or Food for Peace. Lyndon B. Johnson limited even critical famine aid to India, demanding the country implement agricultural reforms and temper criticism of US intervention in Vietnam. The Green Revolution provided India with food security after two centuries of rapacious British rule.

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      Yet like any policy, the Green Revolution had unintended consequences. In 2009, Daniel Zwerdling chronicled how this fabled revolution was “heading for collapse.” With an emphasis on high-yield varieties, the traditional mix of crops grown in the region for centuries has been abandoned. Yields increased dramatically but only through an insatiable thirst for water. Groundwater levels have fallen by 75%-85% over the decade. In Punjab and Haryana, farmers are boring deeper and deeper for water. In 2018, 61% of wells were dug deeper than 10 meters. In a land crisscrossed by rivers fed by Himalayan snow, such water levels mark historic lows. India might have achieved food security at the cost of water security.

      Parts of India are not just running out of water. The soil itself is turning toxic. Intense use of fertilizers and pesticides over decades has pumped harmful chemicals into the soil. More than 10 years ago, astute journalists like Daniel Pepper were reporting on villagers who spoke about rising cases of cancer, renal failure, stillborn babies and birth defects. These health problems have increased since. Researchers attribute these conditions to the “overuse and misuse of pesticides and herbicides.” As Pepper reported in 2008, Punjab comprised 1.5% of India’s area but accounted for nearly 20% of the country’s pesticide consumption. Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh suffer similarly high soil pollution and consequent health problems.

      Another consequence of the Green Revolution has been the overproduction of cereals. So much wheat and rice are produced that a storage crisis has ensued. India now lacks the capacity to store grains, with millions of tons are stockpiled in poor conditions. In particular, India lacks cold storage facilities for fruits and vegetables because of restrictions on farmers, the stranglehold of Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) and a lack of incentives for the private sector to invest in the rural economy.

      A Soviet Procurement System

      After independence, India opted for the Soviet economic model. Five-year plans set out ambitious targets for a command-and-control economy. The so-called quota-permit-license raj emerged, with bureaucrats dictating “which company would produce what, but also the amount of production, as well as the price of commodities.” Agriculture was no different. In a top-down, command-and-control system, the government set targets that farmers had to meet.

      In an indigenous twist to the Soviet system, India created the institution of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee. Thousands of APMCs were to run local agricultural markets, known as mandis. Farmers could only sell to APMC-controlled mandis and only at fixed prices. Unlike their American or European counterparts, Indian farmers could not sell wheat or rice on the open market. This prohibition had two reasons. First, APMCs allowed the government to control both production and price in its planned economy model. Second, APMCs were meant to protect farmers from the vagaries of the free market and save them from exploitation.

      Over time, APMCs become the new oppressors. Local politicians and special interest groups came to control APMCs. Since they were the only buyers by law, APMC mandis began to set ceilings on what farmers received for their produce, offering precipitously low prices. Commission agents started taking greater cuts. APMCs delayed payments to farmers, forcing them to borrow from “[commission agents], local money lenders and savings for their daily expenses.” In addition, APMCs rarely gave receipts to farmers. This meant that they were denied the option of applying to banks for much cheaper credit. Instead, they were pushed into India’s infamous informal economy and became prey to exploitative lending. Tragically, inevitable and unbearable debt burdens have led to thousands of farmer suicides.

      Apart from the APMCs, the government instituted a minimum price support mechanism as part of its planned economy model. New Delhi wanted high and stable production of key crops. Farmers wanted, and still want, stable income. In a pure market system, too much production leads to falling prices. This is not ideal for farmers. Therefore, they are careful to avoid overproduction. So, India’s economic planners instituted a system that provided a floor below which prices would not fall, encouraging farmers to grow crops deemed essential for food security and economic interests.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Over time, powerful lobbies in northwestern India, the heartland of the Green Revolution, pressured the government to put the minimum support price well above the price the market would have otherwise set. What began as limited support to ensure price and production stability eventually morphed into a substantial taxpayer-funded direct subsidy.

