The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered multiple crises on  several fronts: the deaths of thousands of civilians, over 6 million refugees fleeing the country,  the destruction of heavily populated cities, the rise in military spending in Europe, energy shortages within the EU, a projected decline in development assistance to the world’s poorer nations; the demolition of schools and health-care facilities — and now the threat of hunger and starvation worldwide.

David Beasley, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), said last week: “Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full,” while “44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation…“The bullets and bombs in Ukraine could take the global hunger crisis to levels beyond anything we’ve seen before.”

Population-wise, that amounts to the entirety of Argentina.

WFP’s analysis has found that 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger at the start of 2022. That number is expected to rise by 44 million people if the conflict in Ukraine continues, with the steepest rises in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ukraine had about 14 million tons in storage and available for export. But Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports has brought shipments to a standstill. More grain is stranded on ships unable to move because of the conflict.

Beasley warned, “… hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies. We’re running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it’s desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine”.

Yields of staple crops were already down in many parts of the world because of the impacts of the climate crisis and other conflicts.

Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank, told IPS that Russia’s war against Ukraine and their war crimes will have consequences that will last for decades. 

“The war will only exacerbate the many crises the world is now facing—the biodiversity loss crisis, the health crisis, and the climate crisis. And because Ukraine and Russia provided so much food—and cooking oils and fertilizer—to other parts of the world, including the Global South, there will be a massive hunger crisis,” she warned.

Daniel Bradlow, Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, told IPS the war in Ukraine will have a devastating impact in Africa because many African countries import food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine.

Therefore, the war will lead to increase in food and fertilizer prices as well as shortages of food and fertilizer. The impact of the war will come on top of extreme weather events– droughts, floods– in various parts of the continent that will also have adverse impacts on food prices and supplies.

“Thus. it is likely that there will be increases in the number of people going hungry across the continent which will have tragic impacts on the development and wellbeing of children”.

Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam’s Policy Advisor on Food, Agriculture and Land, told IPS global hunger is soaring with the war in Ukraine seeing food prices skyrocket.

“This is catastrophic for people living in countries highly dependent on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. Countries like Yemen and Syria in the Middle East and Somalia and South Sudan in Africa where we are seeing people pushed beyond the brink of hunger,” she said.

The reason is a broken global food system, one that is unable to withstand crises and one that is built on inequality. Many poorer countries are unable – and are too often made unable – to produce enough food to feed their people. They must rely on food imports. This dependency is dangerous, she added.

“Countries should refrain from using food export bans. They just do more harm. Countries should ensure that food can move quickly from one country to another”.

“We need a food system that works for everybody. One that can stand against shocks such as rapid food inflation and one that is built on local small-scale family farming” she declared.

Russian Invasion Blamed for 44 Million People Marching Towards Hunger & Starvation | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 The UK currently use 17.5m hectares of farmland. Simon Fairlie, updating the earlier work of the ecologist Kenneth Mellanby finds that while a diet containing a moderate amount (less than we currently consume) of meat, dairy and eggs would require the use of 11m hectares of land (4m of which would be arable), a vegan diet would demand a total of just 3m. Not only do humans need no pasture, but we use grains and pulses more efficiently when we eat them ourselves.

This would enable more than 14m hectares of the land now used for farming to be set aside for nature. 

Alternatively, on a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200 million people.

While animal manure might return carbon to the soil, in other respects, contrary to the claims of some practitioners, it is not a great soil additive. One paper reports that the leakage of nitrogen from organic farms using animal manure is 37% worse than the leakage from conventional farming using artificial fertiliser. The problem is timing. While artificial fertiliser often releases its nutrients too quickly, manure releases its nutrients too slowly. If the crop is not to starve, the dung needs to be spread long before the maximum growth spurt. Even then, the plants are unlikely to receive all the nutrients they need to reach their full potential. Nitrogen from manure leaks both before and after crops are able to mop it up.

 An analysis by Yadvinder Malhi suggests that between 10 and 50 sq km of land is needed to support one hunter-gatherer, while 10 sq km of modern, productive farming can feed 4,000 people. 

