Monthly Archives: August 2021

Today, perhaps more than ever, the church presents a refreshing response to our nations enforced ideological bifurcation. Polling suggests that about 75 percent of Americans have moderate to progressive views on economic questions and slightly more than half are socially conservative. The median voter has both of these traits, and there are good reasons to think that it was this unnamed coalition of anti-libertarians who decided the outcomes of the last two presidential elections.

Both of our major political parties try to placate voters by triangulating occasionally, tactically co-opting stances from the other side. But the most striking thing about both parties is the wide range of positions they share that are at odds with the enthusiasms of the median voter: a bellicose foreign policy, free trade, social libertinism and the financialization of the economy.

In contrast, the church offers a consistent ethic of solidarity: against pre-emptive war of any kind (which the church tells us cannot be waged in a just manner under modern conditions), against the enrichment of the wealthy in poor and rich nations alike at the expense of the working and middle classes, against the increasingly nebulous claims of academic progressives and activists about the nature of the human person and against the pursuit of maximal shareholder value to the detriment of virtually every other meaningful consideration.

It is not just the wide range of issues addressed by the churchs social teaching that might inform a future large-scale political realignment but also the manner in which it does so. Consider the problem of cooperation among nations. If the events of the last year have revealed anything, it is the importance of what Benedict XVI, the pope emeritus, referred to as supranational institutions with real teeth. Instead of lionizing the neoliberal banalities of Davos Man, Catholic social teaching articulates a morally inflected defense of internationalism that rejects most of what makes Americans suspicious of it the obliging attitude toward corporate power, the soft cultural imperialism of liberal nongovernmental organizations while insisting upon its indispensability for the common good.

The idea that Catholic social teaching can inspire secular politics is not new. The papal encyclicals of the interwar period, which spoke to the anxieties of a world torn between the failures of laissez-faire economics and the growing threat of totalitarianism, were read enthusiastically by Franklin Roosevelt. Today Pope Francis, in keeping with many recent occupants of the Chair of Peter, addresses his writings to all people of good will rather than to the Catholic faithful alone as he inveighs against the spoliation of the Amazon region and its Indigenous peoples, wage slavery in Asia, the theft of natural resources in Africa and the replacement of civic life with algorithm-abetted consumerism in the developed world.

We already have a test case for what Catholic social teaching can offer to a population disillusioned by the collapse of a civilization and its supposed ideals: the European political tradition of Christian democracy. More than half a century ago, Christian democracy arose in Europe as a response to the ideologies that had given rise to a global economic depression and two successive world wars. The new postnationalist Europe to which this political movement gave rise a Europe of robust trade unions and generously subsidized orchestras was the dream not only of the onetime imperial heir Otto von Hapsburg and Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the longtime prefect of the Holy Office, but also of Goethe and Schiller and Beethoven, the fulfillment of the promise of centuries of European humanism.

Like its predecessor in Europe, a revived Christian democracy in the United States would draw upon official church teaching as well as pilfer from the best of secular culture. A new Catholic politics would baptize Bernie Sanderss health care plan, degrowth economics and bans on single-use plastics while drawing attention to neglected elements of our own political heritage that really are worth preserving, such as the presumption of innocence. Such a politics would also remind us, in ways that transcend politics in the narrow sense, of the value of forgiveness and contrition, as opposed to the self-aggrandizing quasi-therapeutic apologies to which we have become accustomed from public figures.

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Opinion | This Is Why America Needs Catholicism - The New York Times

Little, Brown and Company

Evocative and accessible, Nathan Harris's debut novel The Sweetness of Water is a historical page-turner about social friction so powerful it ignites a whole town.

Old Ox, Georgia, is a community attempting to right itself after tectonic upheaval. Focusing on the period just after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox and the enforcement of emancipation in the South through the presence of Union troops, Harris asks a question Americans have yet to figure out: How does a community make peace in the wake of civil war? I'm not sure the novel comes close to finding an answer. But posing the question and following through the work undertaken felt incredibly worthwhile nonetheless.

