Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Pegasus, the subversion of Indian Democracy

Pegasus, the subversion of Indian Democracy 

Suresh Kodoor

The explosive revelations by a consortium of news publications about citizens, including politicians, journalists, judges, activists, election commission and businessmen, being under illegal surveillance via a spyware called Pegasus is yet another eye-opener on how we are rapidly slipping into a banana surveillance republic. The enormity of the danger is not lost on anyone as the Indian democracy is staring down the barrel. Pegasus is the latest and most severe thus far in a series of attempts by this govt to subvert democracy. Pegasus symbolizes everything of a surveillance State and the tyranny spares none. Pegasus is not just a surveillance tool, but a cyber weapon unleashed on Indian democracy. None in their right minds would have even an iota of doubt on who did it. Just look at the target list and one would know who the beneficiary is and what the purpose of surveillance could be. This regime has clamped an undeclared emergency in the country where the institutions one after the other, the key pillars and watch guards of democracy, are being irrevocably destroyed forever. Pegasus no doubt is India’s Watergate, but the vast difference in responses tells a lot about how flimsy the Indian democracy yet is. No wonder the world has downgraded us as only ‘Partly Free’ and as a ‘Flawed Democracy’! The fall from being the ‘world’s largest democracy’ to a ‘flawed democracy’ has been sharp, rapid, dangerous and most disgraceful, especially under the current lot in power! The Pegasus snooping will only accelerate the degeneration with a devastating effect on democratic processes and institutions in our country. Pegasus spyware has been another weapon used by the govt to silence political opponents and others who dare to question those in power. It is very chilling to know that the surveillance software was used not only to track but even to plant fake digital evidences as found in the cases of the activists arrested in the elgar parishad case. Pegasus will be a litmus test for Indian Democracy as the response to it will decide whether we leave democracy to its demise or we want to defend it to the last drop.

What is Pegasus?

Pegasus is a spyware developed by an Israel Cyber intelligence and security firm called NSO Group. Pegasus enables the remote surveillance of mobile phones and makes the phone itself into a surveillance device. The Pegasus spyware is also known by names like Q-Suite and Trident. Pegasus is one of the most sophisticated among similar spyware products and it can infect both iOS and Android devices. Once infected, a phone becomes a digital spy under the attacker’s command and full control.

How it works?

WhatsApp had confirmed sometime in 2019 that some 1,400 of its users in 20 countries, including Indian journalists and activists, had been targeted by Pegasus in May that year. WhatsApp revealed that the spyware exploited its video calling system and a specific vulnerability called ‘zero-click zero-day’ to send malware to the mobile devices (WA fixed this vulnerability later).

Fake WhatsApp accounts are created and used for making video calls to the targeted phones. When the phone rings, the attacker would transmit the spyware to the device which would get auto-installed even if the user don't answer the call. The attacker will then take over the phone via Pegasus app, gaining access to the user's WhatsApp messages and calls (even the end-to-end encrypted calls and messages), regular live voice calls, text messages, passwords, contact lists, calendar events, location etc. The attacker can even control phone's microphone and the camera. The spyware can evade forensic analysis, anti-virus software etc. The attacker can even deactivate or remove the spyware completely whenever he wants (either because his mission is over or if he fears detection) without leaving any trace behind. It is designed to use very minimal bandwidth or charge so that the user never suspects anything unusual.

Earlier, at least until 2018, NSO Group employed methods relying on SMS and WhatsApp messages which will have fake or malicious links luring the users to open these links. Clicking on these links would lead to infection of their mobile devices. Such messages, in NSO’s parlance, are termed as ESEM Messages (Enhanced Social Engineering Messages) (eg. “Your IT returns rejected. Please check” or “You have won a prize. Confirm your mobile number clicking on the link”). When user clicks on a link contained in the ESEM messages, the device is connected to a server that will check the phone and install the malware. With people growing increasingly suspicious of such malicious links, NSO started employing new technologies called ‘network injections’. This method enables the attackers to install the spyware app without the target user doing any interactions (not clicking any links or accepting any calls). The Pegasus software gets installed through such zero-click installation on the devices. As per Pegasus’s brochure, all that is required is a target phone number for the ‘network injection’ and ‘the rest is done automatically by the system’. The spyware gets installed without anyone ever knowing. Once Pegasus gets installed, the infected phone is pretty much a ‘digital spy’ acting under the full control of the attacker.

What is Pegasus Project?

A Paris based non-profit journalism organization called ‘Forbidden Stories’ and the human-rights organization Amnesty International got access to a leaked list that contained tens of thousands of phone numbers across the world that were targeted by Pegasus Spyware. Forbidden Stories initiated and oversaw an investigation and Amnesty International’s Security Lab did all the forensic analyses and provided technology support for the probe (It is yet to be revealed who put the numbers on the list and why).

They shared the list after their investigation with a consortium of 17 media organizations world-wide that included ‘The Wire’ in India and the likes of ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The Guardian’ etc.

The consortium released the list on 19/Jul/21. The list contains 50,000 telephone numbers of people identified as potential targets for Pegasus during the period 2016 to 2021. Over 300 verified Indian phone numbers are in the list which included many Indian politicians (including Rahul Gandhi), activists (many of them currently in jail in the bhima koregaon/ershad parishad case, where the forensic analysis showed that materials were planted in their devices), business persons, journalists (mainly who are critical of the Modi government policies and governance). Ministers, election commissioner Mr.Ashok Lavasa (who has faulted the Prime Minister for election code violation), supreme court judges, former CBI chief, the women who complained against the former CJI for sexual harassment etc

Forensic test confirmation

While the presence of a number in the list does not necessarily mean it was hacked, investigators were able to confirm with forensic analysis that many phones were indeed hacked. A small sample of 37 phones, including 10 Indian phones, were subjected to forensic analysis by Amnesty International and found to show signs of Pegasus infection. None of these phones belonged to any criminals or terrorists, but they are all journalists, activists, businessmen or politicians. Independent verification done by Citizen Lab, a forensic lab setup at University of Toronto, has also confirmed Amnesty International's findings.

Democracy in danger

Such illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of political opponents and independent democratic institutions and custodians are nothing but subversion of democracy. NSO group's clients are all sovereign governments and are all autocracies such as Saudi Arabia or illiberal rightists governments like in Hungary. India finds herself in the list speaks volume about the state of democracy and citizen rights in our country. Right to privacy is a fundamental right of a citizen guaranteed by the constitution. Spying on citizens without their permission or even knowledge is illegal and govt is committing a cyber crime by doing so.

If even the constitutional institutions that are responsible for conducting free and fair elections are threatened through invasive surveillance, what hope do we have of protecting even the basic democratic rights of the citizens? If the political parties and leaders are spied on using Spywares by the govt in power (Rahul Gandhi’s phone was targeted between 2018 and mid-2019 during the Parliament election), even using it to topple elected state governments as seen in the case of Karnataka, what democracy are we talking about? Free media is the back-bone of a healthy democracy and if journalists who criticize govt are blackmailed and threatened and are spied on, such a system doesn't even deserve to be called 'democracy'!