Global food production has been comfortably beating population growth for 60 years. In 1961, there were 2,200 kcals a day available for every person on Earth. By 2011, this had risen to almost 2,900. Crop production as a whole has risen much higher: to an astonishing total of 5,400 kcal per person per day. But almost half these calories are lost, mainly through feeding the food to farm animals, but also through using it for other purposes (such as biofuels) and through waste. Even so, in principle, there is more than enough for everyone, if it were affordable and well distributed. So how come chronic hunger has been rising globally since 2015? It’s the result of a lethal combination of inequality and systemic instability in global food distribution.

George Monbiot: ‘On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200 million people’ | Books | The Guardian

 The world’s most valuable company is the giant Saudi Aramco, as soaring commodity prices swell profits at energy companies. Aramco, whose market capitalisation has climbed by a quarter this year to hit $2.43tn, stoked by the surge in oil prices since the Ukraine war began. Aramco is seeing bumper revenues and earnings, having doubled its profits last year. Aramco has a particularly low cost of production, as much of its oil is in easy-to-tap fields onshore or in shallow waters. That boosts profitability at the company, which is still 95% owned by the Saudi government.

Apple has lost its crown and was eclipsed on Wednesday night amid the ongoing rout on Wall Street. Shares in Apple, which had become the world’s first $3tn company in early January, sank another 5% on Wednesday, knocking its value down to $2.37tn (£1.94tn) – an 18% drop this year.

Saudi Aramco overtakes Apple as world’s most valuable company | Aramco | The Guardian

 Russia

Number of people arrested so far for participating in antiwar protests = 15,442 (including 100 indicted on criminal charges)

Number of people subjected to administrative penalties for ‘discrediting the armed forces’ = 993

Three people arrested for damaging giant letters Z, erected as war symbols

Molotov cocktails thrown at military recruitment centers in four towns and at a police bus in Moscow (used to detain protestors) 

Antiwar posters hung in Tver city center after surveillance cameras turned off 

Transparency poster hung from bridge in Perm with the old anarchist slogan: Peace to the Cottages, War on the Palaces (see illustration)

20—40% of contract soldiers who have returned from Ukraine refuse to go back

Women in Caucasus blocked a road, demanding that the authorities inform them of the fate of sons, brothers and husbands sent to fight in Ukraine  

Ukraine

Many men who went abroad temporarily to earn money and send it home are defying a new law requiring them to return to Ukraine within 15 days or face up to 10 years in prison. Many intend to bring out their families, renounce Ukrainian citizenship and settle permanently in other countries. 

In Khust in the west Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, women are protesting outside the town’s military recruitment center. On April 30 about 50 women broke windows to get into the building. They accepted recruitment of their male relatives to ‘territorial defense’ units on the understanding that these were local units, but are angry that they have now been sent to fight in the Donbass, without even the necessary equipment. 

Source: https://aitrus.info/node/5963, May 11 via Ukraine war: resistance continues – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

Potential tipping points – where gradual decline suddenly becomes catastrophic – include loss of wildlife, fisheries collapse and dead, polluted rivers, the watchdog said.  The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP)is a new official body set up after Brexit to hold the government to account. Its first report says ministers have shown ambition but that action is too slow.

“We’re asking the government to recognise that tipping points are fast approaching in some areas. Because if it doesn’t, it’s going to be so much harder,” said Dame Glenys Stacey, the OEP chair. “When you get to very limited numbers of wildlife species, the effort involved in turning that around is immense and takes an awful long time.”

Simon Brockington, the OEP’s chief insights officer, said: “A tipping point arises at the point where a very slow and persistent decline suddenly becomes catastrophic. We’re seeing long-term declines in biodiversity and we’re calling on the government to address those. The serial setting of catch quotas above catch limits over time can lead to fish stock crash and we’ve seen many examples of that.” He also highlighted seabed trawling, which he said “destroys the integrity of the ecosystem”, and the pollution of farmland and rivers with fertilisers and livestock manure. “For tipping points, it would be those I would highlight,” he said.

