The politics of inevitability .

Timothy Snyder on the Myths That Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans

“Americans and Europeans were guided through the new century by a tale about ‘the end of history,’ by what I will call the politics of inevitability, a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done,” writes the Yale historian Timothy Snyder in his 2018 book, “The Road to Unfreedom.”

The central thesis of “The Road to Unfreedom” is that different understandings of the past, its myths, histories and memories create radically different politics. Snyder wrote the book as a way of understanding Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and the West’s response, but its argument has become only more salient in recent weeks. You can’t understand Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine without understanding his metaphysical attachment to the era of empire, his mythological telling of Russian-Ukrainian history, and his semi-mystical construction of what constitutes the Russian nation.

But Snyder’s more radical argument is that the West is also operating under its own mythological understanding of time — one that is so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche that it masquerades as common sense. And that understanding the influence of the “politics of inevitability” is essential to make sense of everything from the West’s misreading of Putin’s motivations to the internal fracturing of the European Union to the decline of liberal democracy across the globe.

So that’s where we start: with the central myths at the heart of the modern Western project — and the blind spots they have created. But Snyder is also a renowned historian of European great-power conflict who has written six books entirely or partly about Ukraine. So we also discuss the chasm between the radicalness of European integration and the tedium of European governance, why Snyder thinks Putin’s invasion is fundamentally the product of a Russian identity crisis, Ukraine’s unique history as a battleground for a great-power war, how Ukrainian identity transcends ethnicity and language, why Western leaders and analysts consistently fail to decipher Putin’s intentions, the huge difference between a Russian nation premised on myth and a Ukrainian nation forged by collective action, how Ukrainian resistance could inspire a Western vision for the future and more.

A deeper and balanced conversation

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The Ezra Klein Show - Timothy Snyder on the Myths That Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans

“Americans and Europeans were guided through the new century by a tale about ‘the end of history,’ by what I will call the _politics of inevitability,_ a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothin...

“Russia: The state media lying to its own population !

Interesting article from the “The Conversation” titled “Russia: the west underestimates the power of state media”

While it is true that Ukraine has exposed the biasedness , racist double standards and the discriminatory coverage of some Western media outlets, it is to be noted that “many western countries have a wide range of news sources that are free from direct government interference. From the development of multi-channel television, rolling 24-hour news journalism, to the ever-expanding choice, immediacy and reach of online and social media, the infrastructure of western national media systems makes it hard for states and a few media conglomerates to seize control of the news agenda."

Some American journalists and researchers -Michael Arlen, Walter Lipmann and Anne-Marie Slaughter- have noted that “….during the Vietnam war,…the western media moved away from its position as a governmental mouthpiece, and began to adopt a more watchdog approach . It was this change, combined with the graphic reporting of the war, which has since been accredited with the thwarting of American victory. The media’s role is seen to have stoked domestic anti-war sentiments in the American public by presenting them with the atrocities of war into their own living rooms. This occurrence shows a decline of the media’s role in maintaining antagonism and public support for conflict …”

The basic desire for democratic liberties, including access to honest and fact-based journalism, can never be extinguished.

“Academics have even begun to talk about a ……..new communications environment where audiences are often celebrated for being savvy and active – and able to resist media power and influence. But in Russia, with a state-controlled information environment and limited access to independent journalism, the digital age of communications has not delivered the kind of freedoms associated with 21st-century western media.”

The article warns us that in Russia , the power of state-controlled media is absolute, we are back to cold war years of sensational propaganda and politicised reporting developing a societal fear of imminent destruction and severe paranoia.

Mr Putin has told his nation that Ukraine’s drug-addled neo-Nazi elite has been perpetrating genocide and that Ukrainians, especially Russian-speaking ones, needed saving.

“A Moscow news correspondent ..revealed six days into the invasion of Ukraine, Russian people’s reliance on state television appears to have influenced their response to warfare. He interviewed a Russian pensioner who depended on state TV to understand what is happening in the world and her response was chilling: A lot of what they say on TV, it’s truth. It’s true… You know, when I read in a foreign newspaper that Russians bomb Kharkiv and so on, I know that it’s not true because they promised not to do this and they will never do this.

In another story, it was reported that Oleksandra, a young Russian woman living in Kharkiv, called her mother in Moscow to tell her the city was under heavy artillery attack, and that Ukrainian civilians were being killed. But her response was it had probably happened by accident because the Russian military would not deliberately target civilians. According to Oleksandra, her “mum exactly quoted Russian TV. They are just brainwashing people. And people trust them”. Interviews with ordinary Russians on the streets also reinforce Putin’s narrative and justification for warfare”

“Russian authorities have tightly controlled Putin’s narrative by limiting people’s access to media that challenges his perspective and ensuring that state media closely follows the Kremlin’s script.

