Political Colours

 

The Red wall fell, whatever shall folk do?

And yet, although the seats were rearranged

The voters soon found out nothing had changed,

Even if the language was somewhat Blue.

Perhaps a Liberal wash of yellow might

Lighten prospects, or prove a washout.

Whatever the colour, there’s surely no doubt

Without a real change the future’s not bright.

The Greens promise a profound schism

With the old order, a radical stance,

But then succumb to a Scottish romance

Of populist, petty nationalism.

 

For workers to wrest the world from their bosses,

It’ll take more than swapping ballot box crosses.

 

D. A.

 Raj Patel is the author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System, and has an article in The Guardian which contains many pertinent points. 

“…Scratch the surface of a bar of chocolate, a tuna sandwich, or even a chicken nugget, and you find the horrors of international trade: violence, exploitation, poverty and profit. Capitalist logic is everywhere the same, but countries are capitalist in their own ways…”

“…The legacy of the United States’ founding racial territorial conquest and domination can be read off the Department of Labor’s occupational data. In 2020, the whitest and most racially segregated job in this settler state was the appraising of property (96.5% of appraisers are white), and the second whitest was managing a farm (96.3%). It is hardly a coincidence that the largest farmland owner in the United States is one of the country’s richest men: Bill Gates…”

“…In the United States, the legacy contradictions within the food system are particularly acute. Seven out of the 10 worst-paying jobs in America are in the food system, and women are overrepresented in them. Nearly a third of families headed by single mothers are likely to be food insecure, and food insecurity is systematically higher in communities of people of colour…”

“…Tipping was a European feudal relic imported to the United States by the well-travelled Victorian-era American upper class. Initially, it was widely reviled. Even as late as 1905, it was possible to find restaurants in St Louis with signs in the window announcing “No tipping! Tipping is not American.”

Tipping stuck in the United States because it helped keep employers’ wage bill low, and fit with racist sentiments like those of journalist John Speed who wrote, “Tips go with servility, and no man who is a voter in this country is in the least justified in being in service.” The Pullman car company hired Black men from the south to work because “he is more adapted to wait on people and serve with a smile”. The minimum wage for tipped employees hasn’t increased since 1991 – it’s still $2.13 an hour…Tipping was resisted not just by those in the US who considered it an insidious European import. Workers read it correctly as an opportunity for bosses to lower wages. In 1911, the International Hotel Workers Union “demanded higher wages and no necessity of depending on tips”. When the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was organized in 1925, in defiance of the Pullman Company, one of its first orders of business of this first Black trade union was to petition for a ban on tipping.“

 “…Through treaties at the World Trade Organization, and through Nafta, the US has done everything from generate an epidemic of diet-related disease in Mexico to decimate peasant food production in the global south. But the US is happy to blame the migrants fleeing the economic consequences of US agribusiness. And yet, the US continues to have a farm sector dependent on migrant labor…”

“…“Food justice” is a term that is intelligible only because oppressed and exploited communities have organized for redress against the predations of US capitalism. The US was made by finding ever lower labour costs, and workers always fought back. Food justice, and its opposite, are of a piece…”

“Although the myth of cowboys insists that they ranged alone, seldom hearing discouraging words, the truth was that they were exploited as a class and knew it. Wages were low and workers were frustrated by wage theft and underpayment. In 1883, they organized an illegal strike, one that spread from Texas to Wyoming. Timing their actions to the spring “harvest”, when investors were about to receive their profits, cowboys united to demand higher wages, better coffee, and the demand that cooks on the trail be paid as well as anyone else. For a while, they won, at least until 1888, when a combination of industry restructuring, anti-worker organizing by bosses, and brutal weather broke the back of worker militancy.