An independent judiciary is the lifeblood of a democracy as it provides the most vital checks and balances. What is revealed now is that Pegasus has been used to spy on the women and her family who had raised sexual harassment complaint against the former CJI. It raises grave questions on whether the integrity of the CJI in question was compromised and whether the cases he presided over while being under suspicion, including cases like ayodhya,electoral bonds, Rafale and Kashmir, should be subjected to review.

Lack of response from the BJP govt on the Pegasus issue is appalling. While other countries are going for systematic enquiries, Indian govt is in strong denial and is hiding its head like an ostrich. Govt is charged with as serious a crime as political espionage and they are still not ready for even a discussion in the Parliament. Pegasus has clearly exposed the fault line in Indian democracy and it is becoming increasingly clear that India is rapidly degenerating into a full-fledged tyrannical dictatorship, especially since the current govt has assumed power.

- Suresh Kodoor 

sureshkodoor@gmail.com



Monday, December 21, 2020

For whom the Farm Bill tolls? - Suresh Kodoor

 

For whom the Farm Bill tolls?

The new farm acts are detrimental to farmers

-         Suresh Kodoor

Even in this freezing winter, Delhi is now burning!  The power centres in Delhi are now sweating in the heat of an unprecedented storm of rage. Farmers are waging a determined struggle against those who are hell-bent on making their lives a hell, the ones who are ruling this country for and on behalf of the corporate elite at the cost of the people of this nation. This struggle is not for just the farmers though. Just like how the farmers of this country sow and reap for all of us, to feed all of us, they are now fighting on behalf of all of us, the people of this country, whose food security is at stake, whose democratic rights are at stake and eventually whose very survival would be at stake. That is why the farmer’s struggle needs the support of the whole of India, every single citizen, including you and me. 

What was the motivation for the government to rush in the new farm bills now when the whole nation is pre-occupied in the fight against the pandemic, even flouting all democratic norms and procedures?  NITI Aayog gives the answer. It says “The country is witnessing the accumulation of a large surplus of grain and sugar, which is getting increasingly difficult to dispose of in the overseas markets due to poor price competitiveness of our produce. We need to reduce the logistics cost at least by half”. It adds, “According to the emerging scenario of demand and supply, India will be required to sell 20–25% of the incremental agri-food production in overseas markets in the coming years”. NITI Aayog CEO’s worry is “As India transitioned from a food deficit nation to a surplus one, the focus of policy has rightly shifted to surplus management from deficit management”. So, it becomes evident that the Government’s eye is on the profiteering opportunity of the export-market making use of these surplus and it wants to handover the Indian Agriculture sector to the corporate on a platter for them to leverage and exploit the said opportunity. No wonder as many corporate companies have mushroomed in the recent times to exploit and profit from the farmer’s toil. They aim to reduce the cost by engaging only a few big players in the agriculture sector and hence want to drive away all the marginal, small and medium farmers from the field. These new farm bills target to achieve exactly that. Where those poor farmers who eventually would get evicted from their own land because of these so called “reforms” should go to? Well, the Government is least concerned about that. They simply don’t care. The new farm bills are nothing but a move to remove all the obstacles for the corporate to operate seamlessly, unhindered and unquestioned. These acts are essentially to allay the fears of the corporate and investors of any regulatory interference by state or anyone else in their business operation, and give the corporate a free-hand to go ahead with their green-conquest, a conquest that would make Indian agriculture fields an assembly line for the agro-corporate while turning them to death fields for the farmers.  

While the bureaucrats of the NITI Aayog talk about surplus, look at what the Global Hunger Index says.  As per the GHI, India is almost at the rock bottom of the list, having highest number of people who stay hungry.  India has in recent times further fallen to an embarrassingly low position in the list, 94th rank among 107 countries, even below the likes of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The glaring number says it all! It leave no room for doubt that our farmers, who are giving us this surplus, are staying hungry! Does one need any expert economists to suggest where that surplus must go?  Isn’t it criminal to talk about surplus and export on the face of those millions of small children who go to bed every day empty stomach? An estimate shows 3000 children die of hunger every day in India.  Isn’t it utterly shameful to know that 65 lakhs tonnes of grain went rotten in the godowns in just four months while the people were going hungry in these difficult times of extreme distress due to COVID pandemic? Shouldn’t those empty stomachs be the priority of any government which has at least an iota of sympathy towards its own people? Clearly, the priorities of those in power lie elsewhere. Their priority is to feed the corporate, for whom they rule, even at the cost of farmers, workers and those who are toiling day in and day out to meet the ends. This is exactly what the ‘neo-liberal’ politics is. NITI Aayog has spelt in no uncertain terms what the objectives of these new farm acts are as they say “the new acts take forward the unfinished agenda of reforms started in 1991”. No wonder the NITI CEO argues there is “too much democracy” as it is these remaining little democratic forces in the country that come in their way, trying to scuttle their attempts to loot this nation to fill the coffers of a few corporate neo-rich. Farmers realise that the bell tolls for them and the toiling poor around. The farmers do realise that they have no option but to fight for survival lest perish.

The three farm acts are clearly an attempt to offer the Indian Agriculture sector to the agro-corporate houses, throwing the farmers into deep untold, unending miseries, even to the extent of leading them to extinction. Farmers are well aware that these acts will make their lives more miserable and hence they have joined hands to host one of the massive people upraising against the government that India has not witnessed for a long while.  But, as said, the current struggle is not for the sake of farmers alone.  The new farm acts would impact not only farmers, but a vast majority of people, particularly the poorer section of this country. Our food security, our democratic rights, our country’s future are all at stake and thus we all owe our support to farmers in this historic struggle.  The true nefarious intend, underpinning agenda and the far-reaching implications of these acts must be thoroughly exposed and publicised among the mass and gather widespread support for the farmer’s struggle.

To start with, these bills are completely undemocratic and unconstitutional, both in their content as well as the manner in which they were made into laws.  The three new farm acts were initially brought in as ordinances in the month of June, 2020. In fact the farmers were staging protests in various parts of the country immediately after the ordinances were brought in and the struggle has only grown big and intense since then. New bills were brought in the parliament to replace the earlier ordinances and were made into laws in the month of September in a most undemocratic manner. Not only that these bills were formulated without holding any consultations with any of the key stake holders, especially the farmers or their organizations, the Government didn’t even allow any meaningful debate in the parliament and instead the whole democratic process was scuttled by suspending the opposition members, avoiding any discussion in the upper house and opting to pass the bill by voice voting. No wonder the bills reflect a complete lack of understanding of the ground realities of rural India and the crucial role agriculture play in the livelihood of the people living in there. The bills were dictated by the corporate and the government acted as a willing partner in this crime.