But how long Putin can control the narrative of his “special operation” remains to be seen. Once the west’s sanctions begin to hit ordinary Russians and their social and cultural isolation from the world cuts through, they may want to search for themselves a new reality independent of state media.”

Hats off to the Russian journalist ,Marina Ovsyannikova ,who burst on to a live TV news programme to protest against the war in Ukraine ,holding an anti-war sign.

The sign, clearly visible for a few seconds, read: "No war, stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here."

She has been missing since. Her whereabouts are now unknown. Her calls have gone unanswered.

Before the incident she recorded a video in which she called events in Ukraine a "crime" and said she was ashamed to work for what she called Kremlin propaganda. "I'm ashamed that I allowed myself to tell lies from the television screen. Ashamed that I allowed Russians to be turned into zombies," she explained. "We just silently watched this inhumane regime

St Jean flooded : the metro’s full-fledged EIA again and again !!!

After facing the rising waters near the St Jean cemetery during the recent heavy rains, the local habitants and our ecologists have been querying whether the metro construction works have not contributed to these abnormally high level of water accumulations.

In today’s l’express : …..’Le chantier du Metro Express à quelques mètres y est-il pour quelque chose ? Une source avance qu'avant la construction du Metro Express, ce problème n'existait pas. « je me souviens qu’il y avait des accumulations d'eau à cet endroit mais pas d'inondation comme c’est le cas actuellement » lance un habitant de Quatre-Bornes. Il est rejoint par Adi Teelock, écologiste. «Il n'y avait jamais eu d'inondation à cet endroit. Il y a au des accumulations d'eau lors des cyclones mais pas avant la construction des voies du métro » Elle s’interroge. «Est-ce que ces inondations sont liés aux travaux du Metro Express ? » Selon elle, il y a eu de gros travaux d’infrastructures « piling » faits dans cette région. «Comme il n'y a pas eu d'ElA, comme on ne sait pas quels genres d'études géotechniques ont été faits et quels sont les résultats, comme il n’y a pas eu d'études sur le Storm Water Management, on a le droit de se poser des questions»

You will recall that, in reply to a PNQ on 9 November 2018, Nando Bodha refused to submit a copy of an EIA report (..."more of a sort of monitoring plan") from the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise consultant. He simply made it clear that the report’s recommendations are being followed by Larsen and Toubro and that the government has no legal obligation to make the report public.

Some of our evironmentalists were amongst the first to sound the alarm when the Minister of Public Infrastructure, Nando Bodha, announced that the project would be exempt from a general EIA. “The government has made a big mistake by allowing this crucial step to be overtaken because it wants to rush the works. An EIA would have helped to prepare an environmental and social management plan. Now they will have to bear the consequences.”

In their zest to get the project started without adequate planning, the authorities have now to deal with a whole can of worms. Really disturbing !!!

We are coming to regret the absence of a full-fledged EIA and now we are having to bear the costs! The worse is yet to come with the ease with which cronies, the private sector and some foreign investors, via EDB , are securing the EIA certificates.

10Prakash Neerohoo, Paul Lismore and 8 others

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54 years of Independence- a reassessment !

The official version :

“Over more than half of a century after the dire prognosis about its future, Mauritius has steered itself from an impending ‘Malthusian crisis’ to an exemplary developmental poster-child. Supported by a conducive environment of political stability, rule of law, strong domestic institutions and policy continuity, Mauritius has successfully transformed itself from a low-income, mono-sector economy to a middle-income and temporarily High-income one with a diversified flourishing economy by carving out special niches in sugar, textile, tourism, financial services and ICT. In terms of purchasing power parity, its per capita income was more than three times and five times higher than the average of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa respectively.

Mauritius' economic performance has been invariably labelled as the “Mauritian miracle" and it has often been cited as the “African cub-Tiger”. It ranked, on the basis of the 2020 Human Development Index for 189 countries, 66th globally, 44th among developing countries and first in Africa and was classified in the High Human Development quartile globally. Mauritius was also ranked among the top African performers in terms of international competitiveness and 13th out of 190 countries according to the discredited World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report 2020. Life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and income distribution improved significantly to surpass average levels for upper middle-income countries.

Over the period 1970 to 2000, the impressive average real growth of 5.6 percent compared to 3.8 percent for Sub-Saharan Africa was outperformed by only a few countries namely the formerly known East Asian tigers and Bostwana. But its economic trajectory has, however, not been smooth over the years. It has been shaped by various growth cycles. From a take off in the 1960s, the economy gathered momentum in the period 1970-77 but slowed down in 1977-84 and picked up again as from 1984 to 1989. It subsequently stabilized to annual average of 5 percent up to the beginning of the millennium and thereafter dipped to an average of only 4.5 percent.” ……..