      Support prices differed widely from one state to another. At the same time, restrictive laws compelled farmers to sell to designated APMCs within their districts. Crossing state and even district boundaries to get a better price for their produce was illegal and could land farmers in jail. For instance, Punjab’s support prices have been higher than those in Bihar. Therefore, Bihari farmers have been illegally selling paddy to markets in Punjab at a price lower than the minimum support price but higher than what they would get back home. A flourishing black market and widespread corruption emerged as a result.

      New Agricultural Reforms

      In December 2019, the parliamentary standing committee on agriculture published a major report. It concluded that APMC markets were not working in the interest of farmers. Instead, they were reducing competition, causing cartelization of traders and unduly deducting money due to farmers through market fees and commission charges. Corruption and malpractices in APMCs were rife. The committee observed that “there [was] urgent need for radical reform” and asked the government to inform parliament “about steps taken in this direction within three months.” It is noteworthy that the opposition and farmers’ unions agreed with the committee’s observations.

      Last year, the government finally instituted long overdue agricultural reforms. Several economists and policy wonks welcomed them, arguing that these reforms would “unshackle farmers from the restrictive marketing regime that has managed the marketing of agriculture produce for decades.” In their view, these reforms promised “to bring the entire world of farming technology, post-harvest management and marketing channels at the doorstep of the farmer.”

      The reforms have three key aspects. First, farmers will be able to sell their produce to anyone, including agricultural businesses, supermarket chains, online grocers or, as before, APMC mandis. The key difference from the status quo is that farmers are no longer required to sell only to APMC mandis. A Bihari farmer would now have the legal right to sell in Punjab and vice versa without fear of arrest.

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      Second, the reforms have created a framework for agricultural commercial agreements. When farmers engage directly with processors, agri-business firms and large retailers, their counterparties will have to guarantee a price and make timely payments. Third, regulations on farm produce have been simplified and eased. The command-and-control system that determined the crops or quantities farmers would grow is being dismantled. Only in extraordinary circumstances such as war, famine, a natural calamity or an extraordinary price rise will the government have the right to direct production of cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onions, potatoes or any other crops.

      In 2020, agricultural reforms became inevitable because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A nationwide lockdown caused a massive migration of urban workers back to their villages. This increased pressure on already scarce land — something needed to be done. Restrictive laws on sale, pricing and storage of produce had to go. Therefore, after two decades of endless discussion, reforms finally transpired. They seek to increase investment in agriculture, boost farmer incomes and create a national agricultural market to emerge for the first time since India’s independence.

      Who Is Protesting and Why?

      From the outset, the reforms have proved controversial. In September, the BBC wondered whether they were a “death warrant” for farmers. Some farmers worry whether the reforms might lead to the end of wholesale markets and guaranteed prices. Currently, the government offers a minimum support price that acts as a safety net for farmers. Even though the government has promised to retain such a price, farmers fear its withdrawal over time.

      There is an added fear that big private players will offer good money to farmers in the beginning, kill off their competition and then pay little for agricultural produce. Farmers might go from the local monopsonies of the APMCs to the national oligopoly of Amazon-like behemoths. It is important to remember that the government offers price support only for the staple crops of the Green Revolution. Other crops do not qualify, nor do fruits and vegetables.

      Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming number of protesters are farmers from India’s northwest, the region that has benefited most from the old system. In particular, they belong to Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, the birthplace of the Green Revolution. In 2018-19, APMCs procured 73% and 80% of the total wheat production in Punjab and Haryana respectively at a minimum support price. This was higher than the market price, but a hefty chunk of the support price ends up in the hands of middlemen through various fees and charges. Unknown to most, price support does not necessarily mean income support in the current system.

      Farmers in the Himalayas, the Nilgiris or most other parts of India never benefited from the status quo. As a result, farmers in 25 of India’s 28 states and all eight union territories have not taken to the streets. The Shetkari Sanghatana, a Maharashtra-based farmers’ union founded by the economist-turned-farmer leader Sharad Joshi, and other unions support the government’s agricultural reforms.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The late Joshi was convinced that “the root cause of farmers’ problems lay in their limited access to the market.” As per this farmer leader, open and competitive markets, instead of a top-down command-and-control agricultural economy, served farmer interests better. Joshi opposed the APMCs, and his organization naturally supports recent reforms. In fact, it wants to go much further. It wants the government to remove the ban on the export of onions and threatened to pelt BJP MPs with onion bulbs if the government fails to do so.