The new farm acts should be objected for 3 key reasons

i) The farm acts are a total farce on democracy and constitution and are an attack on the very federal structure of our nation. If we go by the spirit of the constitution and the federalism it advocates,  agriculture is primarily a state subject and it is left to individual states to form necessary acts and guidelines that would best suit their unique needs, though some of the other provisions mentioned in the constitution may be cited as legal justification for the union government’s intervention in the subject. The new acts have no place for the voice of the States and thus give scant regard to the federal structure and principles of our constitution. The Act reads “This act will have overriding effect on all State APMC acts” (Act1, section-14). Such arrogance and audacity of power to simply void state powers is a grave threat to our co-operative federalism and should not go unopposed. Another equally important transgression into constitutional rights is how the fundamental constitutional right of every citizen to seek legal remedies in courts is taken away. This may be used as template in the future legislations as well, if it is allowed to go unopposed, where our democratic constitutional right to take our grievances to courts will be curtailed and the government will start positioning itself as the complainant, prosecutor and the judge, all in one. Thus, the bills must be questioned for its violation of all democratic and constitutional norms.

ii) The acts are against the interest of the farmers. The bills would evict millions of farmers from their land and their traditional livelihood, making them jobless, and would convert Indian agriculture into a pure corporate monopoly. Our policy makers say there are too many people engaged in the agriculture sector and the numbers should be drastically reduced. What they don’t say is where the millions of displaced poor farmers should turn to for their livelihood. 

iii) The acts will have far-reaching consequences affecting adversely our hard-earned agricultural self-sufficiency and most importantly, our food security. The acts will also pave way for endangering the bio-diversity and crops pattern as it would be the agro-corporate who would be in control of the agro-inputs, including the seeds and choice of crops, and would be the one deciding  what to grow, when, where and who.

It is very ironical and amusing to notice how misleading the names of these acts are. In fact the names suggest desperate attempt by those involved to conceal the real intent of the bills. It is as if the label reads ‘sugar’ while the bottle is filled with ‘cyanide’!

The first two acts are named ‘Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020’ and ‘Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020’. What the bills lack for farmers is exactly what are there in the titles, namely protection, empowerment, price assurance and promotion. The bills take away all the above from the farmers. The third bill read “Essential Commodity (amendment) Act 2020’ and what it does is exactly the opposite, defining the very essential foodstuffs, including the basic food items like rice, wheat, potato and onion as ‘non-essential’.  So, we must strictly warn those unsuspecting ‘innocents’ who want to go by the titles and government’s hollow words not to go by the label and swallow what is there in those bottles.

India still remains predominantly an agriculture economy. Almost half of our population (42%) is engaged in farming and associated activities for their livelihood. 86% of these farmers are marginal and small-scale farmers having less than 2 acres to 5 acres of land. What this implies is that any change in the agriculture sector in our country will directly impact almost half of the population. Thus, for a huge section of our population, these farm acts are a matter of their life and death and that is why they dare all odds to wage the battle of their lives. With more than 12000 farmers resorting to suicide every year, these acts will only worsen their plight.

If we dive a little deeper into the content of these acts, we would realise how draconian and anti-farmer they are.

Act1: Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020

This act primarily lifts the existing restrictions on farmers and traders to do transactions outside the APMC Markets. Farmers will be allowed to trade their agricultural produce outside the market areas operated under various state APMC acts. This act essentially ‘bypass’ the APMC systems and override all the state-level legislations in force which regulate market for the agricultural produce in various states. Thus, the states will no more have any say on a subject that is designated as a state-subject in the constitution. The act also prohibits state governments or APMC from charging any cess, levy or any taxes at these ‘private market trade areas’, which is outside the APMC market yards. The government version is that this act gives freedom to the farmers to sell their produce wherever they want and to whomever they want. Government projects this act creating an alternate ‘free-market’ where farmers will get “freedom of choice” to trade with anyone, anywhere in India.

On the face of it, this would look like a step to help farmers to fetch higher price for their produce. However, this argument will not stand the scrutiny of anyone who has even basic understanding of how the so called ‘free-markets’ operates. In reality, the farm acts are akin to pulling away the security net provided to the farmers and in turn pushing them into the shark-infested deep waters and claiming they are being offered the ‘freedom’ to swim wherever they want. Leave alone swimming, they would only be eaten up by the sharks in there.  This so called ‘freedom’ narrative is only a cover to conceal the actual intent underneath. It is like unbolting the chicken coop (hen house) on the pretext of freeing the chickens while the actual intent is to let the fox enter the coop.

The APMC trade restrictions are meant to protect farmers from exploitation rather than curtailing freedom. For a guy who earn barely 100 rupee a day, it is absurd and cruel to offer so called ‘freedom’ to dine at any of the five-star restaurants in any of the cities across India. The so called ‘freedom of choice’ in this instance means absolutely nothing for him. It is rather a mockery on his plight. What would make sense for him is to have his nearby dhaba able to offer him his daily meals with what he can afford to pay. So, this whole argument of ‘freedom to sell’ anywhere to anyone is totally bogus and a complete eyewash. If the government think majority of the farmers will have wherewithal to travel to faraway places to sell his produce, they are living in fool’s heaven removed far from the reality. But it is not that they are not aware of it. They just want to act ignorant as the actual intent is to lure the farmers away from the safety-net of APMC and make them perish so that the corporate can take over all for themselves. The farmers do realise this and they are not interested in the promise of hollow ‘freedom’. For them, the existing APMC system that has worked well despite all its limitations is what matters the most. They foresee a grave threat to the existence of APMC mandis once the new acts become operational, which will turn them helpless and leave them exposed to the potential gruesome attack by the corporate predators.

What is concealed in this misleading government narrative of “freedom of choice” is that the restriction inbuilt into the current APMC system is in fact an inherent safety net to protect farmers from being pressurised to sell their produce in distress to their lenders and other scrupulous traders and intermediaries.  APMC system is essentially to protect farmers from exploitation and to ensure they get a minimum support price (MSP) for their produce. APMC (Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees) Markets or Mandis were established to enable farmers to sell their produce at a fare price and to protect them from traders, money lenders and middle-men taking away their produce for pittance. APMCs divide the states into several zones and all the farmers in a particular zone are supposed to trade their produce only in the APMC Mandis designated for them. The traders are not allowed to enter into trade outside these mandis. This restriction is to actually avoid traders coercing farmers into selling their produce at much a lower price than the minimum support price (MSP). Thus, the restrictions imposed on trades outside the APMC Mandis are in fact to ensure that the farmers are not forced to give away their produce to the traders and agents as many of these traders/agents would be the ones extending financial loans as well to these farmers. In other words, the insistence to sell only inside the APMC Mandis is not a restraint, but a mechanism to protect the farmer’s interest. The produces are auctioned in the mandis and the arhtiyas (registered commission agents) purchase the produce from the farmers on behalf of government agencies like FCI or other private traders and exporters. Arhtiyas also provide other services like cleaning, loading, packaging etc of the produce and also many of them finance the farmers. These agents are paid commission by the buyers like FCI and private traders. Mandis also charge taxes, which are used by the state Governments to improve the infrastructure and other agricultural related services. To ensure the safeguarding of farmer’s interest, the APMC Mandis impose the conditions like 1) for all the produces where the Government has announced MSPs, the products can’t be sold at a price below MSP 2) Inside all APMC regions, the farmers and traders can enter into wholesale trades only inside the designated mandis, not outside.  