Between Oprah's Book Club, President Obama's summer reading list and the Booker Prize long list, The Sweetness of Water is having a moment that goes beyond topicality. There are several reasons for that: First, its question feels urgent and familiar, because politics now feels like war. Between the January insurrection, the threat of Texas secession, and the daily rhetoric of combat and revolution, the battles are ongoing, not just along party but also regional lines. Second, the peacemaking project attempted on these pages is still clearly unfinished. Like a fictional companion to Clint's Smith's history How the Word is Passed, The Sweetness of Water joins the national conversation on race and reckoning with history already in progress. In struggles over flags, monuments, textbooks, and university tenure, we're still fighting over how to frame this event in public memory, so those old wounds feel particularly fresh. Nathan Harris makes those extraordinary, still contested times comprehensible through an immersive, incredibly humane storytelling about the lives of ordinary people.

'The Sweetness of Water' is having a moment that goes beyond topicality. There are several reasons for that.

And third, right now, we desperately need to believe in our better angels, that we too can come together and rise above, like Harris's protagonists (and as President Obama famously urged). That hope is the driving force in The Sweetness of Water. It takes flight when three men meet by chance in the woods two Black, one white. George Walker, an aging white landowner, has spent too long out there hunting an elusive prey when he comes across Landry and Prentiss, two young Black freedmen who've been secretly living in the forest on George's property because they have nowhere else to go, and lack the resources to move on. They only know they'd rather be anywhere than back at their old plantation, where the owner is in complete denial about Emancipation and still considers both men his rightful property.

Despite mutual trepidation, the three decide to treat each other with care. Slightly disoriented and in pain, George asks for help getting back to his cabin and his wife, and he offers the two brothers food and shelter in the barn. It doesn't sound like much but in that context, cooperation is an act of kindness and trust. Plus, there's more to Geoge's wandering that day; he'd just gotten the (erroneous) news that his son, Caleb, a Confederate soldier, was killed in action and dreaded sharing that with his wife.

Harris spins an increasingly complex tale about the postwar South, and he tells it in a humane and intimate way, by exploring the interpersonal relationships of all kinds in and around this rural Georgia town.

In the days that follow, a connection takes root. Bereft himself, George doesn't know how to help his grieving wife, but he needs to do something. So though he's always avoided industry, with Landry and Prentiss's help, he decides to start farming his land. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement, a requirement on both sides: Landry and Prentiss won't accept a new master-slave type arrangement of the kind that's proliferating in the area, and that's fine, because George has no desire to be a master. He's always lived apart from Old Ox, in geography and attitudes. To his mind, this is no different. So he'll pay them a fair wage, the same as any other (white) workers. The brothers agree to work until they can save money to move north, and George gets help getting his new venture off the ground.

Emancipation or not, this agreement represents a breach of centuries-old social arrangements. And so even though their business doesn't directly affect any other person in Old Ox, every white person in proximity has an opinion on it, as though Landry and Prentiss's mere existence is yet another affront and attack on their lives. From there, Harris spins an increasingly complex tale about the postwar South, and he tells it in a humane and intimate way, by exploring the interpersonal relationships of all kinds in and around this rural Georgia town.

In small moments, Harris convincingly captures the thoughts and actions of ordinary people trying to push through extraordinary times.

They're all connected and interdependent; a fracture or ripple in one inevitably affects the others. The Walkers treating Landry and Prentiss with respect causes not just a ripple in those relationships more like a revolt. The petty viciousness of the reactions to the Walkers' arrangement with Landry and Prentiss can be maddening, and yet it rings true: American history is littered with events that began with a breach of racial etiquette. In small moments, Harris convincingly captures the thoughts and actions of ordinary people trying to push through extraordinary times. And even though the story focuses on hope and unexpected kinship, it doesn't diminish the horrors of slavery or the struggle in its wake. The events of their former lives are never far from memory whipping, beating, disfiguring physical abuse, family separation, near starvation, dehumanization. None of that is denied. None of it is minimized. Like the brothers, Harris tries to train the focus elsewhere for a time.

