State of Power

Why did the pandemic spiral out of control in India? Why did some states see many more people dying than others? The central government's authoritarian measures, badly planned lockdowns, structural inequality and many forms of discrimination drastically increased the death toll, argues Sulakshana Nandi in this interview. She discusses India's unequal vaccination rollout and the roles of the public and private healthcare sector in pandemic management. Finally, she explains what a better health system in India could look like. Sulakshana Nandi is the co-chair of the Global Steering Council of the People's Health Movement in India. She is involved in research, capacity building, and advocacy on issues related to health equity and access, and public policy and programmes for health and nutrition, with a focus on gender and vulnerable and indigenous communities. Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror.

 During the pandemic, the World Health Organisation and governments took a back seat and power was centred on corporate interests. Health was viewed not as a right or a necessity, but as a product to be marketed and sold. Even in the midst of a global health emergency, companies treated the ill and the vulnerable as consumers and vaccines as commodities, setting prices and production rates that maximise profit. How has this happened and what, if any, are the alternatives?   Harris Gleckman is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Sustainability and Governance at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and the Director of Benchmark Environmental Consulting. He was previously Head of the New York Office of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He is here in conversation with Arun Kundnani, who is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror.

New generations of technologically advanced, hyper efficient industrial vessels, have gotten too good at fishing. This limited number of vessels has a massive impact on the ocean. Fish stocks have largely declined since the 1980s, but not all fishers contribute to the problem to the same extent, nor are all fishing livelihoods impacted to the same degree. The crisis of overfishing, fuelled in large part by a small number of industrial vessels, is threatening the livelihoods of coastal communities and small-scale fisheries around the world who depend on the ocean as a source of food and income. Small-scale fishers around the world rely on traditional methods and practices, working in harmony with the environment to feed themselves and their communities. Around the world they are rallying around the idea of food sovereignty and the vision of a global food system with food producers and human rights at its center. At the State of power podcast, we are concerned with the ways in which power functions, on land and on the sea. With the United Nations Oceans Conference coming up between 27 June and 1 July, we thought this would be as good a time as any to take a closer look at  the oceans that make up more than 70% of our planet’s surface.  How are coastal communities dealing with the capitalist advance into the oceans, the so-called Blue economy? What are the challenges faced by small-scale fishers today? Who are the small-scale fishers today — from France to Indonesia? What social divisions exist within this category of "small-scale fisheries" , what roles do  class, gender, and even race play -- and in this light, to what extent do "small-scale fishers" constitute a "political subject" that can fight for change?   Thibault Josse  works at Association Pleine Mer, a collective of fisher people and fish eaters working together for local, equitable and sustainable fisheries, through the development and strengthening of Community Supported Fisheries. A fisheries engineer, he works with coastal communities in France and in the Global South for social and environmental justice. Here he is in conversation with Mads Barbesgaard,  who is a researcher with TNI working on struggles around the use and control of land and ocean resources in the midst of the energy transition. Mads is also an associate senior lecturer at the Department of Human Geography, at Lund University in Sweden. Image source: Pleine Mer This podcast has been developed in the course of the Deck-to-dish: Community-supported-fisheries advanced training project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union; the European Commission cannot be held responsible for the information presented.

Aside from occasionally popping up as a topic, for example in relation to plastics, oil-spills, or occasional references to melting glaciers, the oceans are often a "forgotten space" for many otherwise inspiring social movements. But the oceans have had a central and changing role across different moments. The global ocean has through the centuries served as a trade route, strategic space, fish bank and supply chain for the modern capitalist economy. While sea beds are drilled for their fossil fuels and minerals, and coastlines developed for real estate and leisure, the oceans continue to absorb the toxic discharges of our carbon civilisation—warming, expanding, and acidifying the blue water part of the planet in ways that will bring unpredictable but irreversible consequences for the rest of the biosphere. Here at the State of power podcast, we are concerned with the ways in which power functions, on land and on the sea. With the United Nations Oceans Conference coming up between 27 June and 1 July, we thought this would be as good a time as any to take a closer look at  the oceans that make up more than 70% of our planet’s surface. What is the relation between contemporary social, environmental, climate, economic crises and the oceans? Also, who is benefitting from all of this exploitation of the oceans,  and how? Who are the capitalists at sea and what are their strategies?  What types of acts of resistance and struggle exist against these interests - historically and today? Liam Campling and Alex Colas,  are the authors of the book, Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World In their book, which deals with the political economy, ecology and geopolitics of the sea, the authors argue that the earth’s geographical separation into land and sea has significant consequences for capitalist development. The distinctive features of this mode of production continuously seek to transcend the land-sea binary in an incessant quest for profit, engendering new alignments of sovereignty, exploitation and appropriation in the capture and coding of maritime spaces and resources. Here they are in conversation with Mads Barbesgaard,  who is a researcher with TNI working on struggles around the use and control of land and ocean resources in the midst of the energy transition. Mads is also an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Human Geography, at Lund University in Sweden. Image source: Pleine Mer