The new act provides to create private markets or ‘trade areas’ outside the APMC system where both these conditions are not applicable. There will be no Minimum Support Price and neither there will be any restrictions on where and whom the traders and companies can buy produce from the farmers. There would be no need to register or obtain licenses for the traders and thus any individual, groups or corporate can buy produce from the farmers. State government is prohibited to charge any cess, levies or taxes in these private markets from anyone.  With the new found license and golden opportunity to force farmers to sell their produce anywhere at any price, the traders, agents and other corporate entities will desert the APMC mandis and take the trade outside and coerce farmers to submit to them through various means. This will only weaken the mandi system and will force farmers to sell their produce at much lower price at these private ‘trade areas’ as no alternative avenues will be available for them to dispose of their produce.  

As we know, farming involves lot of uncertainties and risks. Between the sowing and harvesting, lot many factors may adversely impact the outcome. So, it is critical to make sure that the farmers get a reasonable income above and beyond what they have to spend to produce crops. Only then they can sustain farming and produce foodstuffs to feed the nation.  Enforcement of Minimum Support Price (MSPs) on selected produces are to ensure that the farmers would get at least a minimum price to cover their cost of production. If not for MSP, traders will bring down the price at the time of harvesting and the farmers will be forced to sell at throw away prices, pushing them into huge debts. Thus, MSP is very crucial in providing support to the farmers. Telling farmers, most of who live in small houses with one or two rooms, that they could store their produce as long as they wish and sell whenever they want at the price they decide is totally unrealistic. These farmers won’t have adequate storage facilities and hence will be looking to dispose of their produce at the earliest. Moreover, the farmers will have to sell their produce immediately after the harvest to settle their loans and pay for their other living expenses, including children’s education, medical needs etc. So the agents and financiers will try to take advantage of this distress situation and will try to squeeze maximum out of the poor farmers. Eventually the farmers would be left with nothing. They would be forced to ultimately sell their land to come out of the debt trap. It is precisely to avoid this situation and save farmers from this distress sale that the APMC mandi system was introduced. The new act is destroying farmer’s life-support echo system by paving the way for dismantling the APMC mandis. Government should rather focus on expanding the APMC system and build more mandis, fixing the loopholes, than completely destroying the APMC system for all practical purposes and leaving farmers at the mercy of traders and corporate. Majority of the marginal, small and medium farmers with very little bargaining power will be pushed out of the new system and rapidly will move out of farming, which is precisely what the corporate and the government are looking for. So, this act is not an accident, but a well planned strategy to get rid of all small farmers and handover the agriculture entirely to the mega agro-corporate. Bihar provides one of the glaring example of what can be expected to happen if APMC vanishes. In Bihar where the APMC system was discontinued in 2006, farmers are forced to sell paddy for Rs.600 and 700 a quintal while the government MSP stands at Rs.1800. In fact the plight of the farmers there is so pathetic that majority of them don’t produce enough to even to take to market for trading. Many farmers have left farming forever and were forced to migrate to other states in search of daily wages and casual labour. This farm act targets to replicate the same story across the country so that the field would be left open for the corporate to play at their will and by their own rules.

The act also takes utmost care to protect corporate from having to face any legal consequences. Not only farmers, even no citizen are allowed to take their grievances to court. Corporate don’t want to be bothered with the law of the land and the government readily oblige, taking away the fundamental rights of the citizen in the process.

Section 13:  “No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Central Govt or the State govt or any other person in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this Ordinance or of any rules or orders made thereunder”

Section 15: No civil court have jurisdiction to entertain any suit or proceedings in respect of any matter, the cognizance of which can be taken and disposed of by any authority empowered by or under this Ordinance or the rules made thereunder

Such blatant disregard for the citizen’s constitutional rights is unheard of.   

Act2: Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020

The second farm act is about contract farming. The act puts in place a framework for the farmers to enter into agreement with buyers and other third parties involved in advance, before they sow the crop, to sell the final produce at a pre-fixed price. It is an agreement based cultivation of pre-decided crops of pre-determined quality, quantity, grade and variety by farmers on behalf of a sponsor, who can be a trader, a corporate company or any other entity. The farmers are obligated to fulfil the contract conditions and the sponsor is liable to purchase and pay for the produce only if all the conditions, including quality, quantity and other parameters like even pesticide residue left on the grain, moisture content etc, stipulated in the agreement  are met.

The act talks about two forms of agreement

Trade and commerce agreement – farmers are paid when they deliver the final produce. The buyer is not responsible for anything if the produce is not delivered. i.e the farmer will be solely responsible if their crop is damaged for some reason or the other. The entire loss will have to be born only by the farmer

2.  Production agreement – The buyer will be providing ‘farm services’, including providing seed, fertilizers, machinery and other inputs and advice and the farmers are paid just for whatever service the farmer provides, not necessarily the price for the produce

The contract doesn’t need to specify any minimum support price. The contract will specify though the quality and standard that should be met by the final product for the sponsor to take the delivery. The sponsor can always decline to purchase the product citing any reason like the final produce not meeting any of the terms specified in the agreement and can use it to either reject the entire lot or to lower the price considerably. Even the amount of pesticide residue on the final produce can be a reason to decline the product. With no option to seek legal remedies and absolutely no means to fight with the battery of corporate lawyers, farmers will be completely at the mercy of the corporate houses.

Clause 4(1) The parties entering into a farming agreement may identify and require as a condition for the performance of such agreement compliance with mutually acceptable quality, grade and standards of a farming produce.

Clause 4(3) The quality, grade and standards for pesticide residue, food safety standards, good farming practices and labour and social development standards may also be adopted in the farming agreement

Clause 6(2) The Sponsor may, before accepting the delivery of any farming produce, inspect the quality or any other feature of such produce as specified in the farming agreement…

With farmers or anyone else not in a position to predict or control the outcome of the production, farmers will be always running the risk of their final produce getting rejected by the sponsors. If the market prices are lower than the price agreed in the contract, the sponsor can always use this clause to entirely decline to purchase or to force the farmer to sell at lower price. This farm act would lead to a situation where the sponsors, a bunch of agro-corporate companies, would start deciding what crops, when, where and how much to produce. The crop pattern could easily get aligned with the export market as that would be more attractive and profitable for the companies. With the corporate in full control of all the inputs, including the seed varieties, the entire crop pattern will undergo a shift and the bio-diversity and richness would be put severely under threat. Farmers will be forced to produce what the sponsors want and will be turned into mere contract labourers of the companies in their own land. Even none of the state laws can come to their rescue as the clause 7(1) completely exempt the commodities produced under farming agreements from all state laws.

7. (1) Where a farming agreement has been entered into in respect of any farming produce under this Act, such produce shall be exempt from the application of any State Act, by whatever name called, established for the purpose of regulation of sale and purchase of such farming produce.

