This is What We Paid For

7/29/2019 This is What We Paid For

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the state is reducing the number of its employees and foreign corporations arerationalising the rest of the workforce, and you end up with millions without work orstate support. The States people, McKinsey warns, will need to be enlightenedabout the benefits of change.

(6)McKinseys vision was not confined to Naidus government. Once he hadimplemented these policies, Andhra Pradesh should seize opportunities to lead otherstates in such reform, becoming, in the process, the benchmark state.

(7) Foreign donors would pay for the experiment, then seek to persuade other parts ofthe developing world to follow Naidus example.

There is something familiar about all this, and McKinsey have been kind enough to jogour memories. Vision 2020 contains 11 glowing references to Chiles experiment in the1980s. General Pinochet handed the economic management of his country to a group ofneoliberal economists known as the Chicago Boys. They privatised social provision, toreup the laws protecting workers and the environment and handed the economy tomultinational companies. The result was a bonanza for big business, and a staggeringgrowth in debt, unemployment, homelessness and malnutrition.

(8) The plan was funded by the United States in the hope that it could be rolled outaround the world.Pinochets understudy was bankrolled by Britain. In July 2001 ClareShort, then secretary of state for development, finally admitted to parliament that,despite numerous official denials, Britain was funding Vision 2020.

(9) Blairs government has financed the states economic reform programme, itsprivatisation of the power sector and its centre for good governance (which means aslittle governance as possible).

(10) Our taxes also fund the implementation secretariat for the states privatisationprogramme. The secretariat is run, at Britains insistence, by the far-right business lobbygroup the Adam Smith Institute.

(11) The money for all this comes out of Britains foreign aid budget.

It is not hard to see why Blairs government is doing this. As Stephen Byers revealedwhen he was secretary of state for trade and industry, the UK Government hasdesignated India as one of the UKs 15 campaign markets.


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(12) The campaign is to expand the opportunities for British capital. The people ofAndhra Pradesh know what this means: they call it the return of the East IndiaCompany.

This isnt the only aspect of British history which is being repeated in Andhra Pradesh.

Theres something uncanny about the way in which the scandals that surrounded TonyBlair during his first term in office are recurring there. Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula 1boss who gave Labour 1 million and later received an exemption from the ban ontobacco advertising, was negotiating with Naidu to bring his sport to Hyderabad. Ihave been shown the leaked minutes of a state cabinet meeting on January 10th thisyear.

(13) McKinsey, they reveal, instructed the cabinet that Hyderabad should be a worldclass futuristic city with Formula 1 as a core component. To make it viable, however,there would be a state support requirement of Rs400-600 crs(4 billion to 6 billion

rupees).

(14) This means a state subsidy for Formula 1 of 50million to 75m a year. It is worthnoting that thousands of people in Andhra Pradesh now die of malnutrition-relateddiseases because Naidu had previously cut the subsidy for food.

Then the minutes become even more interesting. Ecclestones Formula 1, they note,should be exempted from the Indian ban on tobacco advertising. Mr Naidu had alreadyaddressed the PM as well as the Health Minister in this regard and was hoping toenact state legislation creating an exemption to the Act.

(15)The Hinduja brothers, the businessmen facing criminal charges in India who weregiven British passports after Peter Mandelson intervened on their behalf, have also beensniffing round Vision 2020. Another set of leaked minutes I have obtained shows that in1999 their representatives held a secret meeting in London with the Indian attorney-general and the British governments export credit guarantee department, to help themobtain the backing required to build a power station under Naidus privatisationprogramme.

(16) When the attorney-general began lobbying the Indian government on their behalf,this caused yet another Hinduja scandal.The results of the programme we have beenfunding are plain to see. During the hungry season, hundreds of thousands of people inAndhra Pradesh are now kept alive on gruel supplied by charities.

(17) Last year hundreds of children died in an encephalitis outbreak because of theshortage of state-run hospitals.


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18) The state governments own figures suggest that 77% of the population has fallenbelow the poverty line.

(19) The measurement criteria are not consistent, but this appears to be a massive rise.In 1993 there was one bus a week taking migrant workers from a depot in Andhra

Pradesh to Mumbai. Today there are 34.

(20) The dispossessed must reduce themselves to the transplanted coolies of Blairs newempire.

Luckily, democracy still functions in India. In 1999, Naidus party won 29 seats, leavingCongress with five. Last week those results were precisely reversed. We cant yet voteTony Blair out of office in Britain, but in Andhra Pradesh they have done the job on ourbehalf.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Vision 2020 can be read athttp://www.aponline.gov.in/quick%20links/vision2020/vision2020.html

2. Vision 2020, Page 96.

3. Vision 2020, page 42.


5. Vision 2020, page 170. This is worded as follows: ?However, agriculture?s share ofemployment will actually reduce, from the current 70 per cent [of the population of 76million] to 40-45 per cent?.



8. The figures have been tabulated by Tom Huppi in the document Chile: theLaboratory Test, which can be found at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-chichile.htm


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9. Clare Short, 20th July 2001. Parliamentary answer to Alan Simpson MP. HansardColumn 475W.

10. The full list can be read at http://www.dfidindia.org/

11. Government of Andhra Pradesh, ?2002. Strategy Paper on Public Sector Reform andPrivatisation of State Owned Enterprises.

12. Department of Trade and Industry, 6th January 2000. Byers to Help UK SMEs FosterExport Links with India. Press release.

13. Government of Andhra Pradesh. Minutes of Cabinet sub-committee meeting on 10thJanuary 2004.

14. ibid.

15. ibid.

16. Clifford Chance solicitors, 3rd June 1999. Vizag Meeting with the Attorney-General. Fax transmission.

17. Eg P. Sainath, 15th June 2003. The politics of free lunches. The Hindu.

18. Eg K.G. Kannabiran and K. Balagopal, 14th December 2003. Governance & Policeimpunity in Andhra Pradesh: World Bank urged not to make loan. Peoples Union forCivil Liberties and Human Rights Forum, Andhra Pradesh.

19. Government of Andhra Pradesh. Draft Report of the Rural Poverty Reduction TaskForce. Cited in D. Bandyopadhyay, March 17th 2001. Andhra Pradesh: Looking BeyondVision 2020. Economic and Political Weekly.

20. P Sainath, June 2003. The Bus to Mumbai.http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/jun/psa-bus.htm

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