Further down the beef production chain, unions in Chicago’s squalid meatpacking industry were recruiting. In Upton Sinclair’s classic 1907 novel The Jungle, workers aren’t passive amid the filth and horrors heaped upon them. They strike back. For a while, it even looked like they might win sweeping change. The final sentences are a hymn to the inevitability of socialism in Chicago…”

“…Battles over food justice continue in the United States. A recent Guardian/Northwestern University investigation pointed to the persistent racial divide in the food system. In Texas, Black families reported hunger four times more often than white families, and in the week before Christmas 2020, 81 million people were food insecure…”

Full article can be read here

Food injustice has deep roots: let’s start with America’s apple pie | Food | The Guardian

James Connolly is better known for his nationalist martyrdom, being executed for participating in Dublin’s Easter Rising. However, he was previously the founder of the Socialist Labour Party in Scotland, emigrating to the United States to become a full-time organiser for the American SLP. He also became an activist in the Industrial Workers of the World. The following essay is a reminder of his socialist origins.

In every discussion on the aims and objects of a Socialist Party some one is sure to bring up the objection that even if the Socialist Party were to conquer their opponents, and make an effort to establish their ideal as a political and social edifice, the difficulties which would arise out of the inability of the common people to understand the complexity of the social system they were called upon to administer, would infallibly produce the downfall of the new order. This objection is, it seems to us, rather far fetched in view of the circumstance that the majority of those who at the present day are entrusted with the work of organizing and administering the capitalist system are completely ignorant of every development of the system outside of their own particular sphere of employment.

It is not at all necessary that everyone, or even a very large number, of those engaged in labour should be able to give an intelligent account of the multifarious processes of production, nor yet that they should be qualified even to trace the passage of the commodities upon which they are employed through all their stages from the crudity of the raw material up to the perfection of the finished product as it eventually reaches the hands of the purchaser. It is only necessary that each worker should perform with due skill and scrupulosity his own allotted task; to the few required as organisers of industry may be left the work of adjusting and interlocking the parts. Even this latter function – formidable as it may look when thus baldly stated – may be reduced to a mere automatic function to be executed as a part of the routine work of a clerical staff.

Any person reflecting upon the mechanism of the capitalist system can readily perceive how little its most important arteries of commerce are dependent upon international organisation, and how much upon the reciprocal action of the economic interests involved at first hand. Where the international organization of Socialism will indeed come into play it will come to smooth over and simplify many of the difficulties which are constantly arising under capitalism as a result of the clashing of personal interests. Hence the Socialist organisation of industry will preserve the effectiveness due to the development of capitalism whilst entirely obviating the friction and disputes capitalist competition entails.

It is well also to remember the multitude of things which in civilised society we are all compelled to take upon trust at the word of others. It is safe to say that what is called ‘progress’, or civilisation, would be impossible were each individual in the community, or even a majority, to insist upon acquiring a complete theoretical and technical mastery of, say, each new application of Science to the needs of life before consenting to allow its use. There are few persons nowadays who would shrink from trusting themselves to railway trains, even although in all but complete ignorance of the mechanism of the steam engine, signal-boxes, points, and brakes; we have had gas in our houses, shops, and public buildings for several generations, but to this day the number of those who really understand the processes of gas production, storage, and distribution are extraordinarily few, yet that does not prevent us using it despite its well known poisonous and explosive nature. And so we might go on enumerating many things in daily use – the use of which involves risk to life – which are accepted and freely utilised by people at large without stopping to acquire a perfect knowledge of their active principle.

Much the same might be said of the pretended wonderful and mysterious results to be attained under Socialism – results too wonderful to be realised. In Socialism there is nothing so abnormal that its realisation could exceed in strangeness things we see around us every day, and composedly accept with the greatest equanimity. In the proposition that the community can so arrange the work of production and distribution that plenty can be provided for every human being, there is nothing, in view of present day machinery, half so extraordinary as the fact that if a gentleman sitting down to dinner in Dublin sends a telegram to a friend in Australia that friend will have received said telegram before his Dublin correspondent could have finished the final course of his repast. The fact that people in Ireland were reading accounts of battles in South Africa, 7,000 miles off, while those battles were still in progress, is far more intrinsically wonderful than a system of society in which labour enjoys the product of its toil, and neither hereditary tyrants nor capitalist exploiters are tolerated.