As an act of pure storytelling, it soars. On a deeper level, however, some aspects of the novel feel unsettled and incomplete. The Sweetness of Water taps into America's longstanding and profound thirst for fantasies of racial reconciliation stories in which Black people and white people find salvation together, bonding in the face of the egregious extreme racism of others. As appealing as they are, these narratives tend to reproduce certain problematic patterns. First, while seeming to focus on crucial issues, these narratives actually highlight individual exceptions to systemic problems that need real examination. Second, even in stories where Black people should naturally be the focus (as in The Help and Green Book) they tend to marginalize Black characters in order to center and affirm the virtue of good whites. And third, they can provide easy absolution without deeper reflection (again see The Help, Green Book).

I felt those tensions keenly reading this novel, but while it flirts with the edge, it doesn't quite fall into the abyss. The difference is that The Sweetness of Water isn't a story about what happened to the enslaved after slavery's end, coopted to focus on a white family. It's a soapy and riveting drama-filled exploration of a fracture and a healing. The focus on an interracial cast is an necessity, feature rather than a flaw.

I only wish the ensemble was a little more interested in the fullness of its Black characters; I yearned to spend more than snippets of time with Landry, Prentiss, and George's confidante Clementine. It's easy to love George and Isabelle and Caleb, eventually but I don't think they're inherently more worthy of our focus and nuance, or even more essential to the redemption story being told. The novel seems to follow the logic that it's the white inhabitants of Old Ox whose adjustments to life post war are most worthy of our attention. But if Landry and Prentiss are worthy of driving the action, if they are worthy of risk and saving, then they are worthy of depth. They're beautiful characters I wish I'd gotten to know better.

They're not the only ones neglected. The Sweetness of Water is highly selective about where it casts its lens. It's a story at once set in history, yet removed from it. In the emphasis on the Walkers and what they do for Landry and Prentiss, there's also a glaring omission of the realities of post war life elsewhere in Old Ox. Though Harris is generous to these select few white Southerners, he shuts out facts that are essential to understanding the world they inhabit, even if at a remove.

Harris captures white anger and resentment at loss of white livelihood, lifestyle and status. The novel briefly references the rough reentry to society of white men who returned from a lost war lacking jobs and money and the restoration of pride. But in this period the losses were not merely symbolic or even material. There was also tremendous loss of life in the Civil War, one in five young men, according to some estimates. But there's an eerie silence about those who didn't return the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the war and how their absence shaped the lives of those they left behind. Where were those widows and fathers and mothers and friends? As much as I was captivated by Harris's storytelling while I was in the thick of everything, in the end, I felt his omissions and oversights just as acutely.

The Sweetness of Water left a lasting and multifaceted impression: It's warm and absorbing, thought provoking and humane. But ultimately uneven in its ideas a book whose resonance ever so slightly exceeds its art.

A slow runner and fast reader, Carole V. Bell is a cultural critic and communication scholar focusing on media, politics and identity. You can find her on Twitter @BellCV.

Excerpt from:

Review: 'The Sweetness Of Water,' By Nathan Harris - NPR

THE actions of two car wash bosses who were jailed for more than three years each for modern slavery crimes have been condemned as cold and calculated and driven by greed by a leading detective.

DCI James Yallop described the crimes of Defrim Paci and Sitar Ali as callous and said Cumbria Constabulary had shown such actions will not be tolerated in the county.

Paci and Ali were found guilty of exploiting four Romanian men who worked for them at Shiny car wash in Carlisles Warwick Road. Both were jailed for more than three years on Friday.

The employees were forced to work long hours for less than minimum wage and were housed in filthy accommodation.

DCI Yallop said that, despite the ordeal, the victims had been able to move on and were now living outside the county.

This has had a long-lasting and devastating impact on their lives, but they have been able to relocate and start slowly to build a new life, and hopefully they will be able to continue to do that, he said.

They were presented with a set of circumstances [by Paci and Ali] that ultimately werent true, and what they were told was not what they found to be the reality.

They didnt understand employment law, they didnt speak English, they had little or no money, which allowed them to be exploited.

DCI Yallop encouraged members of the public to be on the lookout for signs of modern slavery offences being committed.

Modern slavery is really about the exploitation of vulnerable victims, he said.