From thereon, follow our version which is more in tune with more recent facts and figures

A reassessment:

Mauritius at crossroads: But at the cusp of the millennium, after more than three decades of remarkable progress with sustained economic growth and significant improvement in the standard of living, Mauritius found itself at crossroads. It was in the midst of a challenging environment- a new era where the protected environment in which it was evolving so far was withering away. It started facing daunting challenges with the entry into the world economy of vast new sources of hard-working and highly motivated cheap labour from economic powerhouses such as China and India; the unbundling of the production chain across frontiers is accelerating across frontiers in manufacturing and extending more deeply in services; the reliance on trade is rising almost everywhere; the gradual phasing of external trade preferences for its textile and sugar and the volatility of prices; prices of labour-intensive manufacture and tradable services were falling while the prices of commodities, notably energy was rising. Mauritius has been increasingly affected by these developments.

The lost decades: Growth dwindled to an average rate of only 4.0% over the past two decades, nearly a two percentage points below the heady historical trend.

Why lost decades ? The improvements to the macroeconomic, business and investment climate and the adoption of a more simplified and growth-friendly tax and hiring system were short term and piece-meal reforms that were not accompanied by the more broad-based and inclusive reforms to tackle fundamental bottlenecks and generate sustainable growth. The low level of capital investment and the absence of sector reforms to generate productivity improvements in agriculture, industry, public utilities, health, education, public sector etc, did not prepare the economy enough for greater resilience and sustainable growth thus undermining the medium to long-term growth prospects.

We avoided making hard choices. The reform agenda remained unfinished and critical constraints to economic development became increasingly evident.

These economic constraints were more sectoral than macroeconomic, and in the absence of sector reforms to generate and enhance productivity improvements, the long run growth potential was insufficient to absorb the unemployed and growth was not broad-based enough to achieve the desired above-average growth rates.

On the social side, over the past twenty years, the proportion of households in relative poverty showed a general increase - the poverty rate decreased from 8.7% in 1996/97 to 7.7% in 2001/02, and then continuously increased in the next 15 years i.e. 7.9% in 2006/07, 9.4% in 2012 and 9.6% in 2017. In 2017, the estimated number of households in poverty was around 36,500, around 3,000 more households as compared to 2012. Similarly, the proportion of persons in relative poverty increased from 8.2% in 1996/97 to 10.4% in 2017, but with a drop to 7.8% in 2001/02. In 2017, the estimated number of persons in relative poverty reached 131,300, up from 122,700 in 2012. From 1996/97 to 2017, poverty depth, as measured by the income gap ratio, increased from 21.0% to 23.8%. At the same time, poverty intensity went up from 1.7% in 1996/97 to 2.5% in 2017

The WB report, “Mauritius - Through the Eye of a Perfect Storm” highlights that “Over the medium term, the growth process itself tends to lead to income inequality as the demand for skilled workers relative to supply widens the wage distribution and creates the evident risk that those with less education will be left behind. While the economy has been generating a healthy supply of low-skilled jobs, these have often been filled by migrant workers while many low-skilled Mauritians have stayed out of the labor force or unsuccessfully sought higher paying jobs for which they may not be qualified. Improving social protection therefore needs to be accompanied by renewed efforts to integrate more Mauritians at the bottom end of the income pyramid into the labor market. This includes targeted measures to address the specific disadvantages faced by women and youth. Additional reforms of the education system, focusing in particular on the crucial early years and the provision of second chance education to early dropouts, is key to a more inclusive labor market. “

Lost decades also in the sense that by the early years of the new millennium, when we peeled off some of the layers of the success story it uncovered a fragile underlying fabric which, for quite some time now, was being gnawed by a typical Mauritian virus - the dodo virus. Yes the historical dodo virus had caught up with the African cub-tiger. Like the dodo, the cub-tiger was cosily enjoying the spoils of its success that it has lost its competitive and enterprising drive. Indeed, the tiger needed immediate treatment. It was still a well-cocooned economy, where the economic agents haven't learnt all the tricks of competitive trade and business practices. “Markets and free competition are limited by the actions of the oligarchic families who dominate major plantations, financial institutions, real estate, trade and telecommunications.” And an education system that is no longer responsive to the needs of the economy and we had too much excess luggage on board- an over-burdened bloated public sector and unsustainable social maintenance programmes among others.

Some of our academicians, economists and thinkers were starting to question the very basis of our development model -a failed economic system that was not delivering for large parts of the population. “It is a model that cannot extricate us from our current inegalitarian low-growth economy because it encourages private sector connivance with the public sector resulting in rent-seeking activities, restrictive markets and crony capitalism.”