If these stranger developments have been accepted whilst Socialism is still rejected, it is because the personal economic interests of the classes controlling the educative and governing forces of the world are in line with such developments, while the same personal economic interests of those classes are as directly opposed to Socialism. But the workers are in the majority, and their interests are in line with Socialism, which may, therefore, be realised as soon as they desire, and are resolute enough to put their desires into practice.

Difficulties of Capitalism

We propose to treat of a few of the Difficulties of Capitalism. In this connection we would point out that the critics of Socialism invariably devote their energies to demonstrating how far a Socialist system would fall short of ideal perfection, and, having so demonstrated to their own satisfaction, they affect to conclude that the last word has been said, and argument is at an end. It may perhaps surprise such critics to learn that such a line of argument leaves untouched the real contention of the Socialist Party which nowhere proposes that Socialism will escape the taint of fallibility due to all institutions of human origin, but only that the establishment of our social arrangements on a Socialist basis will ensure material prosperity to all men and women, and by so ensuring leave the race full freedom to seek for such expression of its faculties as is best suited to their varying characters. It does not assume that with the advent of Socialism all the evil of our nature will immediately disappear, that love, hate, ambition, lust, envy and all the forces which in our complex natures make for the stirring up of strife and discord, will be instantly eradicated, and the earth take on the aspect of Paradise. But it does contend that Poverty and the crimes born of poverty may be banished, and that with the elimination of the economic struggle from our life the intellectual forces which to-day expend themselves in striving for mastery will find expression in avenues of greater helpfulness, and individuals seek renown as benefactors instead of exploiters of their species.

Our sapient critics likewise forget that the line of argument which consists solely in discovering possible flaws in a future state of society is permissible only to those who defend a state of society in itself flawless. Such capitalist society obviously is not. Its glaring contradictions are so many and so apparent that many of its most zealous defenders rely for their success in maintaining its integrity intact upon their skill in impressing the ignorant multitude with the belief that reform is hopeless, and, therefore, politics a mere waste of time. The space at our disposal would not permit of the mention of a tithe of the problems and difficulties, the contradictions and absurdities, which abound in the very nature of capitalism, but a brief enumeration of a few of these may be of use in serving to convince the less obtuse of our critics that they are playing with a two edged sword when they speak of the difficulties Socialism may have before it.

Why is it necessary that human beings should work at all? In order that the world may be supplied with goods, of course. Do we therefore rejoice when the world is so supplied? Oh, no, that is the greatest disaster we can imagine, for then we would be thrown idle, owing to over-production. We must labour in order to supply the world, and when the world is supplied we must starve because there is plenty for all and our labour is not needed.

Science and invention by increasing the productivity of our labour lessens the period necessary to stock the world’s markets, and thus, at one and the same time, lessens the period during which our labour is required and increases the duration of our compulsory idleness.

One difficulty – one insoluble difficulty – of capitalism is to devise a method whereby the march of science and inventive genius can assist industry without menacing the bread and butter of the working class.

Property of all kinds making for human comfort commands the respect of all men. Yet there are times when the unemployed building trades need not repine if a conflagration lays a street in ruins, or an earthquake wrecks some noble building; and we have known shipwrights to rejoice when some stately ship foundered in mid-ocean.

The world rejoices at the progress of medical science, yet the same healing art which withholds its victims from the grave robs the cemetery companies of their expected dividends, and the funeral undertakers of chances of earning a livelihood. Under capitalism matters of public calamity – war, pestilence, death – are often matters of private thanksgiving; the crepe on the widow’s bonnet finds its counterpoise in the breakfast on the grave-digger’s table.