      Journalists unfamiliar with rural India, including those working for the market-friendly Financial Times, have failed to capture this nuance. Not all farmers are protesting. Protests are largely confined to Punjab, Haryana and Jat strongholds in western Uttar Pradesh. This northwest region around Delhi comprises less than 8% of the Indian population. It elects 38 out of 543 MPs in the Lok Sabha, but its proximity to the capital gives it disproportionate power. Home to the Green Revolution, it has benefited from massive government spending for decades.

      As per the managing editor of the Financial Express, farming households in Punjab get an average of $2,385 per year in fertilizer and electricity subsidies alone. Irrigation subsidies account for another $190 per year. Households in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh benefit from other subsidies as well. To put these figures into context, in 2019, GDP per capita in India was less than $2,100, with most farmers earning a much lower figure.

      Many of those protesting are large farmers from northwestern India. Some of their family members are part of the Indian diaspora in Australia, Canada, the UK, the US and elsewhere. Some of them continue to be absentee landlords. They have petitioned their representatives to raise the issue with the Indian government, organized demonstrations and raised the matter with the press. As a result, a narrative has emerged in the English-speaking press that is not entirely unbiased.

      On January 26, India’s Republic Day, protesting farmers marched through New Delhi. Some attacked the police, destroyed public property and flew flags on the Mughal-built Red Fort from where prime ministers address the nation. This caused outrage and weakened the movement. However, Rakesh Tikait, a farmer leader, rallied his protesters with an emotive appeal. He broke down in tears and threatened to hang himself if the BJP government did not repeal its reforms. Tikait is the son of the late farmer leader Mahendra Singh Tikait who took over the nation’s capital with nearly 500,000 farmers in 1988. Per the Indian press, Rakesh Tikait is a former policeman with assets worth 80 crore rupees ($11 million), a significant sum for a farmer in India.

      It is clear that the likes of Tikait are not poor, helpless farmers crushed by debt, contemplating suicide. They form part of the almost feudal elite that has dominated the APMCs and the rural economy for decades. Many media outlets fail to realize that such farmers have enjoyed price support, subsidies on agricultural inputs, free electricity, waived water charges, cheap credit from the state-led banking sector and no tax on farm income. They are the winners of the old system and are desperate not to lose what they have.

      Small farmers in northwestern India have joined large farmers too. They fear the unknown. Since British rule, agrarian distress has been persistent in India. Well-meaning measures like APMCs have backfired. The Indian countryside faces the unique challenge of extreme overpopulation. Low productivity, fragmented landholdings, lack of storage infrastructure, high indebtedness, strangulating red tape and entrenched corruption have held rural India back and caused simmering discontent. Leaders like Tikait are tapping into this discontent much like Donald Trump harnessed the rage of those left behind.

      What Lies Ahead?

      The government has clearly been shaken by the duration and intensity of the protests. Sustained negative media coverage in the West has rattled New Delhi. For decades, the West in general and the US in particular criticized India’s agricultural subsidies. At the World Trade Organization (WTO), the US consistently argued that Indian subsidies distort trade. The WTO has been a hostile place for India. Over the last three years, Canada raised 65 questions against India’s farm policies. Australia has complained against India’s sugar subsidies. Yet reform has led to brickbats, not plaudits, in Western capitals.

      In fact, contrary to many press reports, the government has behaved with remarkable restraint. It did not act against protesters even when they blocked highways and hindered railway traffic. Swarajya, a center-right publication, called for the government to “demonstrate it [meant] business when it comes to law and order.” Yet it did nothing. When British coal miners challenged Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s authority, she used mounted police to crack down on them.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In contrast, the Modi government has been rather conciliatory, engaging in 11 rounds of talks with protesters. The government offered key concessions and proposed amendments to its reforms. In the final round, the government even offered to suspend the implementation of its reforms for 18 months. Protest leaders rejected this offer and demanded nothing less than a complete repeal of all reforms. No government was likely to accept such an intemperate demand, especially one that was reelected with a thumping majority in 2019.