Natalie Prosser, the watchdog’s chief executive, said the UK was one of the most biodiversity-depleted countries in the world, and air pollution caused tens of thousands of deaths a year. “Changes in climate are affecting the environment and biodiversity. We are heading towards a major tipping point.”  She said the government had missed many environmental targets, and funding for monitoring the environment had fallen in the last 10 years.

Richard Benwell, the head of Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of 65 nature and conservation charities, said: “It has been 10 years since the government promised to pass on the environment in better condition – 10 years in which biodiversity has continued to decline. The OEP poses a simple challenge: that overarching ambition must now be rooted in ambitious targets and an urgent delivery strategy.”

Joan Edwards, of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “For all the initial promise of the 25-year environment plan, the government has been seriously dragging its feet. Targets for reversing nature’s decline are so unambitious that in 20 years’ time we could have even less wildlife than we have now. The steps outlined by the OEP provide a framework for government to deliver on its promises, but we need much greater political willpower.”

For months, international NGOs and UN agencies have been warning that the unprecedented outpouring of funding and compassion for Ukraine is diverting attention from some of the world’s other humanitarian crises.

 Only just two out of 10 people in Britain are aware that the worst drought in 40 years is taking place and threatening famine. According to polling commissioned by Christian Aid, while 91% of the British public is aware of Vladimir Putin’s war, only 23% know about the worsening humanitarian crisis in east Africa.

As the war in Ukraine rages, the combined effect of three failed rainy seasons has pushed parts of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia to the brink, killing livestock, forcing people to leave their homes and increasing levels of child malnutrition. The Russian invasion has exacerbated the situation, pushing up the price of staples such as wheat and sunflower oil, as well as fuel.

Patrick Watt, CEO of Christian Aid, said the findings were “deeply concerning”.

“Across the Horn of Africa, up to 20 million people are facing hunger. Droughts have become increasingly severe and frequent, and so this is not a surprise. However, the war in Ukraine has turned a bad situation into a dire crisis. With rocketing food and energy costs around the globe, we are seeing people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing a crisis like no other,” said Watt. “While we cannot thank the public enough for their response to humanitarian needs in Ukraine, the fact that so few people in Britain are aware of the crisis in the Horn of Africa is deeply concerning. “We must sound the alarm and give hope to people in need in the region. The cost of living crisis is global and demands urgent action from the government and the development sector,” Watt said.

In Somalia, about 6 million people, 40% of the population, are suffering extreme levels of hunger, and the World Food Programme warned last month there was “a very real risk of famine” if the drought continued and assistance wasn’t received.

In Kenya, the number of people in need of food assistance has risen more than fourfold in less than two years, WFP said. In southern and south-eastern Ethiopia an estimated 7.2 million people wake up hungry every day, it added.

Hunger crisis grips Horn of Africa – but 80% of Britons unaware, poll shows | Global development | The Guardian

Ever wondered how billionaires accumulate their wealth? Elon Musk pushes his workers ‘s at Tesla’s massive Shanghai ‘Giga-factory’ to the limit to meet production targets amid an ongoing pandemic lockdown. 

 Musk called upon American workers to emulate his Chinese factory workers. Chinese and American labor norms have clashed in recent years, as bosses pit workers against each other.

“There is just a lot of super talented hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing,” the billionaire said. “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3am oil, they won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”

Eli Friedman, a China labor expert and associate professor of international and comparative labor at Cornell University’s ILR School, said Musk’s remark should be understood in the “broader context of American corporations taking advantage not just of the low cost of labor in China, but the flexibility”. For bosses like Musk, “that’s the comparative advantage: the fact that you have hundreds of thousands of workers that you can literally wake up in the middle of the night and put them on the production line,” Friedman said. “It’s tapping into a kind of Orientalist narrative about these kind of robotic Chinese workers who, [Musk] says in a sort of valorized way, that this is a good thing,” the researcher added.

In April, Tesla restricted its Shanghai workers from leaving the factory under a so-called “closed-loop” system originally developed by Chinese authorities to contain Beijing Olympics participants. While locked inside, the workers were reportedly made to work 12-hour shifts, six days in a row, and to sleep on factory floors. 