When capitalism has made the private interest coincide with the common weal; when machinery becomes in reality ‘labour-saving’, and not as at present, wage-saving; when an overstocked market means for the worker a well stocked larder, and not idleness and hunger, then it will be time for our enemies to tell us of our future difficulties.

But under Capitalism that time will never come.

James Connolly,

Workers Republic, 1903

 

 Wednesday 5 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

“Did you see the news?”

Topical news discussion and quiz

Wednesday 12 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

FAQ: What if we had to start the Socialist Party from scratch?

The SPGB was born into a gas-lit Edwardian England of hansom cabs and handlebar moustaches. The Russians and Japanese were fighting with coal-powered battleships, the Belgians were committing atrocities in the Congo, and Louis Bleriot had not yet flown across the Channel. Our history is a legacy and an asset, but also perhaps a burden. If we had to start from scratch today, what would we do differently?

Wednesday 19 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

FAQ: Is it true that the rich are not the problem?

We say the system is the problem, not the people who benefit from it. But as the wealth gap continues to widen, could there come a point where individual billionaires and even trillionaires have such iron control of the planet that revolution is no longer possible?

Wednesday 26 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

FAQ – What’s it like being a socialist?

Speaker: Glenn Morris

Friday 28 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

 

 

Our South Wales comrades are holding a street stall to-day, Saturday 1 May, in Cardiff outside the Capitol Shopping Centre, Queen Street (Newport Road end) from 1pm-3pm.

We would very much welcome to be challenged on our ideas by our fellow-workers. 

Come along and pose your questions to Brian Johnson who is the Socialist Party candidate in the Welsh Parliament election. 

He and other members are only too happy to engage in a civil exchange of view-points with those who may disagree with our aims and principles. 

Always remember we are the only political party that calls for votes from only electors who understand and agree with our case for socialism. Otherwise, we say don’t vote for us.

 

Hilda McClatchie was married to Gilbert McClatchie, and was the sister of Adolph Kohn. She was General Secretary of the SPGB for a large part of the First World War when the Party’s membership was decimated because of the introduction of conscription, which resulted in many members either ‘going underground’ or going overseas. She would have been in her mid-twenties at the time.

From the May 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard



Don’t you sometimes think that it might be pleasant if your day’s work finished at the same time as your husband’s—or the average working man’s—even though his working day is too long?



Don’t you wish you could have 1½ days “off” a week, free from the constant worry of meals and work, an opportunity to enjoy life along with your menfolk?



You cannot heave a sigh of relief when the hooter goes, even though you have worked all day. The hooter only calls you to more work when the family return to meals. Don’t you wish you could leave your thoughts of work behind you at the same time as most men do?



How often are you able to fulfil the hopes of your youth and spend happy evenings with your husband? You are too tired and too busy to share his leisure time with him.



Why be content to scrape along week after week and year after year without relief from the same monotonous work when there are so many who live in luxury and yet have never worked? Surely the reward of work should be pleasure, and not misery and more work.



Has it never occurred to you that, instead of pottering about in your home all day and a good part of the night, it should be possible for the work to be done collectively (as in hotels and institutions), and the children could have large, airy nurseries and large gardens instead of the stuffy living rooms they now have.



Wouldn’t you like your children to have the same opportunities as the rich person’s child?



The first few years of a child’s life are most important, as not only do they naturally require a lot of care, but until they are about five years of age they are not able to go out for air by themselves, and air, as well as good food, they must have to prepare them for the future. The working-class mother cannot afford to employ a nursemaid to take the child out all day, and is not allowed to keep other children at home to do so. It is only at great sacrifice that she takes a child out for about two or three hours a day, and what a rush of work awaits her return. How can children be kept in first-class condition when they are stunted for want of air, and when the mother is too busy to give them the attention they require and cannot afford good food?