Is the middle-man removed by all this as claimed? Of course not. Apart from the fact that the corporate themselves become the new middlemen, it also brings in ‘aggregators’ and ‘Farm Service Providers’ as the new middlemen in the farming agreements. The clause 10 reads

10) Save as otherwise provided in this Act, an aggregator or farm service provider may become a party to the farming agreement and in such case, the role and services of such aggregator or farm service provider shall be explicitly mentioned in such farming agreement.

Thus, it is a total free-hand for the corporate to decide how they want to shape Indian agriculture so as to profit to the maximum. If these are not enough, the third act free them from the essential commodities act’s provisions as well so as to allay any fears the corporate may have about state intervention in their business.

Act3: Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020

This act pretty much nullifies the Essential Commodities Act of 1955. Most of us would think foodstuffs are the most essential commodities. Strangely, our Government thinks otherwise. May be, for them, the corporate profit tops the list. The act removes the foodstuffs, including cereals like rice and wheat, pulses, potato, onion, oilseeds and edible oil etc, pretty much every single food item that we need for our day-to-day life, from the list of essential commodities. What that implies is that government neither can intervene to prevent hoarding and black-marketing of these items nor can regulate the prices of these commodities.  The original act was established to ensure the availability of commodities that are essential for us to lead a normal life and to be vigilant against hoarding and black marketing and deliberate obstruction of the supply of these essential products. In effect, the new act is making hoarding and black-marketing legal for the corporate. The act severely restraints government from exercising any control over hoarders. Government is not allowed to impose any stock holding limits for these newly delisted produces, except for extreme exceptions like war, famine etc. The method of calculating ‘extreme price rise’ is a joke. Corporate can keep increasing the price as long as they make sure the moving average of the price over 12 months remains just below 50%. Another strange rider is that even these limited criteria cannot be applied if “the stock limit doesn’t exceed the overall ceiling of installed capacity of processing or the demand for export in case of an exporter”.  So, if the company has huge warehouses, they can stock as much they want even if the price skyrocket! Government takes extreme care to make sure that the operation of private businesses and corporate do not face any difficulties from anyone, including government agencies, judiciary or citizens in their quest for profit. The act will be a huge threat to the food security of the country and will kill the already weakened PDS system as the State governments will have to now beg the corporate for grains and other foodstuffs to distribute through the PDS outlets for the poor.  Instead of strengthening the essential commodities act and PDS systems to ensure availability of most essential stuffs like food to all, the Government is encouraging the corporate to profit from even people’s hunger. At a time when people are unemployed and hardly have any purchasing power, subjecting them to food price inflation is simply an unpardonable crime against humanity.

Eyeing the new found opportunity and Government’s willingness to even sell India to appropriate wealth for a few elites, dozens of ago-corporate entities have mushroomed in the last couple of years. More than fifty agro companies have been registered in the last two years by the likes of reliance, adani, patanjali etc. These corporate are now going to decide what Indians should eat and even how much they should eat as a greater share of agriculture produce may be set aside for export. Government is going all-out to ensure a free-hand for the domestic and foreign corporate to have a field day with the newly opened up agriculture sector. Those in power with no concern whatsoever for the poor may use any crude tactics to realise their agenda. For example, the laws banning cattle sale evoking the religious sentiments of ‘gau-matha’ and ‘love for cows’ was nothing but a condemnable move to drive away local people from cattle-rearing so that the corporate could establish its  monopoly on the dairy produce market. The label was ‘gau-matha’, but the real content was ‘corporate pitha’! The government forces engaged in mass campaigning to mislead the innocent unsuspecting minds to flock behind the ‘gau-matha’, while they struck a back-door deal with the corporate.

It is not only domestic conglomerates like Ambanis, but foreign corporate like walmart, kargil etc are also eyeing the Indian agriculture sector to get their share of the pie where they can ensure more export from India at a much higher profit by paying as cheap as possible to the farmers, especially now that the MSP is out of the picture. The unregulated and unlimited export of food grains will lead to massive food shortage and crisis with rampant hoarding and black-marketing and the eventual victims would be poor farmers and the disposed majority of this country. Ultimately it is the life of the poor, who hardly own any equity in the nation’s wealth, which is going to be more miserable. Therefore, it is important to educate the people about the threat posed by these new farm acts to their livelihood and their future in order to evoke wide-spread mass support for the historic struggle being led by the farmers. A strong and relentless people resistance alone can force the government to repeal the new farm acts that are anti-farmer, anti-people and anti-nation. 

- Suresh Kodoor

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Corona and Capitalist Amnesia - Suresh Kodoor



As the US President continues to attack World Health Organization accusing them as ‘China-Centric’ and is eager to put the blame on China for the COVID-19 pandemic, even with some quarters going to the extent of accusing China of starting it all, if not deliberately at least inadvertently, it may be worth to remind the American President some of the bitter truths on how America has been using its own people as guinea pigs, both knowingly and unknowingly, voluntarily and coercively to develop and fine-tune a whole array of biological, chemical and nuclear warfare in the past. It is also a grim refresher for those who have suddenly woken up to the ‘enlightenment’ that the current pandemic is all due to ‘communist evil’ in China and the answer to all the problems lies in ‘capitalist messiah’. The new-found fans of ‘capitalist democracy’ mustn’t hide behind selective amnesia forgetting how the so called ‘democracy’ had let down its own people, subjecting them to horrific and most inhuman biological, chemical, nuclear and genetic warfare experiments under the pretext of various secret missions spearheaded by CIA, US Army and other governmental agencies. There isn’t much love lost even in America for these agencies due to their past sins.   


Before getting under the hood of those chilling stories, let us look at how the US Government, under the so called ‘democracy’, responded to the Corona outbreak. This is only to remind those who are quick to put the onus on the ‘communist rule’ for China ignoring the early warning and shunting out the doctor who had raised the early alarm on the corona virus (which certainly has been a miss for which the Chinese government had apologised later. But the point is, such overlooks are neither new nor unique to any country and have been happening across the world irrespective of which political side they adhere to). As per an article published in the Washington Post, the US President downplayed for months the corona warning from his own senior advisers and has been avoiding taking any action that could have controlled the virus spread in the country. An official in the government is quoted as saying “Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were – they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it. The system was blinking red”. The story has clearly documented how Mr.Trump was dragging his feet for the whole of January and February even though “a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers was about COVID-19”. Whenever the administration officials tried to bring the topic to Mr.Trump’s attention, seems he had changed the subject. The experience of the Health and Human Services Secretary Mr.Alex Azar sums it up well. As per the Washington Post, Mr.Alex got Mr.Trump on phone on 18 January (as he couldn’t get through to Trump until then), a full three weeks after US administration officials became aware of the Corona outbreak in China, and when he tried to impress upon Mr.Trump about the Corona virus situation, the article says, “the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavoured vaping products would be back on the market”. Even in early February, Trump showed minimum interest though it was becoming increasingly clear that virus will severely impact US health and safety. As per the post, “he even predicted the virus would go away by April and even praised the Chinese President’s response as ‘strong, sharp and powerfully focused’”. Mr.Trump, as of course as a true capitalist, was more concerned about the adverse impact a ‘wide-spread panic’ would create on the stock market. When Nancy Messonnier, an official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the press on 25 February that “disruption to everyday life might be severe”, Trump complained that “Messonnier is scaring the stock markets”. So, if anyone is under the illusion that the initial response to the outbreak of the pandemic would have been better or quicker if it had been in the ‘Capitalist Democracy’, they are living in a fool’s heaven. 