Labor rights and safety violations have been reported at Tesla’s Shanghai factory since it opened in 2018, with some workers making as little as $1,500 a month in what an investigation by local journalists called the “Giga-sweatshop.”

Even in the United States, Musk is well known for his disregard for labor norms and work-life balance: the tech billionaire infamously declared “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”. He has bragged about making Tesla’s US employees work 100-hour weeks, while claiming to have worked 120-hour weeks himself. 

Musk’s practices are on par with China’s extreme work culture, nicknamed “996”, in which workers are expected to work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The practice has been the source of protests in recent years and has been characterized as a form of modern slavery. 

China’s gruelling culture of extreme hours has been celebrated by tech billionaires in the country, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma, who has called the “996” system a “huge blessing”, and rival company JD.com’s Richard Liu, who has called workers who work fewer hours “slackers”.

Officially, Chinese labor law mandates a 40-hour work week, with employees allowed up to 36 hours of overtime a month – which would come out to just over a 48-hour work week. But that’s not what happens in practice. 

“There’s no pretence anywhere that that’s enforced,” said Friedman. “Excessive overtime is kind of a built-in feature of the whole model of industrial development in China. Very long hours and compulsory overtime, while not legal, are also completely the norm. And this is done regularly in consultation with local governments who are also tasked with enforcing the labor law.” 

Employees in China are often asked to sign a “striver’s pledge” which waives their right to overtime pay and paid time off. And while many corporations in China have unions, the unions are funded by the employer, which makes them essentially powerless to negotiate against management, Friedman noted.

 The Wall Street Journal revealed that some of the US-based employees at Chinese-owned TikTok were expected to pull back-to-back all-nighters and spend as many as 85 hours a week in meetings to keep up with their Chinese colleagues. The 2019 Netflix documentary “American Factory” described the conflicts that arose after a Chinese billionaire, Cao Dewang, opened a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant in Ohio. “American workers are not efficient, and output is low,” Cao complained at one point in the film. “I can’t manage them.”

The grim backdrop to Musk’s comments is that “American workers are in a very subjugated position as well, unfortunately”, said Friedman. “The not-at-all subtle threat is that these Chinese workers are a threat to you white American workers. If you don’t meet that standard, then your jobs are on the line.”

However, in recent years, a growing movement of Chinese workers has stood up to oppose overwork, with some activists using tools like GitHub to compile lists of Chinese companies accused of violating labor laws. Anger over the country’s extreme work culture intensified last January after a 22-year-old worker for Shanghai-based e-commerce firm Pinduoduo collapsed and died after leaving work at 1.30am, after a run of brutally long shifts. Incidents like these helped drive a trend among young Chinese social media users early last year promoting “tang ping”, or “lying flat” as a passive protest against work, which has since been restricted on the Chinese internet. Later in the year, China’s top court ruled that forced and excessive overtime was illegal, but the ruling has not been well enforced. Work stoppages, often unofficial “wildcat” strikes, continue to occur regularly in China.

Elon Musk praises Chinese workers for ‘burning the 3am oil’ – here’s what that really looks like | Elon Musk | The Guardian

 Trump officials “collaborated” with the meatpacking industry to downplay the threat of Covid to plant workers and block public health measures which could have saved lives, an investigation by the congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis revealed.

At least 59,000 workers at five of the largest meatpacking companies – Tyson Foods, JBS USA Holdings, Smithfield Foods, Cargill, and National Beef Packing Company which are the subject of the congressional inquiry – contracted Covid in the first year of the pandemic, of whom at least 269 died.

Industry representatives lobbied government officials to stifle “pesky” health departments from imposing evidence-based safety measures to curtail the virus spreading – and tried to obscure worker deaths from these authorities.

 The companies were warned about workers and their families falling sick within weeks of the virus hitting the US. Despite this, company representatives enlisted industry-friendly Trump appointees at the USDA to fight their battles against Covid regulations and oversight.