 

Don’t leave it to the men to improve your lot. You should understand the conditions under which you work better than they. You should know what scheming you have to do to make the week’s money buy what is required of it, just as other sections of workers know their own particular conditions best, the miner, factory worker, etc.

 

Organise yourselves. Ask yourselves why marriage and children should mean the abandonment of all your leisure and the weary, never-ending work.

 

Talk the matter over as to whether you cannot alter the existing state of affairs.

 

Wives and mothers, all women, in fact, you must not think that it is out of your reach to alter the state of affairs under which you live. You have a vote, and therefore a say in the matter as to how you should carry on. You must help to improve conditions along with the menfolk, if not for your own sake, at least for your children’s. You would not like them to struggle along just as you have done. It is not enough and no excuse to say that things will not alter in your lifetime, so why bother to think about it. That has been said too long, and if those who said it in the past had given the matter more serious attention and thought of their children, we would have been nearer getting our desires now. Your husband may be in work now, but you never know for how long. Your children may also have their turn at unemployment, and, as time goes on, the unemployment throng will tend to be greater even than now.

 

Is it fair to bring children into such an unpromising future without endeavouring to do your share in improving their opportunities ?

 

We all want to get the best the world can offer. Let me give you an illustration as to how you may obtain your desire in actual fact, and the illustration can be enlarged according to requirements. Suppose a number of women met and came to the conclusion that they could work better together on a large scale at specified work, and instead of each, as at present, being “head cook and bottle washer,” nursemaid, housemaid, kitchen maid, dressmaker and cook rolled into one, they decided to amalgamate and work collectively, with all its possibilities. How much more airy their surroundings could be, and how much less work there need be. It would take much less time in proportion to cook for 100 people collectively than for the same number in a number of houses as at present, to say nothing of present washing day troubles. Among the women carrying out this arrangement, no doubt some would be better at one type of work than another, so that, while some do the cooking, others do the sewing and others give their attention to the children, and perhaps have a change of work in turn. By this method the day’s work could be shortened for all, and if the men must do different work from the women, they could have more comfortable surroundings to return to and a companionable wife, instead of returning home to a small, crowded house or rooms and a harassed drudge, tired of the million and one jobs she has to perform.

 

If all people worked to produce what all require, and each had a guarantee that they would by that means be sure of getting the necessaries of life, there is no telling how soon the work could be done and what pleasures life could hold out.

 

Don’t think that it sounds all right, but your next-door neighbour could not be trusted to do things so well as yourself, because no doubt that neighbour is thinking the same of you.

 

As a general rule, every mother does her best for her offspring, however much they may differ from each other in temperament. It is only the cares of life and the narrowness of it that cause us to mistrust our neighbour. At bottom, we are all bent on getting as much pleasure out of life as we can, and if we can work better collectively, the struggle need not be so hard. Most of us prefer to enjoy ourselves collectively, do we not? You cannot improve matters on your own. Do not isolate yourselves so much, but get together and talk about things with a view to improving your lot.

 

Your grandmother carried on much as you are doing now. Must your children do likewise ?

 

Whether your family live by brains and your neighbours by muscle, or vice versa, both work hard, and should be alike as regards having the necessaries of life. If your family consists of various types of workers, surely you do not give one less to eat than another. You give them the best you have.

 

Why not apply the results of work in the same manner, collectively—each have the best obtainable, each do the best they can?

 

This is the end which the Socialist Party of Great Britain have in view and are organised to obtain. Not a pittance, but at least a sufficiency for all.

 

I said you have a vote and should therefore have a say as to how you should live. Why not?

 

Perhaps in our next issue I will tell you what the vote has to do with your present struggle, and how voting a particular way could relieve you of a harassed life.

 

… I promised to show you how you could improve your conditions of life by using your vote in the right direction. Now, in order to carry out that promise I intend using one particular instance, the remedy for which applies also to other troubles that arise from the present mode of living—that of only being able to obtain necessities if you have the money, although you have worked harder than those who have the luxuries. Apart from the everyday worry of providing food and clothing, the housing problem is a special worry at the moment—even to those who have the other necessities.