Coming back to the conspiracy theories doing rounds that the virus is an offshoot of a bio-warfare project that the ‘Communist China’ has been indulging in, the conspirators once again want us to believe that the corona is an ‘evil’ and the ‘evil designs’ are the hallmark of ‘Communists’. For the sake of these lovers of the ‘capitalist democracy’, let us revisit  some of the scariest and most inhuman instances of  state-sponsored experiments in the fields of biological, chemical and nuclear warfare which sacrificed tens of thousands of unsuspecting innocent souls living in those very ‘democracies’.  Jonathan Moreno, who led the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, has recounted some of these evil experiments and the horrifying experiences of the victims in vivid detail in his book ‘Undue Risk – Secret State Experiments on Humans’. Huge heaps of de-classified documents of yesteryears will tell us terrible stories of how citizens were coerced and ferried into secret places where they would be disposed off after being used as ‘guinea pigs’ without leaving any trace of their existence, experience or disappearance, all with the active connivance and under the complete control of the so called ‘democratic government’ and its agencies. 


Even before the first atomic bomb fell on Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, unsuspecting 4,00,000 American soldiers were made to watch nuclear explosion from a distance of as close as a mile or two from the ground zero. This moment of horror was part of the ‘field experiment’ to ‘study’ the effect of a nuclear bomb explosion on humans. None of them knew what they were being subjected to. Worse still, all of the soldiers who were already traumatized by the experience and radiation exposure were made to take an ‘oath of secrecy’ that they would not talk to anyone about it. Breaking this oath of secrecy, even talking among themselves, was considered as nothing less than ‘treason’ and was punishable by 10,000 dollar fine and 10 or more years of imprisonment.  Silence was forced on the victims, own citizens and soldiers, by the very ‘democracy’ that some people want us to hail now. Many have died due to leukaemia and other radiation related diseases and had to live the rest of their lives, those unfortunate ones who were left to live, haunted by scariest nightmares. These victims are referred as ‘Atomic Veterans’. They were not even eligible for any compensation as the government refused to even acknowledge that there was any radiation exposure at all. By the time the oath of secrecy was lifted finally in 1994, many veterans have had already taken their secrets with them to their graves. Some of them who had survived long enough to break their forced silence had described how the blast had knocked them down to the ground and how they could see the blood vessels and bones in their body like viewing under an X-ray. The account of terror they had to go through was unimaginable and horribly painful. The documentary ‘The Atomic Soldiers’ by Morgan Knibbe had relived the horror through the experiences of hundreds of victims who lived to tell their painful tales. One of them says in the documentary, “It haunts me to think of what I had witnessed and not realised at the time the importance of what we were doing… serving as guinea pigs”. The book ‘Undue Risk’ quotes a Navy veteran as saying “The government has lied to us for 50 years over and over again. If I would have been shot on the front lines at least I would have had it on my record and would have received medical treatment”.  It is a grim reminder to all those who think the ‘capitalist democracy’ offer them a democratic heaven. They must be under no false illusion about its transparency and commitment to its own people. Between 1946 and 1992, US government must have conducted more than 1000+ nuclear tests during which unsuspecting soldiers were exposed to nuclear radiations, says the book. Report of the Committee on Human Radiation Experiments describes in detail how American citizens were injected with plutonium as part of radiation experiments. One of the chilling stories narrated in there is a classic tale of deception and horror of state sponsored terror that thousands of innocents men and women were subjected to go through in the name of ‘medical research’. The victim, named Ebb Cade, a 53 year old cement worker, was met with a car accident and had a broken bone when he was admitted to a local facility. He was later taken to the Manhattan project (Atomic project headquarters) Army hospital for operation, but was fated to become the first of the 17 victims who got injected with the nuclear fissile material called Plutonium. He never knew he was being exposed to one of the most lethal radioactive material and what consequences awaited him. A women from Tennessee filed suit alleging many pregnant women and their foetuses were used as guinea pigs exposing them to radiation. Radiation experiments on human didn’t spare even children. The news, released in the late 90s, about Quaker Oats Cereal Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) settling a lawsuit brought by a group of unwitting test victims shocked many and raised a huge public outrage. The victims were young boys at the Fernald School in Waltham, Massachusetts, where they “were fed cereal containing trace amounts of radiation to identify the pathway of nutrients in the human digestive system”. 


Chemical and Biological weapon experiments had even larger shares of guinea pigs. National Academy of Sciences in one of its reports released in 1993 has estimated that during Second World War alone around 60,000 army men were used in the research with chemical weapons like Mustard Gas and other toxic agents. Many were locked in gas chambers filled with Mustard Gad during the infamous Mustard Gas experiments. The objective of the experiment was to find out at what point the toxic gas agents would ‘break a man’. As part of a study on venery diseases, US Public Health Services worked with Federal Bureau of Prisons and arranged for two hundred “volunteer prisoners” who were deliberately infected with gonorrhoea disease forcing them to have sex with infected females or by injecting them with pus taken from the urethra of the infected females. One wouldn’t even dare to imagine, even in dreams, the pain, sufferings and horror the victims might have endured during these blatant crime on humanity. The widely reported Yellow-Fever experiments in Cuba used innocent Spanish migrant workers, apart from the soldiers themselves, as guinea pigs.  Camp American University was used as Army’s Chemical Warfare Center where all sort of experiments with toxic chemical warfare agents were conducted on humans. George Temple, an electrical engineer with the Army and one of the few survivors from the Camp University research ‘experiments’, is quoted as saying “one day, in the pitch black interior of the smoke lab, three men were burned by a deadly dose of gas. The bodies were hauled away on a cart, the flesh jiggling off their bones”. They were exposed with deadly chemicals like phosgene and white phosphorous. Temple recollects “more men were killed by gas on the experimental side than in actual use”. All were subjected to extreme tortures by exposing them to series of various poisonous and incendiary gas agents as part of the experiments in the Camp AU. An investigation report on “CIA activities” is filled with horror stories of instances of covet operations executed by CIA to experiment with mind-controlling agents like LSD on unsuspecting victims. One of the most infamous tragedies of the LSD experiment was the death of its own scientist Dr.Frank Olson by crashing down from the 10th floor of a hotel while being under the influence of LSD. He was a specialist in air-born delivery of diseases used as biological weapon. Sidney Gottlieb, the one who led LSD experiments and secretly mixed LSD in the drinks, as a key member of the Technical Service Staff of CIA had helped CIA in planning several of their assassination plots designing poison handkerchief and other lethal devices to take out their targets, which included even Fidel Castro. A similar case where a 42-year old Harold Blauer lost his life in the ‘secret experiment’ performed on him by the Psychiatric Institute (PI) in Newyork in collusion with the US Army further reveals the uglier underbelly of the so called ‘democratic messiah’. The experiment, spearheaded by the US Army, was to collect sufficient data “for the utilization of psycho-chemical agents both for offensive use as sabotage weapons and for protection against them”, quotes the report. Accordingly, patients were to be injected with mescaline chemical substance, a variant that was never tried on humans before. Blauer was coerced into the experiment by threatening him that he would be sent to mental asylum. He was injected upon multiple times irrespective of his protest and the experiment continued for days until he slipped into a coma and died after the fifth injection he received. Army and New York state authorities conspired to cover it up in the name of national security. There will be no dearth for even more chilling stories in the CIA archives. 