As Covid spread, the industry was warned about the high risk of transmission in their plants. For example, a doctor near the JBS facility in Cactus, Texas, wrote to a company executive in April 2020 saying “100% of all Covid-19 patients we have in the hospital are either direct employees or family member[s] of your employees”, warning that “your employees will get sick and may die if this factory continues to be open”.

In late May 2020 – well after the importance of prevention measures such as testing, social distancing, and personal protective equipment was widely recognized – an executive told an industry lobbyist that temperature screening was “all we should be doing”. The lobbyist agreed, replying “Now to get rid of those pesky health departments!”

In addition, company executives intentionally stoked fears about meat shortages in order to justify continuing to operate the plants under dangerous conditions. The fears were baseless – there were no meat shortages in the US, while exports to China hit record highs.

Yet in April 2020, Trump issued an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to keep meat plants open following a flurry of communication between the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the vice president’s office, USDA allies and company executives. The order, which was proposed by Smithfield and Tyson (whose legal department also wrote the draft), was an overt attempt to override health departments and force meat plant workers – who are mostly immigrants, refugees and people of color – to keep working without adequate protections while shielding the industry from lawsuits.

Documents show that:

In March 2020, the industry aggressively lobbied USDA officials, who in turn escalated their wishes to former vice-president Mike Pence’s office, to ensure states were advised to designate meatpacking workers as “critical infrastructure” employees who could be exempt from social distancing and stay at home orders. This conduct was “particularly egregious considering that the nation’s meat supply was not actually at risk”, the subcommittee found.

Mindy Brashears, the undersecretary of food safety, was considered the go-to fixer, who could stop health departments enforcing Covid safety measures at local plants. Brashears “hasn’t lost a battle for us”, said one lobbyist.

Career USDA staff told the congressional subcommittee how they were sidelined, while Brashears and her deputies communicated with industry officials on their personal phones in order to avoid leaving a paper trail.

Meatpacking companies also successfully lobbied USDA officials to advocate for Department of Labor policies that deprived their employees of benefits if they missed work or quit, while also seeking insulation from legal liability if workers then fell ill or died.

As reports of Covid clusters at meatpacking plants increased, industry officials and the USDA jointly lobbied the White House to dissuade frightened workers from staying home or quitting. For instance in April 2020 the CEOs of JBS, Smithfield and Tyson among other companies asked the secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue during a call to “elevate the need for messaging about the importance of our workforce staying at work to the POTUS or VP level”.

It worked. At a press briefing soon after, Mike Pence told meatpacking workers that “we need you to continue … to show up and do your job”, admonishing recent “incidents of worker absenteeism”.

The report concludes: “Meatpacking companies knew the risk posed by the coronavirus to their workers and knew it wasn’t a risk that the country needed them to take. They nonetheless lobbied aggressively – successfully enlisting USDA as a close collaborator in their efforts – to keep workers on the job in unsafe conditions, to ensure state and local health authorities were powerless to mandate otherwise, and to be protected against legal liability for the harms that would result.”

James Clyburn, chairman of the subcommittee, condemned the conduct of the industry executives and their government allies as “shameful”.

“Trump’s political appointees at USDA collaborated with large meatpacking companies to lead an administration-wide effort to force workers to remain on the job during the coronavirus crisis despite dangerous conditions, and even to prevent the imposition of commonsense mitigation measures. This coordinated campaign prioritized industry production over the health of workers and communities, and contributed to tens of thousands of workers becoming ill, hundreds of workers dying, and the virus spreading throughout surrounding areas.”

The subcommittee investigation into the meatpacking industry’s response to the pandemic was launched in February 2021 following reports that meat companies had refused to take adequate safety measures precautions to protect workers during the first year of the pandemic. Last year, the subcommittee found that the illness and death toll at plants owned by the five big meatpackers had been grossly underestimated, and that the companies put profits over worker safety.

The meatpacking industry, which includes slaughterhouses and processing plants – is one of the most profitable and dangerous in the US. It is a monopoly business, with just a handful of powerful multinationals dominating the supply chain which, even before Covid, was bad news for farmers, workers, consumers and animal welfare.

Trump officials and meat industry blocked life-saving Covid controls, investigation finds | Meat industry | The Guardian

India is home to about 18 per cent of people in the world.