      The Economist, a longtime critic of Modi and the BJP, takes the view that “agronomists and economists are in nearly uniform agreement” with India’s agricultural reforms. It attributes protests to the “trust deficit” of the BJP government. The publication sees large-scale cold storage as the most obvious benefit of the reforms. Such storage would involve removing limits on stockpiling commodities for future sale. Farmers fear that this could give large companies too much power and undue advantage. They could buy large quantities of produce from farmers within a few days of harvest, hoard this produce and sell it when the price was high.

      Such fears of change are only natural. No entrenched system changes without upheaval even when the status quo is untenable. The Indian agricultural system no longer works, economically, environmentally or ethically. Agriculture needs investment. Neither the government nor the farmers have the ability to provide this investment. In the post-1991 world, India’s private sector has been a success. It is the only player in the Indian economy with the ability to invest in the villages. Hence, Modi has called for a greater role for the private sector in an unexpectedly candid parliamentary speech.

      Despite the current sound and fury, India’s farmer protests will simmer down. Like the Green Revolution, India’s agricultural reforms will have intended and unintended consequences, both positive and negative. 

      Finally, it may be prudent to think about agriculture in the global context. Most countries subsidize agriculture in one way or another for reasons ranging from food security to cultural preservation. The country of Jean Jacques Rousseau has championed the Common Agricultural Policy. Even the free-market US is generous with its farm subsidies. If either France or the United States were to implement agricultural reforms, demonstrations would ensue, legislators would face pressure from electors and sections of the media would accuse them of one sin or another. India is doing something that both the EU and the US may need — but have not yet dared — to do.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Will Britain Become Scot-Free?

      by

      Among the consequences of Boris Johnson’s greatest accomplishment, Brexit, the question looms of the possible imminent fracturing of the union of nations known as the United Kingdom. The act of shattering one union — the EU — may have launched a trend. 

      As the second most important political entity of the British union, Scotland sees its quest for independence as symmetrical with Britain’s withdrawal from Europe. The Scots have long felt as oppressed by the English as the Brexiters felt oppressed by Brussels. Moreover, Scotland has traditionally felt a strong kinship with Europe. It once took the form of the Auld Alliance, established in 1295 by France’s Philippe IV, as both nations opposed England. The idea of the alliance resurfaced in the troubled period after James II, the last of the Stuart kings of England, was forced to flee to France following the 1688 Glorious Revolution.

      More recently, following the hesitating but finally successful integration of Great Britain into the EU in 1975, Scotland reveled in its European status. In June 2016, the Brexit referendum that then-Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to hold shocked the world by producing a victory for the “leave” camp. Scotland, however, unambiguously favored remaining in the European Union by a score of 62% to 38%. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, immediately saw a reason to hold a second referendum for Scottish secession from the UK, an initiative that had been attempted but failed in 2014. Today, the polls indicate a clear majority of Scots will vote for independence. This time around it will be justified by the UK’s effective withdrawal from Europe. Scotland feels a deeper loyalty and kinship to Europe than to England.

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      The Scots are nevertheless divided. Breaking with England would revert to a situation that hasn’t existed since 1707, the year the Treaty of Union was signed. Creating a border between Scotland and England in the 21st century will likely be more of a challenge than the knotty quandary still facing Northern Ireland concerning the unsettled question of a border that may need to be enforced with the Republic of Ireland, which is still part of the EU. The Roman Emperor Hadrian may have presciently anticipated the question of Scottish independence when he ordered the construction of his famous wall in 122 AD.

      As disappointment with Brexit increases and polling shows the Scots as likely to show the same alacrity to exit their union as the Brexiters did with regard to the European one, the minority of Scottish “remainers,” known as unionists, are beginning to worry. To understand the nature of their panic,Al Jazeera quotes one unionist, Sheena Francovich, a retiree from Argyllshire on Scotland’s west coast: “As far as I’m concerned, we had a vote [in 2014] and we voted to stay part of the UK and that’s end of story. Nobody has ever convinced me that [independence] would make any economic sense. If there was another vote and people did vote [Yes] it would be a sad, sad day.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Economic sense:

      The idea that better economic conditions will result from a choice the person speaking has already made, despite having no access to the full range of factors that determine economic success or failure.