The Biological warfare program was covered with greater secrecy than even nuclear weapons programs. Later revelation about the open-air field testing of biological weapons conducted in Minneapolis in 1960 had stunned many, including the Congress representative from the constituency as even he was kept in the dark. The Army had made elaborate arrangements to keep the public unaware of field tests of biological weapons. Testing of biological weapons was conducted in the Camp Detrick and the Army was extremely careful of keeping everything about the tests secret from the public. Body remains of the People died due to exposure were secretly disposed off. The report describes the modus operandi, citing army officials involved, as “deceased personnel might be placed in a hermetically sealed metal casket and interred by military personnel in the area, without disclosing by certificate, report or statement the nature or cause of death”. Some of the young male and female soldiers Mr.Morena interviewed for the book had revealed to him that “they understood that occasionally they would be invited to serve as subjects in medical experiments having to do with the Infectious Disease Institute's bio-protection mission”. Many were used as ‘subjects’ in genetic warfare experiments or vaccine development studies and were either lured into it offering money or coerced into it with threats of repercussions. 


A few cases referred in here are only a tiny tip of the mammoth proverbial iceberg as revealed by de-classified secret documents and various enquiry commission reports. The vast underbelly of one of the biggest ‘democracies’ may stay in the dark for ever as hundreds of thousands of souls sacrificed on the ‘altar of weapon research’ would never come back to tell their torture tales.   It is anybody’s guess that no single country on the face of the earth, irrespective of which political spectrum they belong to, if they have technical and economical wherewithal, would be shying away from the pursuit of genetic weaponry.  With the boundary between biology and chemistry becoming increasingly blurred with every advance in the field of genetics, the modern weaponry could be more sophisticated and potent than one could imagine.  Possibilities of biological weapons that can be ‘managed’ so as not to affect the forces who have released it (‘return’ effect) is very much a reality today. Many scientific breakthroughs have found their way to military (mis)use and genetics research wouldn’t be any exemption.  It would be foolhardy to argue that the ‘Capitalist Democracy’ is the means to guard against such self-destructive adventures on humanity.  Its past history in fact guarantees exactly the reverse. 

- Suresh Kodoor

Monday, March 30, 2020

Corona and Conspiracy Mongers



Corona Is Not Bioengineered

(Corona and Conspiracy Mongers)

Suresh Kodoor


We are confronting two deadly viruses these days. One is of course the deadly COVID-19 Corona Virus and the other is the more venomous and malicious ‘Conspiracy’ virus. We may soon find vaccine for the first one. However, the second one may never find a cure as it constantly mutates to various forms and the ‘lie DNA’ of this ‘virus’ has a special knack of evading any ‘truth’ vaccine.  


All the conspiracy stories doing rounds around CORONA virus are not simple innocuous ones, especially the ones that have its origin in the ultra-right ‘propaganda manufacturing labs’. These lies have clear agenda and targets. The fact that the current pandemic is being misused as an opportunity to reignite the jingoism and hatred with lies and gross misinformation is of great concern as there may be many unsuspecting takers to the stories, innocently ingesting whatever is served. 


One of the conspiracy theories goes like this. China deliberately unleashed the Corona virus on themselves and the world so that the stock market will crash, following which China can buy all the shares of all the American companies. Ridiculous it is, but, as usual, blatant lies, misinformation, fake stories, manufactured data and fictitious sources are skilfully stitched together to deliver the venom.

World Health Organization has named the corona disease as Corona Virus Diseas-2019 or COVID-19 and the virus causing the disease as ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2’ or SARS-CoV-2. However, many still like to call it Chinese Virus, Wuhan Virus etc. to implicate China as the conscious perpetrators of the disease though the US President himself has recently pulled back from calling the virus as ‘China Virus’.  


Is the SARS-CoV-2 a genetically engineered virus manufactured in a lab as Biological weapon as these ‘Conspirators’ want us to believe? No. The answer is in absolute negative. The scientific community has categorically ruled out the possibility that the virus is genetically engineered and rather has established that it is a product of evolution having undergone numerous mutations and got transmitted from the wild-life to human. In fact scientists did get to the root of this conspiracy theory and had comprehensively debunked them, as it is important to know the origin of the virus in order to develop effective vaccines. How did the scientists rule out that it is not engineered in labs? By analysing the genetic structure or to be more specific the RNA sequence and the characteristics of the virus’s receptor-binding domain (RBD), a feature of the virus that helps them to attach to the host cells. The fact that the virus does possess the feature, acquired in the process of its evolution, to evade human immune system also points to the fact that it wasn’t created, neither deliberately nor accidentally, through cell-culture, a process used in labs for conducting virological studies and experimental research.   


The study has revealed that the corona pandemic is caused by a natural virus, not one made in a lab. As per the study published on March-17 in the Science journal ‘Nature Medicine’, the genetic structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus reveals that it isn’t a mix and match of any known viruses, as might be expected if it were human-made (Ref: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9). The virus has unusual features that have only recently been identified in scaly anteaters called pangolins, an evidence that the virus came from nature, reports the study. Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in California and a team of scientists from other research centers carried out the study. Anderson has said “It was clear that the virus wasn’t human-made. Anyone hoping to create a virus would need to work with already known viruses and engineer them to have desired properties. But the SARS-CoV-2 virus has components that differ from those of previously known viruses, so they had to come from an unknown virus or viruses in nature”. The paper says, “Genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone. This is not a virus somebody would have conceived of and cobbled together. It has too many distinct features, some of which are counterintuitive. One wouldn’t do this if you were trying to make a more deadly virus. Similarity of SARS-CoV-2 to bat and pangolin viruses is some of the best evidences that the virus is natural”. “This was just another animal spillover into humans. All the data show it’s natural”, say the scientists who were part of the research team. Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (USA) says "This study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19". Most likely the COVID-19 virus arose from a recombination of a virus found in bats and another virus, possibly in pangolins.


So, the story of China manufacturing the virus is a total bogus and has been completely debunked through scientific studies. Now, what is portrayed as the motivation behind such an action is even more ridiculous. The fake narrative goes on to say that China bought in bulk the shares of American Companies to take control of the US firms and the world economy in general. This is not only absurd but in fact the American analysts fear exactly the opposite, i.e would American investors go and put their money in so many Chinese companies using this crash as an opportunity. In fact there are also counter propaganda, especially in the Arab media, which portrays the pandemic as an American plot to destabilise Chinese economy. 