"Why do we have to continue with the smart cities and real estate schemes with the result that a large part of the population is being crammed into smaller and smaller and relatively poorer areas? Why do we continue to graft on our economy imported concepts of economic development like the tax-centric Global Business Sector and unproductive FDI inflows that have not delivered in terms of competitiveness, technology, management know-how and jobs ? But is this what the population really want or is it a development model imposed on us by a detached ruling elite out of touch with ordinary people’s lives, realities and hopes? -A model of an unhealthy coalition between the family-dominated political elite and the island’s few families-dominated economic elite whose policies have remained too eurocentric, and have thus been hampering our diversification strategies in markets and products.

The tourism sector, our Africa and IT strategies are paying the price today. Digital technology, for example, is moving at a fast rate often driven by the private sector, leading to doing things in new ways: more bottom-up, more plugged into outside networks and with a greater willingness to accept the risk of failure. But here our private sector is slow to move things up a gear. Where are the new emerging local and global services industries? Is our family-dominated private sector too conservative, too claustrophobic to open up to top IT firms from India, Korea, China and other Asian economies?

How can we talk about self-sufficiency in food when our strategic land assets are being sold to foreigners when they should have been put to productive use? There is also no coherence in our policies for a more optimal utilization and sustainable use of land and other natural resources, the development of our coastal regions and protection of marine life, agro-industrial production for food security and a thriving fishing industry….."

It is not the discourse that we are hearing today ; much of the talks and discussions limit themselves to the necessary constitutional reforms that would enhance gender inclusivity, abolish communal representation, and introduce elements of proportional representation. (Cast a look at the different editorials in the mainstream media, the interview of the ex-president, the "message" of the leader of the opposition and many others...). Not a word about the need for an alternative economic system...There are still many doubters about an alternative economic model for our economy to meet its future challenges.

Fighting for a change of the political system is not enough , it will be limiting our demand for social justice in very narrow terms, satisfying ourselves with the few crumbs left by the economic elite for a subservient political elite, without re-examining the use of our resources in relation to the country’s needs, including social and community needs, the natural environment and the impact of property development on our environment. Indeed, our quest “du vrai changement” should be, above all, a call for new economic paradigm that will dramatically change the socio-economic fibre of Mauritius, and especially one that will attend to the interest of "the many, not the few"..

The true discourse is the needed changes and reforms to our present economic model of development and the accompanying political system.

Let us hope that the next time we are given the opportunity of time-travelling the present unfolding development framework it would be an arduous but smooth climb all the way with fewer bumps and troughs to a firm economic foundation that has tamed the challenges to its advantage and met our expectations for a rising economic tide that could lift all boats instead of polarising the country between few haves and many have-nots.

7Prakash Neerohoo, Akhil Mishra and 5 others

Inflation, at double-digits unofficially, is being given a free pass !!!

You recall Mr Gerald Lincoln's advice to Government that “L’inflation ne doit pas devenir une obsession.” How could you expect our BoM boy to spurn such precious advice from our corporate friend?

Indeed, BoM seems to believe that by raising interest rates by a ridiculous 15 basis points and thus letting prices bubble for quite a while, they will not constrain growth ; nor will they discourage investment and employment and for sure, this small hike in interest rates will not be much of a burden for our debt-laden corporate friends .

They and the chatwa economists were queuing up to toe the line that “ le taux d’inflation est largement dû aux facteurs externes ” -putting everything now on the back of the Ukraine war. But core inflation, CORE 2 , which is non-food and non-fuel inflation, remained elevated at 5.8% compared to 5.7% in January 2022 and 4.5% in February 2021.

The external factors, especially the oil’s impact, are being dwarfed by their policy of the deliberate depreciation of the rupee which has fuelled inflation reaching 9%, year-on-year, in Feb 2022. BoM is currently allowing the rupee to depreciate by about 1/2 percentage point monthly. As in the previous 3 years, BoM is likely to continue with rupee depreciation until June 22, to again distribute exchange valuation gains to Govt for spending.

From end Dec 2018 to end Feb 2022, the rupee depreciated by 27% against the currencies of our major trading partners. The rupee has lost more than a quarter of its value over the last 3 years! The BoM allows the rupee to depreciate especially in the first half of each year so as to accumulate valuation gains on its forex reserves, which are added to its Special Reserve Fund in June, at the end of its financial year, to be distributed to Govt for budget spending.

BoM has currently borrowed about USD 1 bn to support the current level of forex reserves, but is not doing enough to prevent rupee depreciation. A shortage of foreign currency continues to prevail. Govt should apply urgent and serious policy measures to stabilize the rupee, which has already lost a quarter of its value over the last 3 years.

BoM should stop the heavy monetary financing of the budget deficit, which is aggravating pressures on depreciation and inflation. The increase in the policy interest rate, i.e., the Key Repo Rate, by 15 basis points to 2% is not sufficient to tackle inflation. The Minister of Finance announced a plan for a “assainissement des finances publiques” recently. Where is it? It is time he stops impoverishing the population!