 

So we will see about the whys and wherefores and the way in which we can put things right.

 

Most of us are, or have been, faced with the difficulties of the housing problem, and instead of insisting that houses be built because they are urgently required, we take no organised action in the matter, but hope some day things will be better.

 

While we are putting up with antiquated and insanitary houses, we see all around us business premises being extended, garages and cinemas being built and old houses giving place to non-residential buildings, even though they be more commodious than those we live in, and still we are the silent sufferers and cast longing eyes and hope.

 

Much has been made of the housing problem at election times of late years, and at such times, if at no other, you manage to attend meetings or read circulars promising to alleviate your housing and other financial troubles.

 

The candidate who puts the case most plausibly gets your vote, then you leave him to carry out his promises and forget to notice whether he does so or not.

 

At the next election you do likewise, but somehow things seem just as bad as ever. You still find it a struggle to make ends meet, but the reason does not strike you, except, perhaps, that you put it down to your husband not getting enough money or that there are not enough houses built.

 

It is not that there are not enough land, building materials and workers to build houses (or materials for making clothes and food), but because there is not much profit to be made from building houses for the vast number requiring them, so that only those things are done which do produce a profit, this being the natural result of living in a system of society which is run on profit-seeking lines.

 

The various governments which have been in power since the war—the starting point of the present housing shortage—have done little to remedy the shortage. They have given the builders subsidies (which shows the power they can use) to encourage them to build, and the councils have made some effort to provide accommodation for those who could not afford to pay the market price. Does it not seem strange to you—if you will ponder a moment—that the obtaining of such important items as decent housing conditions, good food, etc., should depend, not on the needs of the people who do most of the work, but upon the profit-making of the few?

 

Now we come to the question. How and why is it that the majority of the people are worse off than their employers—the few? Mainly because the workers do not realise that their vote plays so important a part in influencing their conditions of life.

 

Let us remember that whatever government has been in power its influence has been used, for instance, in deciding industrial disputes, even to the extent of using the police, soldiers, etc., and don’t forget that those who have to work for a living are those who have the majority of votes and are themselves responsible for having elected the governments which have used their power against the workers.

 

Think what could be done if those who required houses, etc., organised together to get those needs fulfilled, recognising that one can do little by oneself.

 

What might take place is this :—

 

A candidate is elected to Parliament by the majority of voters in a particular locality. Since he (or she) represents the majority he could be made their servant— as it were—to carry out the wishes of that majority. He could be made, when attending the Central Organisation (Parliament) to put forward and endeavour to carry out the wishes of his electors.

 

Now most of you are quite clever at making a 1/- do the work of 2/- in various ways, saving, cooking, etc., but you might go on with that struggle for ever and your children likewise, if you do not try to devote at least a little of your time to thinking of how you can abolish that terrible nightmare of trying to make ends meet. Like the other jobs you are doing, it only requires practice and you will soon get the hang of it.

 

What is taking place in this country is, generally speaking, taking place in other up-to-date countries—therefore mothers, wives and others are faced with the same thoughts and problems and have similar methods of cure, too, if they only knew how to use the remedy. We are all in the same boat.

 

Under a more reasonable arrangement of society, if the majority decide that more houses or corn, clothes or fuel are required, then it would be easy enough for that majority to see that the factories, etc., are set to work to provide the necessary goods, whereas now the very goods the workers pile up for their masters they must very often go without until such time as the goods have been disposed of to somebody else.

 

The method of production and distribution under which the people freely use the goods that they make in common by common agreement, we call Socialism and those organised for that purpose are Socialists. This method of common ownership can be carried out successfully only when the majority vote in that direction and put their candidates forward to change the present system of a few owning all, to ownership by all, that is by society as a whole.