Did Chinese really buy shares of American companies, either at Chinese exchanges or the American stock exchanges? First and foremost, Chinese investors can’t buy American stocks in the Chinese stock market. Why? The answer is simple. They aren’t listed in the Chinese stock market. Chinese stock market was opened for foreign companies only in the mid-2019 and no companies have been listed yet. So, Chinese investors buying American Stocks from Chinese market is ruled out. Of course it doesn’t matter to the fakers anyway. So, that leaves the possibility of Chinese investors buying American stocks from the American market. Did it really happen? Just a cursory glance of the American market indexes would reveal that there was hardly any buying happening at all and rather the market indexes were consistently hitting lower circuits undergoing severe crash. The index trends reflect no such bulk buying at all. In fact, the American stock analysts and policy makers fear exactly the reverse. Their fear is that US investors would end up investing hugely in Chinese companies, that too of dubious background.   The US had already started stopping its investors from investing in Chinese companies as part of US-China trade war even before the Corona outbreak. America is trying its level best to stop its investors from investing money in Chinese companies. The US is also said to be looking at limiting the ability of government pension funds to participate in Chinese markets. US has been considering de-listing Chinese companies from US stock exchanges as part of a ‘broader effort to curb US investment in China’. More than 150 Chinese companies are listed on the major US exchanges, worth a total of $1.2 trillion in market value as in February. If one goes by this theory, not only US companies but also these 150+ Chinese companies would be equally vulnerable to being bought over. Thus the fake narrative of Chinese buying major stakes in the US companies has absolutely no merit in it. 


Chinese stock market didn’t crash much compared to many of the other world markets though it did indeed witness a setback. The Chinese market benchmark the Shanghai Composite Index had marked its recent highpoint 3115 on 13 January and slipped to 3095 on 20th January when China officially announced the corona virus outbreak. It fell to 2746 on Feb 3 after the market was opened after their New Year holidays. It is hovering around that value even now in the mid March. What was the reason for the Chinese markets to fare relatively better? One reason is that China has infused $174 billion stimuli package to their economy and that kept the sentiments in the Chinese market in good spirit. The tremendous progress China made in controlling the spread of the pandemic also added to improved stock market sentiments. There is one more likely reason for the less volatility seen in China's share markets. The reason is that the foreign capital accounts for only less than four per cent of the entire share market in China. So, there isn’t anything to be bought over from the ‘foreign hands’ in the Chinese market. Rather, the Chinese investors are in fact being encouraged to invest money in the Chinese companies in the Chinese stock market to showcase the resilience of their economy. 


Again, for the fakers, the data doesn’t need to be accurate, rather data is conveniently manufactured by hook or crook to suit the fake narrative, and the truth remains the immediate causality. For example, they would insist that Beijing didn’t have any corona cases and that is a good enough proof for China’s hands behind the pandemic.  The fact is of course Beijing was very much impacted as well.  There are of course many countries which are not impacted by Corona, including Singapore. Hopefully the Conspirators won’t get any new ideas to run their imaginations wild. The faker behind one of the stories wonders how Chinese could create a vaccine and that is the proof that the formula of the virus was already with them. The only problem with that statement is that only the faker seems to know about the existence of such a vaccine while WHO has no knowledge about any such vaccine existing at all till date. Same sources that project China building a hospital in 2 weeks as proof of their prior-knowledge of the pandemic will have no qualm in spreading fake message about a hospital being built in Rajasthan in 2 days by Indian Army and going jingo about it! Well, the conspirator wouldn’t even spare the US house speaker Nancy Pelosi. As per the narrative, Ms.Pelosi is behind the deadly virus, engineered by colluding with Chinese, in an attempt to cripple American economy by bringing down Trump. Of course sky is the limit when it comes to fictitious fake stories.  


The Covid-19 is a challenge to the whole world. We need to be united in the fight against this deadly disease and cooperation beyond national boundaries to promote pursuit of science and knowledge alone will make us emerge victorious in this battle as well. All those who indulge in fake propaganda to serve their narrow interests are only harming this cause and are enemies of the humanity. 


Suresh Kodoor


Ph: +91 9845853362

Friday, March 20, 2020

No, we still won't be safe from Corona after the Sunday 'Curfew'! - Suresh Kodoor



No, we still won't be safe after the Sunday 'Curfew'! 

- Suresh Kodoor

There is a message going around in the social media forums now saying we will emerge as a safe country once the Sunday 'Curfew' is over! Reason? Because the life span of the virus is 12 hours and the curfew is for 14 hours and thus corona virus present at the public places would have died by then. 

This is more of a 'made up' justification by the 'bhakth brigade' (as an afterthought to conceal the embarrassment in the face of widespread criticism of PM's speech, which did not lay out any concrete strategy and steps to deal with the Corona challenges), than with any scientific basis (just like the justifications that were 'manufactured' one after the other (as each one flopped) after demonetisation) 

The said message doing rounds at present is totally wrong, misleading and dangerous. Unless there is a total lockdown for 2-3 weeks (which may not be practical), one can not be completely 'safe' from the virus. A 14 hr curfew WILL NOT make the country emerge safe out of the virus scare. Believing such misleading information will only instil a false sense of security and will lead to people throwing their caution to wind post Sunday curfew. 

1. Life span of the Corona virus range from a few hours to couple of days depending on the surface (Copper - 4hrs, Cardboard - 48 hrs, Steel - 48 hrs, Plastic - 72 hrs (source: Economist))

2. Only those Virus that are stuck to the outside surfaces will die after its lifespan is over. The Virus inside an affected person will not die until he/she is completely cured. So, if an affected person get out and roam around after the 14-hr curfew, he/she will again spread the virus to other people. Until all the already affected people as well as those who are presently the carriers (difficult to identify until they develop symptoms) are in isolation without any outside contacts for at least next 3 weeks, nobody is safe from the virus. So, be aware that you are not still 'safe' even after the 14-hr curfew as affected people and 'virus carriers' could be still out there and thus the virus is not going to disappear all of a sudden post Sunday curfew

So, irrespective of you observing the 14-hr curfew, please do not get out and roam around for next 2-3 weeks unless absolutely necessary. For some people, especially for those whose daily bread depends on their going out for work, it may be difficult to stay back at home. The community and government will have to come forward to help them pass this difficult period. However, all those who can stay home may please observe self-restraint for next 3 weeks and take all precautions in case they have to go out for any valid reason. 

When there is already a standing instruction and advisory from multiple agencies asking people not to venture out for next couple of weeks unless absolutely necessary, another call for one-day curfew will only do more harm than good, as is evident from the messages doing rounds. The 'break the chain' is a strategy which needs meticulous execution extending for a few weeks. It is not a 14-hr showbiz! Please do not get misled by misinformation. This is not a time for trivia. 

- Suresh Kodoor