Inequalities have been increasing recently to record levels. According to the World Inequality Report, after years of significant reduction of inequalities in the post-independence period, inequalities are coming back to their colonial levels in recent times. This report tells us that the bottom 50% have only 6% of the wealth, while the top 1% have 33% of the wealth. The bottom 50% have only 13% of the income, while the top 1% have 22% of the income.Despite growing claims of significant reduction of poverty, in reality there are signs of increasing economic distress. A number of ill-advised decisions, including demonetization, tax changes and sudden, longer than necessary lockdowns led to big setbacks in smaller-scale, unorganized, informal sector of economy, causing loss of millions of livelihoods. Informal workers, construction workers, migrant workers, domestic workers, crafts-persons, handloom weavers, several small entrepreneurs have suffered big losses from which they have not yet recovered. Prices of several essential goods and services have increased sharply. While staple cereals are generally subsidized, a real relief, there has been increasing difficulty for millions in terms of affordability of  accessing proteins and  essential micro nutrients in the form of pulses, vegetables, fruits, oilseeds, milk etc. Costs of house rent, fuel, tea, some widely needed medicines, school fees are also increasing for most people. Hence despite food subsidies the number of people suffering from denial of basic needs, malnutrition, loss of livelihood, unemployment, reduction of income, indebtedness and poverty has been increasing, even though this is not admitted officially.Dalit communities, those who have been poorest in a historical context, now face a double whammy of loss of some traditional livelihoods as well as reduced opportunities of reservation based government jobs, keeping in view lesser government posts being filled as well as privatization. They also suffer due to the wider unemployment crisis in the informal sector and the clampdown on land redistribution. Support for several education and rehabilitation schemes for them has become more erratic with several recent cuts. Dalit leaders known for their assertiveness have been frequently victimized.Tribal communities have faced loss of land due to many-sided displacement and higher-than-anticipated rejection of claims under Forest Rights Act. Many of their forest-based livelihoods and support-bases are reducing while the opportunities for government employment have reduced too.Workers have seen an erosion of some of their hard earned gains in the course of the ongoing codification of labor laws. There are fears of longer working hours, more of hire and fire trends and other higher risks. Construction workers face high uncertainty regarding benefits of 1996 special laws for them even as attempts to stabilize these gains on the basis of recent court orders were being made. Increasing accidents in a wide range of industries are a cause for growing concern. Many outdoor workers ( farm workers, construction workers, NREGA workers etc.) and farmers face increasing heat stress and related health problems with remedial measures not yet in place.Women have faced the worst impacts of the increasing unemployment and reduced income in the informal sector. Domestic workers have experienced increasing debts and reduced income. Women employed in large numbers in health and nutrition schemes have been forced to live with low and frequently delayed wages. The benefits meant for mothers under Matra Vandana scheme have been curtailed much and even in reduced form could not reach many mothers. Crimes against women have increase in several contexts, even as important schemes like Nirbhaya to help women victims have been under-utilized.It has been becoming increasingly clear that the number of disability affected people has been seriously under-estimated and therefore the already low allocations made for their welfare are in fact even lower than what was believed earlier. Pensions have stagnated at very low levels, as has budget for institutional support. Recently alarming low utilization of funds meant for their welfare has been reported in some contexts.Inter-faith harmony has been increasingly disturbed and minorities have become much less secure than before. This is particularly true of the Muslim minority but others like Christians have also suffered in some places. Minority members have been attacked and lynched while the response to punish those responsible for such tragic incidents or to take protective measures has been much less than adequate. There have been attacks and provocations regarding the livelihoods, food, dresses and places of worship of minorities which should have been avoided. Controversies relating to history of places of worship which have led to much disturbance of peace and loss of precious human lives in the past are again being unleashed at more places. There are attempts to misinterpret history to create inter-faith disharmony and the authorities often appear to be supportive of this instead of checking this.There is increasing intolerance of dissent. There is more control over media and victimization of independent media persons and organizations. A significant number of political dissenters have been imprisoned, despite frequent allegations of arbitrary action not based on factual