You might see someone looking nervous or anxious, withdrawn, perhaps unkempt.

He said victims might be out at unusual hours and stressed that if something doesnt feel right or doesnt quite look right it was important to report it.

We are a remote county and we need to remain vigilant and its really important that the public are able to spot the signs so they can help us in uncovering a crime that can often go unreported, he said.

He paid tribute to investigating officers for their determination in securing a conviction and justice.

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Detective condemns pair convicted of slavery in Carlisle | News and Star - News & Star

In August 2020, a group of around forty Indian construction workers staged a hunger strike in Kraljevo, Serbia, demanding to be paid. In addition to not receiving months worth of wages from their employer, they had been working 10 hours-12 hours a day without proper food or access to healthcare and were living in cramped, unhygienic quarters during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The migrant workers from across India first arrived in Serbia in mid-2019. According to the Building and Wood Workers International, a global union federation, around 150 Indians were employed across the Balkan country for the construction of the Corridor 11 project.

In a Zoom interview, two of the workers recounted how their troubles with getting paid had begun soon after arrival. When their situation did not improve, the first group was repatriated to India in January and February 2020. The rest, including those protesting in Kraljevo, were repatriated by September 2020.

Much of the Indian governments efforts have been focused on Gulf countries, where, based on data from the International Labour Organization, around 90 lakh Indians live and work. However, the Building and Wood Workers International warns that Europe is fast becoming a hub for the exploitation and trafficking of third-country nationals. In Serbia, other reports of exploitation of migrant groups from China and Turkey have recently come to light.

When he heard about the stranded Indian workers, Ramachandra Khuntia, chair of the Building and Wood Workers International Indian Affiliates Council and a former MP, contacted the external affairs ministry and the Indian embassy in Belgrade multiple times.

What followed was a cross-border initiative involving labour unions, the Indian government, and Serbian anti-trafficking organisation ASTRA. We were finally able to bring the workers back home. But til today, they have yet to receive their wages from the employer, said Khuntia.

The payment of arrear wages is usually dealt with by the labour department in the host country, but the matter can be pursued through the Indian embassy, explained Khuntia, adding that despite assurances from the Indian government and the Indian embassy in Serbia, the payments seem nowhere in sight.

Wage theft the illegal practice of denying workers the money that they are rightfully owed has dramatically increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to the non- or incomplete payment of wages, employees have to deal with job loss, non-payment of termination benefits, poor working conditions, and hurried repatriation without the chance to register their grievances.

Ponkumar Ponnuswamy, president of TKTMS, a construction workers union in Tamil Nadu that was directly involved in the process of repatriating the stranded workers, says that each of the workers is owed anywhere between the equivalent of $1,300 and $2,600 by the aforementioned company, depending on how long they were in Serbia.

For the workers who were put through this trying ordeal, their unpaid wages represent a substantial amount of money that would have otherwise gone towards debt repayments, medical treatments and basic subsistence.

I think it is a huge loss not only at the individual level but also at the country level, said S Irudaya Rajan, an expert on Indian migration and member of the Kerala governments Covid-19 expert committee.

Migrant workers constitute an integral part of the global economy, with their remittances adding up to over three times the amount of international aid and foreign direct investment combined. India, the worlds largest source of international migrants, received $82 billion in remittances in 2019 according to World Bank data, a sum that has helped keep millions out of poverty.

Covid-19 has become a great opportunity for exploitation, said Rajan, who is currently heading a study on counter-migration from the Gulf to assess wage theft.

But according to him, migrant workers troubles begin in their country of origin, not abroad. It is a new form of slavery that begins before they even leave the country in the form of recruiting fees, he said. Recruiting agents and others involved are selling dreams to migrant workers.

In theory, the central government offers various resources for those who emigrate for work: registration portals, insurance schemes, awareness programs and helplines. They also provide a list of registered recruiting agents across the country.

But the reality of emigration is far more complex, even confusing. For instance, it would be safe to assume that only a fraction of the recruiting agents operating in India are registered with the external affairs ministry.