 

The rather hard lesson we all have to learn is that our everyday bread and butter questions can only be solved in what looks at first a roundabout method. To make our homes worth living in and to make our lives themselves more worth living, we have got to get together in a political organisation — the Socialist Party — for the purpose of gaining control of the key which will open all these closed doors. That key is Parliament. Parliament carries out the wishes of the majority. But if the majority have no decided views or are divided, the Capitalist minority will go on as now, running the world in the way which is very comfortable for them, but not for us. We tell you the way out, and we are sure that if you think about it you will sooner or later agree with us.

 

You have tried Conservative, Liberal and Labour. We ask you to try Socialism instead. But you must first understand what Socialism is and how it is to be attained.

 

When we ask for your vote it is not with the idea of promising to do something for you, but with the idea of getting you to join us in building up a system of society in which all will co-operate to produce and distribute the things needed by all. It is not a question involving bloodshed or violence. It only requires a majority of convinced Socialists to take organised political action through Parliament. We are workers just as you are, wives, labourers, clerks, bricklayers, managers, salesmen, shop assistants and unemployed, etc. Our needs are the same as yours. Help us to satisfy

them.

Hilda McClatchie

 “That’s the reality,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says.

 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally but 82% of them were given in high- and upper-middle-income countries.

Just 0.3% of all vaccines administered so far were given to people in low-income countries.

An article by Arundhati Roy, the author and activist, lays bare the reality of the Covid pandemic in India. 

 “…The “system” has collapsed, they say, again and again. The virus has overwhelmed India’s health care “system”.

The system has not collapsed. The “system” barely existed. The government – this one, as well as the Congress government that preceded it – deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was. This is what happens when a pandemic hits a country with an almost nonexistent public healthcare system. India spends about 1.25% of its gross domestic product on health, far lower than most countries in the world, even the poorest ones. Even that figure is thought to be inflated, because things that are important but do not strictly qualify as healthcare have been slipped into it. So the real figure is estimated to be more like 0.34%. The tragedy is that in this devastatingly poor country, as a 2016 Lancet study shows, 78% of the healthcare in urban areas and 71% in rural areas is now handled by the private sector. The resources that remain in the public sector are systematically siphoned into the private sector by a nexus of corrupt administrators and medical practitioners, corrupt referrals and insurance rackets.

Healthcare is a fundamental right. The private sector will not cater to starving, sick, dying people who don’t have money. This massive privatisation of India’s healthcare is a crime.

The system hasn’t collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps “failed” is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity. Virologists predict that the number of cases in India will grow exponentially to more than 500,000 a day. They predict the death of many hundreds of thousands in the coming months, perhaps more…

Fredrick Douglass said it right: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” How we in India pride ourselves on our capacity to endure. How beautifully we have trained ourselves to meditate, to turn inward, to exorcise our fury as well as justify our inability to be egalitarian. How meekly we embrace our humiliation…”

 Previously comfortably-off people who suffered sudden and massive drops in household income during the pandemic crisis recorded the sharpest increases in mental illness, according to a major survey.

While mental health worsened across all groups during the period, those forced to become newly dependent on universal credit and self-employment grants experienced the most dramatic and ongoing decline in mental wellbeing. 

“The pandemic took people who had been for decades living on a comfortable income into a totally different world overnight. The shock of that sudden drop towards the poverty line was enormous,” said Neil Smith, head of analysis at the National Centre for Social Research, which carried out the study. He said: “We can observe increased mental distress across the population as a consequence of the pandemic, but people faced with growing financial insecurity have been far harder hit than the financially secure. With the economic fallout of the pandemic expected to continue, the mental health of people relying on employment and benefits support during the crisis should not be ignored.”

The lowest rates of mental illness were people whose incomes increased during the pandemic – and those whose incomes were unaffected, often pensioners.

Sharp rise in mental illness among those whose income fell away during Covid | Coronavirus | The Guardian