evidence. Political prisoners and dissenters have frequently faced injustice as seen in the highly tragic death of Jesuit priest Fr. Stan Swamy in the course of his imprisonment. Social activists and their organizations have faced frequent harassment and unreasonable, arbitrary restrictions.Even the gulf between the government and the mainstream opposition has increased drastically with important persons in the ruling establishment giving the call for Congress-mukt Bharat or the country being entirely devoid of the leading opposition party, something which never happened before. The non-transparent system of election bonds has been widely criticized for favoring the ruling party heavily to amass funds and setting up a system of legalized corruption.In agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries, forestry and food-processing the increasing domination of big business interests can play havoc with crucial issues of sustainability, nutrition and health, as seen in recent decisions relating to gene edited cops, spread of sexed semen technology to eliminate birth of bullocks, rice fortification and rapid increase in dependence on palm oil for meeting edible oil needs. Despite the warning given by farmers against big business domination in the course of their recent agitation and the subsequent withdrawal of the three controversial farm laws by the government, the rapid drift towards big business domination of farm and food system has increased. This is happening at a time of worldwide increasing concern over the alarming implications of food trade as well as seeds and patents getting increasingly concentrated in a few gigantic companies and the use of GM technology by them leading to very serious and irreversible harm. In big business led models of development, small farmers face increasing threats of survival, on top of the high and increasing rates of displacement already suffered by them. Problems of high costs and indebtedness continue to increase for farmers, while at the same time they have been exposed to more adverse weather and disasters in times of climate change.Promises relating to rapid reduction of river pollution have not been fulfilled due to wrong approach and poor implementation. At the same time much bigger threats to river systems have appeared due to the reckless pursuit of gigantic river-linking project at national level. Due to human made factors, already several rivers are much more prone to causing more destructive flash floods than before, while in other contexts problems of excessive depletion of river flow is a riding concern. River bank communities have been reporting erosion of river related livelihoods. Overall water crisis has continued to intensify in times of climate change as provision of more taps and pipelines is not linked to more water in basic water sources, groundwater level continues to decline in many places and water bodies experience increasing encroachment, pollution and sand mining.Despite increasing forest cover being mentioned by official sources, there are many, many reports of avoidable cutting of a very large number of trees and forests being destroyed or threatened. There is increase threat to biodiversity even in highly sensitive zones, for example in the North East and Andaman Nicobar by spread of plantations for obtaining palm oil and in Uttarkashi –Gangotri stretch by axing deodars for road widening.Environmental clearances and appraisals have been increasingly influenced to favor business interests, regulations have weakened and many ecologically destructive projects are being cleared rapidly.Despite claims to the contrary and notwithstanding the high vulnerability to climate change and related serious environmental problems, the country has lagged behind in mitigation as well as adaptation tasks. Already we can see the worsening of disasters like floods, landslides, cyclones, droughts and heat wavesIn many cities pollution has become an increasingly serious problem threatening the health of millions, with the poor and the homeless exposed much more. Threats of heat waves have increased more for slum areas, more congested and less green areas. Yet even in such difficult times, many slum populations are being threatened with demolition and eviction, ignoring the recommendation of on-site development. This as well as increasing urban poverty and unemployment, decline of public housing schemes and increasing rents can result in further big increase of homeless people in our cities, including women and children.The vulnerability and weaknesses of health system have been increasingly exposed in pandemic times and despite increasing evidence that a profit dominated health system is least suitable for health needs of India, the trend is even more in this direction.

Where Truth Lies

It seems there’s a self-appointed elite

Who are the exception that proves their rule,

And consider it’s only for the common fool

To abide by their laws; such their conceit.

These are leaders, those special chosen few,

Rising like Messiahs above the herd,

Convinced that truth is a flexible word

And a word can mean what they want it to.

Should they ever be caught telling a lie,

It will turn out they had their fingers crossed,

Or, perhaps, truth is a lie that’s been glossed,

And who cares anyway, let it pass by.

Follow my leader is just blind man’s buff,

And while folk shrug, leaders are secure enough.

D.A.