A 2018 investigation by the Migrant Forum in Asia, with the support of the International Labour Organization, found that in the state of Punjab alone the number of unregistered agents ran into several thousands, despite the 2014 Punjab Travel Professionals Regulation Act requiring mandatory registration of all consultants, agents and advisors involved in sending people abroad.

Unscrupulous agents make emigrants more vulnerable to exploitation by charging illegal fees and pushing unfair contracts. Some workers arrive in a foreign country only to learn that the job they were recruited for does not exist, says Rajan. Others end up without appropriate visas or permits and are never registered in the system.

The external affairs ministry limits the service fees registered recruiting agents can charge their clients, which caps at Rs 20,000. But Rajeev Sharma, Regional Policy Officer at Building and Wood Workers Internationals South Asia office, says that many of the workers have paid far more depending on the state they hailed from.

Workers from Punjab, for instance, paid up to Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 1,50,000 to the agent, he said. We dont know how they managed to fund their journey, they may have run into debt so it is not just the salary, so many other issues are involved. When asked about this practice, one of the agencies involved an unregistered Shakti Tread Test Centre run by Muktinath Yadav in Deoria, Uttar Pradesh gave no response.

Indian missions abroad are tasked with ensuring the welfare of overseas Indian nationals. However, the migrant workers and union members say that the Indian embassy in Serbia failed to even register their grievances properly. The Embassy of India in Belgrade did not respond to requests for comment.

In response to an inquiry about grievance redressal mechanisms for repatriated migrant workers, the Ministry of External Affairs Protector General of Emigrants instead pointed to the Pravasi Bharatiya Sahayata Kendra, a general helpline.

Grievance portals address a lot of topics, including pre-departure issues. However, there needs to be a specific focus on wage theft, particularly during Covid-19, said Rajan. He stressed the importance of collective bargaining by various governments in South Asia and proper grievance registration by Indian embassies in order to pursue the necessary legal steps.

Recognising the lack of global mechanisms to address wage theft, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor stated during a panel discussion last year that an escrow fund could be set up, with employers depositing six months worth of wages in order to protect workers against non-payment.

In the case of the Indian migrant workers in Serbia, it was labour unions that initially came to their rescue, following through until they had arrived safely back to their respective homes. When asked if there is enough awareness among migrants themselves about their rights and the resources available to them, Rajan said: Absolutely not, and I think that is where we are failing.

Migration has three cycles, he explained. The first pre-migration cycle happens in our country and steps to protect migrant workers need to start here.

Rajan said believed that the government should make pre-departure orientation programs, including skills training, mandatory. Most workers do not even know the currency of the host country. They know, in rupees, how much they expect to make and in how much time.

Khuntia, of the Building and Wood Workers International Indian Affiliates Council, highlighted the utter importance of signing bilateral agreements with host countries regarding wages, healthcare, and social security so that those emigrating can feel secure. And if anything were to happen, by virtue of this bilateral agreement, the Indian government can negotiate with the host country and provide relief to the workers, he concluded.

If everybody were cheated, there would be no migration, said Rajan. But to raise awareness among prospective migrants, it is important to share not only success stories but also those of struggles. It is not about how many people we send, but about how well-informed our migrant workers are when they are deployed abroad, he said.

Yamuna Matheswaran is an independent journalist and visual artist from India whose work has appeared on The Hindu, Atlas Obscura, Scroll.in and New Internationalist. She holds an MA in International Studies from the University of Denver.

This article first appeared in Asia Democracy Chronicles.

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Indian government stood by as migrant workers were denied wages during the pandemic - Scroll.in

What does it mean to lose ones childhood to unsung labour? What is it like when books are replaced by bricks, playgrounds by agricultural fields, plastic toys with heavy-metal machines, alphabet recitations by silent cries of help? What is to have memories set in strife, solemn smiles, and tiny hands clasped in the chains of unquestioned slavery? Nobody knows. Because 160 million children worldwide, deep into an abyss of darkness and trauma, do not get to answer these questions.

A report published in June by the International Labour Organization and the UNICEF shows an increase of more than 8 million child labourers across the domain in the past four years, and over 9 million more children are expected to have lost their childhood by 2022.