      Contextual Note

      Brexit has been officially in place for a month and a half. One commentator highlighted the gap that has become evident between the promises Prime Minister Boris Johnson made five years ago and the reality of what is turning into a new winter of discontent: “During the 2016 Brexit campaign, proponents promised businesses that leaving Europe would mean liberation from suffocating regulations and infernal bureaucracy that supposedly prevailed across the Channel. It was all a lie. Post-Brexit, British companies that trade with the EU now deal with expensive disruptions to their businesses, and watch as their export profits plunge.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Boris Johnson and his cohorts cannot complain that it’s all because they haven’t had enough time to prepare. The Europeans were ready to allow the UK more time, but it wasBoris who insisted that it was crucial to “get Brexit done.” The long-term consequences of Brexit, including the eventual dismantling of the United Kingdom, are unknown. But the short-term consequences have given an idea of the scope of the material and economic damage. It will take longer to assess the psychological and cultural damage. 

      This will, of course, be compounded by the incalculable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, not just on the economy, but on the entire youth of the nation. This is occurring at a curious moment of history, marked in recent decades by the vaunted interdependence associated with the idea of globalization. The edifice has begun to shatter, with nothing stable in view to replace it. Sheena Francovich may be right to say that any nation’s independence makes no “economic sense” — but neither does dependence.

      On Sunday, for the first time, pro-independence parties have won a majority in Catalonia’s regional parliament, putting pressure on Spain to take into account a powerful centrifugal force that has been building for some time. The Catalans are already watching closely the drama unfolding in Scotland, hoping the much clearer case for Scottish independence prevails. Fragmentation as a reaction to decades of forced globalization may become a dominant trend of the 21st century.

      It doesn’t even stop there. The world has entered into a new era of uncertainty concerning the way people imagine their future. This has always been the biggest intangible factor of stability for any society. Political and cultural disarray has become the norm throughout the West and across much of the globe, including another “united” nation, the USA. The events of January 6 in Washington, DC, may portend the disunifying of the entity celebrated as “one nation, indivisible,” a scenario difficult to imagine. There are nevertheless telltale signs of serious cracks in the national narrative that, unlike the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, famous for its crack, offer no reassurance about a tranquil future.

      Historical Note

      The UK became united only slowly and in a largely haphazard way. When Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, died in 1603 leaving no successor to perpetuate the Tudor line, the rules of monarchy required seeking a new king among her cousins, the Stuarts. The nearest of kin was the reigning king of Scotland, James VI, son of Mary Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots, who was martyred by her cousin Elizabeth for remaining loyal to the Catholic faith. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, to seal his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, had assumed the equivalent of papal authority over the newly created Anglican Church. 

      The accession of the king of Scotland, who now became James I of England, established the Stuart family as future heirs to the throne. All did not go well. James’s son, Charles I, was dethroned and decapitated by Oliver Cromwell after a civil war in which the Roundheads (the anti-Anglican Puritans) defeated the Cavaliers (the royal army).

      When, following the restoration of the monarchy, James II, son of Charles II and grandson of James, declared his Catholic faith and, to add insult to injury, had a son with his Catholic wife, the defenders of Protestant England were upset enough to stage a coup. A bloodless revolution took place. The Protestant establishment celebrated it as the Glorious Revolution. Luckily for the revolutionaries, James II’s first daughter, Mary, had had the good sense to marry a Dutch Protestant, William of Orange, and the couple were called back from the continent to reign over England.

      Mary’s sister Anne became queen in 1702. Under her reign, the Acts of Union were ratified by the English and Scottish parliaments respectively, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The 18th century witnessed the rapid expansion of the British empire. Scotland tagged along with the triumph, though sometimes grudgingly. The last attempt at securing Scotland’s independence was led by the Stuart pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, who had returned to Scotland from France via Ireland. The Scots and their allies were defeated ingloriously at the 40-minute battle of Culloden in 1746 by the equally inglorious duke of Cumberland, known to this day as “Stinking Billy.”

      Though the Scots quickly gave up on the hope of a Stuart restoration, they have never really forgotten the humiliation of Culloden. Brexit, for many Scots, is another Culloden.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More