New Delhi, Sept 10: Today the brutal subjugation of the world's poor resumes in Cancun. Officially, the event is the meeting of the World Trade Organisation. In practice, it will mean the continuing headlong rush to abandon the world to the private corporations of the North and to load the system even more ridiculously against the South.
The private sector record in major infrastructural matters would be hilarious if the issues were not so serious. To start with, a survey published a year or two ago indicated that one half of American university students could not locate the United States on a globe — but the Iraqi education system has been given to a U.S. corporation, and the rewriting of the Iraqi legal system has been given, without competition, to a U.S. law firm with close ties to the Bush administration. Iraqi engineers' estimates of $ 300,000 to repair a bridge have been ignored; the deal is going to a U.S. firm for $ 50 millions.
Secondly, the Enron-driven privatisation of California's power supply caused such problems that the State Government had to bail the system out. In the U.K., half of London including the underground was recently brought to a standstill by a power blackout in the middle of rush hour. The back-up station had been decommissioned, and the result was chaos. Power could not be restored for a long time either, because conflicting instructions had been issued to staff about leading passengers out along the tracks, which are normally electrified. And had the weather been anything other than cool and rainy, there could have been deaths in the tunnels. The recent blackout in the eastern parts of the U.S. and Canada could also have had disastrous results had it occurred in winter, when temperatures are minus 20 degrees C or lower.
The official reactions to the London blackout were very revealing. The elected London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, had no hesitation in appearing on radio and television. The private electricity company, National Grid, put up a technical functionary who was obviously ill at ease and could only keep repeating the technical explanation for the shutdown. The British Parliament's Trade and Industry Select Committee will carry out an investigation, but the great majority of Britons have no idea about such procedures and the findings will probably get little press coverage. Few will realise that the system itself is the problem. On the one hand, the power companies face ideologically-driven pressure from the regulator to deliver cheaper power, and on the other they face shareholder pressure for bigger and quicker profits. More blackouts and even power-rationing are predicted for the coming winter. The rotting infrastructure is not confined to power supply — the whole British piped-gas network is in even worse condition. More chaos is the almost certain future. For example, the European Commission, the highly secretive administrative body of the European Union, has demanded and got the power to negotiate trade treaties with no reference to member-states' Parliaments. The Commission is almost fanatical about enforcing GATS, the General Agreement on Trade and Services, under which all goods and services must be put out to foreign tender; even private-sector bodies within the states concerned are banned from tendering.
Neither do the rich have any intention of playing by the rules. U.S. private corporations get gigantic subsidies from their Government, which is providing agribusiness (not small farmers) with $180 billions; the apparent intention is to destroy Latin American farmers with hugely-subsidised U.S. grain — especially the transgenically-modified sort which First World consumers refuse to eat. In the U.K., the private companies, which are purportedly the saviours of the National Health Service, have their profits guaranteed by the public exchequer for 30 years irrespective of their performance.



It is, further, publicly documented that the U.S. imposes huge duties on imports from the South, particularly on the poorest countries; so does the E.U. Japan imposes duties of up to 1000 per cent on rice imports.



The aim is not to bypass the WTO but to destroy it altogether, so that the Governments of the North can drive deals on behalf of the corporations. Yet, on the evidence, the world's private sector giants are not brave mariners on the free-market ocean but frightened children hiding behind mummy state's skirts. The public — especially the poorest people in the poorest countries — pay for their failures, of course, often with their lives.



In the face of today's colossal inequalities, with the 500 richest people owning $ 1.54 trillions — more than the combined annual incomes of three billion people — it looks as if all is lost. National legislatures too, appear to be ignorant of the facts and powerless to control their own Governments. Yet the signs are that the tide is turning. Some campaigning bodies say the intellectual battle for fairer trade and tougher regulation has been won.



And the bullies are probably less powerful than they look. A U.S. official with a reputation for hating India once asked a senior Indian diplomat, "Why don't you fight harder for India?"



Why indeed. If the South's leaders do not fight very much harder at Cancun the only conclusion will be that Southern leaders hate their own poor even more than they fear the Northern leaders and corporations who control them like puppets.