As the pandemic would have it, in the first quarter of the year 2020 itself, over 370 million students kept away from schools, their essential dwelling grounds for an ambitious, educated future amidst an uncertain, often hostile, world. The situation got exacerbated further as state-sponsored policies like the Mid-Day Meal Scheme stood suspended in the event of the physical retreat of children from school, leading to a widespread increase in drop-out rates.

The concerns are further legitimised as a UN estimate shows that over 24 million students dropping-out of schools across the globe. Children in the poorest regions of India are, thus, facing a double whammy the risk of illiteracy, as well as a clear denial of a nutritious meal, which had earlier acted as a pull-force for them to attend schools, defeating socio-economic compulsions.

The World Bank has predicted an addition of more than 12 million people in the below-poverty-line category in India during the pandemic. This, coupled with the reverse-migration of thousands of seasonal labourers due to lack of jobs in the city, has thrown the burden of fiscal adversity on the shoulders of children, now expected to support their families overcome this ordeal. Unreasonable market demand has made vulnerable children a part of the supply chain mechanism to supplement limited adult, skilled labour, in both urban and rural areas. These children have taken to hard agricultural labour, contractual work in brick kilns, and other industrial wage employment activities as a means to overcompensate for a phenomenon way beyond their control.

On top of this invariable and uncontrolled spike in child labour, a study conducted by Lancet has estimated that around 1.2 lakh children lost at least one parent between March 2020 and the end of April 2021. The loss of this parental shield against the scourge of the real world has exposed young orphans to social and market forces way beyond their understanding. One shudders to imagine the trauma these children might have to undergo on a physical and psychosocial level through exploitative hands. The possibility that children in their tender ages can fall prey to people with vested, criminal interests cannot be overlooked.

The Constitution of India guarantees free and compulsory education to children in the age group of eight and 14, prohibits the employment of children below the age of 14 in hazardous industries, and mandates the state to direct its policy towards the protection of children against forced labour and work-related abuse. But strong constitutional ideals must be accompanied by stronger policies, and more importantly, stronger implementation, oversight and evaluation mechanisms.

Despite the existence of a strict Child Labour Prohibition Act, misuse is prevalent due to the absence of strict repercussions. The biggest challenge comes from the non-recognition of the problem at the grassroots, which allows a free-hand to violators to grossly abuse vulnerable children without any fear of punishment.

More than across-the-line legal interventions, however, the real solution lies in nipping the issue in its bud. Resources must be directed to trace and monitor former school-attendees, dispense resources and provide counselling and guidance to avoid further drop-outs. Monetary help, as well as mid-day meal programmes also need to be established locally to encourage remote school enrolment, class-attendance and participation even during the pandemic.

Existing infrastructure needs to be optimised to prevent financial distress and digital divide from coming in the way of education. Help for orphans of the pandemic must also begin from tracking their numbers and cases, as a first. It is often that unsupported children go missing from records, falling utterly into destitution. Proper tracking and record-keeping will also ensure that new monetary and protective schemes get disbursed in a direct, monitored way, to avoid bottlenecks that come hand-in-glove with the involvement of corrupt middle-men.

The most effective change will come from balanced efforts from all three heads the state, the market and the civil society. A complete prohibition on the employment of children in hazardous industries up to the age of 18 will do well with a comprehensive social security scheme for underprivileged children. This will guarantee financial support and forge a shared responsibility between the state and the parents in raising them. The private sector can also be roped in with the creation of child-labour-free-zones, offering unique financial incentives to non-hazardous industries in this mission, who often employ child labourers for their cost-effectiveness.

As our governments think and rethink lockdown measures, scheme policy interventions and grapple with whatever remains while also contemplating over what does not, it is time we, as a society collective, pay attention to our children on the brink of irreversible damage. As the world observes 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, we must vow to join our hands in the interest of innocence. We must lend our voices and efforts to our children who await amenities and comfort, wipe their tears and lull them to sleep, and together, knit for them sun-rays that promise a brighter tomorrow.

The writer is Managing Director, IPE Global

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The Covid story of lost childhood - BusinessLine