The privatisation of public services is a long-standing global trend. But in the wake of the pandemic and through the introduction of contact tracing apps, Big Tech has gone one step further: Large corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are now set to control the very infrastructure that underlies our public health system. In this eye-opening discussion, Arun Kundnani interviews Dr Seda Gürses about the dangers of a system in which we depend on profit-oriented companies for receiving basic health services. How did we get to this point, and how can we imagine a different future?  Dr Seda Gürses is an Associate Professor at TU Delft and an affiliate at KU Leuven. Her work focuses on privacy enhancing and protective optimization technologies, privacy engineering, as well as questions around software infrastructures, social justice and political economy as they intersect with computer science. Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror. Keywords Health Securitization, Algorithms, Big Tech, Mobile Technology, Privacy

Many poor countries sign trade agreements with the desperate hope of attracting investment from their wealthy counterparts. However, these agreements, or treaties, tend to have some very problematic clauses, which often lead to trouble down the road. Investors have used these treaties to sue countries for any actions, such as changes in policy, that they perceive to be a threat to their projected profits. And they don’t sue in the national courts either, but in a special parallel system that seems to always favour the foreign investors.  Countries have had to use billions in taxpayer money, to pay these investors, at the expense of their own development. Our guest on this episode of the podcast,  Luciana Ghiotto is a researcher at TNI on trade and Investment. Her Phd is in social sciences, and she has done a lot of research on these Free trade agreements.  She is a researcher in CONICET-Argentina, and Professor of International Political Economy at Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM). Ms Ghiotto is also a member of ATTAC Argentina and coordinator of the Assembly Argentina Better Without Free Trade Agreements. Image source: B.S. Halpern (T. Hengl; D. Groll) / Wikimedia Commons

For a while now, the mantra “trade not aid” has dictated how the overdeveloped countries of the Global North engage with their less wealthy counterparts. The logic being that trade is more dignified than aid, and leads to longer lasting change. However, to anyone who has been paying attention, the way global trade is set up may actually be one of the reasons these countries remain poor. The playing field is far from level, and there are multiple mechanisms that work in concert to ensure it remains that way. To try and understand how the global trade system works, and to find out what can be changed, we had a series of conversations with some experts.  In all these conversations, we aimed to understand how the current global trade system came to be, how it works, and how we can make it more equitable, just, and fair.  In this episode, we wanted to understand exactly what the WTO is, where did it come from in the first place, and why does it have the influence it has?   Our guest, Alexandra Strickner, studied economics in Vienna and is co-founder of ATTAC Austria. Alexandra has decades of experience working in Civil Society around issues of globalization,   EU trade policy and Economic alternatives. Image source: B.S. Halpern (T. Hengl; D. Groll) / Wikimedia Commons

For a while now, the mantra “trade not aid” has dictated how the overdeveloped countries of the Global North engage with their less wealthy counterparts. The logic being that trade is more dignified than aid, and leads to longer lasting change.  However, to anyone who has been paying attention, the way global trade is set up may actually be one of the reasons these countries remain poor. The playing field is far from level, and there are multiple mechanisms that work in concert to ensure it remains that way. To try and understand how the global trade system works, and to find out what can be changed, we had a series of conversations with some experts.  In all these conversations, we aimed to understand how the current global trade system came to be, how it works, and how we can make it more equitable, just, and fair.  In today’s episode, the first of the series,  we speak  to Grieve Chelwa, who is an economist, about how the global trade system particularly affects African countries. Grieve is the director of research at the Institute on race power and politics at the New school in New York City.  In upcoming episodes, we will delve deeper into the history of the World Trade Organization, we will look at how global trade as it is currently done contributes to climate change, we will explore how Global North countries can change the way they engage with their less wealthy counterparts, and we will zoom in on investor state dispute settlement,  a particularly insidious mechanism that makes it difficult for countries to decouple themselves from an exploitative trade system that stifles their economic growth.  Image source: B.S. Halpern (T. Hengl; D. Groll) / Wikimedia Commons

On 24 February 2022, to considerable shock, Russia launched a large scale invasion of Ukraine. This was a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict that has been ongoing, particularly since 2014. In this podcast we want to find out what Ukrainians involved in its social movements are thinking about the conflict. Where do they think the war is going? What are their thoughts about the apparent rifts in the global left response? What should solidarity look like? The State of Power podcast spoke to Denys Gorbach and Denis Pilash, who are both activists on the editorial board of the left Commons journal that explores and analyses Ukraine’s economy, politics, history and culture. Image source: Markus Spiske/Unsplash License Keywords:  Ukraine Putin Russia Zelensky      

Governments around the world have used the pandemic as an excuse to expand their powers. Populations have been divided on the basis of race and class into those deserving of protection and those perceived as risky and to be controlled. Migrants, refugees, precarious workers, and racialized groups have faced vulnerability and repression. Many Western liberals, nevertheless, seem to wish for governments to be tougher in enforcing measures. In this fascinating discussion, Eda Seyhan lays out why an abolitionist analysis of official pandemic responses is essential and what an alternative approach would look like. Eda Seyhan is an international human rights lawyer and researcher, focused on policing, national security and racial justice, and Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies. Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror.