The coronavirus pandemic has caused huge disruption for businesses in the UK and around the world, with extraordinary trading conditions severely testing even the strongest of companies.
In fact, figures published by market and consumer data provider, Statista, show that in April 2020 almost a quarter of all businesses in the UK paused trading or closed temporarily due to COVID-19.¹
When trade ceases so abruptly it’s extremely challenging for even the most streamlined and agile businesses to carry on, but what are the specific problems that businesses are dealing with due to coronavirus?
What problems are businesses experiencing due to COVID-19?
Inability to operate effectively, if at all
Social distancing and the national/local lockdowns have made it impossible for some businesses to trade – particularly those reliant on footfall and the physical presence of their customers.
Staff shortages due to ill health/self-isolation
Ill health among employees, and the ensuing self-isolation or quarantine, has led to huge uncertainty – businesses can’t plan effectively due to uncontrollable and unmanageable staff shortages and workforce disruptions.
Reduction in customer demand and decreased revenues
Considerably reduced footfall and a change in customer buying habits have significantly reduced revenues, leading to severe cash shortages for many businesses. Some have also experienced problems securing vital finance, being rejected for the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) or the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS).
Pressure from creditors
With such widespread financial fragility businesses have come under severe pressure from their creditors to pay monies owed, and the ever-present risk of being wound up by a creditor remains.
The virus hasn’t gone away, and with a further surge predicted over the coming months what can businesses learn from the initial wave that was so shocking. Also, how can they introduce new working practices and safeguards to protect themselves in the future?
How can businesses overcome Covid-19 trading conditions?
Streamlining
A streamlined business is agile and able to change direction quickly when needed. Streamlining measures could include:
Cutting costs – selling non-essential assets and ensuring that all outgoing revenues are reasonable and necessary
Using new technology – modernising or updating business software, and making sure staff working from home are doing so securely and efficiently
Changing working hours/the working week – staggering shifts or rotas so employees face less risk of contracting the virus
Eliminating non-essential tasks and workflows to save time and financial resources
Reporting
It’s essential for business owners and directors to know and understand the figures, including:
How much cash is required to survive for the next month/six months/a year
Whether there will be any cash shortages in the coming months, and if so, when
Whether stock levels can be controlled so that vital cash isn’t tied up in inventory
The current profit and loss situation and balance sheet position – vital information that warns of approaching insolvency
Additional funding
Consideration should be given to any government-backed schemes and loans that could support the business and provide valuable additional funding to survive the coming months. Alternative sources of finance, including merchant cash advances and invoice finance, may also be appropriate.
Building resilience
Building resilience involves focused planning, potentially involving new technology, and adapting operations to meet changing customer demands/business needs. This makes the business better able to withstand the financial pressure that’s likely to continue for some time. The viability of existing suppliers should also be explored, with research into potential new suppliers providing valuable reassurance that the business can carry on if a key supplier fails.
Professional insolvency support
Early insolvency advice is crucial as it allows businesses to act quickly and with confidence in the face of adversity. A greater choice of options may be available if action is needed – informal negotiations with creditors, for example, or entering an official insolvency procedure. The UK operates a strong insolvency regime with supportive rescue and restructuring procedures available, including fast track CVA (Company Voluntary Arrangement) – just one route that provides protection from creditors.
What happens when a business has to close due to Covid-19?
If a business has to close due to Covid-19, any assets will be sold off to repay creditors – a process called liquidation. There are two types of insolvent liquidation in the UK:
Compulsory liquidation whereby a creditor obtains a winding up order from the court
Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation (CVL), which is initiated by company directors
Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation is a better option, as UK insolvency law requires directors to prioritise the interests of creditors when the company becomes insolvent. If they wait for a creditor to wind up the company, directors don’t fulfil their statutory duties and could be held personally liable for additional creditor losses.
A CVL also offers eligible directors the chance to claim redundancy pay. So what happens during the liquidation process, and how does a business close down in these circumstances?
Business liquidation and closure
When a business enters liquidation, a licensed insolvency practitioner (IP) is appointed to administer the process. The liquidator deals with company contracts, informs creditors of the business’ financial situation, sells company assets, and distributes the funds to creditors.
At the end of the process the company is struck off the register at Companies House and no longer exists. Additionally, directors undergo investigations by the liquidator to ensure no wrongdoing has taken place during the time leading up to insolvency.
Planning ahead for a new business trading environment
The business world has been forced into action by Covid-19. Actions that businesses may have been planning to implement in the coming years – working from home, new technology, or general streamlining – have had to be fast-tracked due to the pandemic.
Operating in a new trading environment that nobody could have predicted is certainly challenging, but there’s still time to implement protective measures. With a little support, businesses will be able to trade with more confidence, less risk of closure, and with an eye to the future rather than to the past.
The article “Data Overtakes Oil as Leading (Geopolitical) Global Commodity” published three years ago became the subject of much debate and deliberation. At the time, many economists and political commentators decried the notion as nonsense – and some still do. “Data, the leading reason why tech exists in today’s world has overtaken oil as the number one traded global commodity and is now worth exactly double budgeted global defence spending. Like oil and military spending, data is the new geopolitical ammunition of the 21st century.” Whilst that statement is now recognised by just about everyone as common knowledge, Graham Vanbergen stresses the next big shift to take place will be just as rapid, game-changing and threatening. (1)
The reality is that data today is not just the main driver of everything from shipping to science, from shopping to share-dealing, it is about to change the way we live. It will change our understanding of economics, health, national security, politics, geopolitics and even the principles of democracy.
It is nothing new to say that the biggest corporations in the world by revenue manage everything from energy, retail, automotive, healthcare, commodities, financials, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals – and they so with one common factor – data. What happens next though will somehow surprise us all once again, like the 2008 financial crash and the Covid pandemic did.
The fine balance of international trade agreements that dominates agreed flows of goods and services are showing signs of stress and decay. For instance, the World Trade Organisation started life as GATT in 1948 and required overhauling in 1995. As the World Trade Organisation selects a new director-general this month, the Geneva-based group will be faced with one acute challenge: that there is no longer a great deal for support for it. Frank Lavin, CEO of Export Now says – “For its part, the WTO is faulted for its inability to complete a trade round… with no successful trade-rounds for 25 years. To put it politely, the WTO is not designed for success. Unlike the World Bank or the IMF, the WTO has no weighted voting based on a member’s economic role or financial contribution. (2)
The WTO is really designed for textiles, food, cars and commodities – but not artificial intelligence, software and big data – and unlike the former, the latter can be transported in seconds to anywhere in the world, with or without international or domestic governance. These new products are now challenging the institutions that support civil society and chips away at protective laws that govern such things as economic activity, workers terms and conditions, privacy, democracy and the making of geopolitical decisions. It will challenge the very basis of our understanding of not just how our economies are shaped but also how our democracies evolve in the years ahead.
For context, in the last two years alone, an astonishing 90 per cent of the world’s data has been created. Approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are now produced by humans every day, 40 per cent of which, is now machine-generated. By the end of next year, the entire digital universe will be ten times the size of what it was this year at the beginning of this year as exponential growth continues. Systems have gone from storing gigabytes to petabytes and then on to zettabytes (one trillion gigabytes) and now yottabytes (1,200 zettabytes). (3)
Whilst the digital age was getting a firm and steady grip of every aspect of our lives, a market accelerator unexpectedly appeared. We have witnessed how economies are rapidly changing as a result of the Covid19 pandemic. It’s not just the obvious like traditional bricks and mortar shops being rapidly replaced with online retail, it’s telemedicine, fin-tech and home-working. Many businesses are rapidly digitising their operations. Those that don’t quickly evolve face extinction as their competitive edge is snatched from underneath them.
More regulated countries, face the dilemma of falling behind. One example is how the ubiquitous state surveillance system in China has not only shaped how the state delivers public services but also how to control, punish and administer its citizenry, and in so doing, cornered the global facial recognition systems market now being sold to countries all over the world.
This then leads on to concerns over democracy and national security and the inherent risk of geopolitical fallout. Technology can be as regulatory free and borderless as two parties desire. Take for instance Palantir Technologies. It is a private American software company that specialises in big data analytics. It was born in the intelligence community, initially funded by America’s huge Department of Defence, given additional seed-funding by the CIA and is used extensively by the National Security Agency. It helps to manage America’s warfare monitoring, counter-terrorism observation and was the architect of GhostNet, a cyber-espionage network that targeted the UN and various national embassies – alongside hacking operations of foreign defence systems. It played a starring role in the huge Facebook/SCL Elections scandal that dragged Brexit over the line in 2016, which required just 1.2 million votes to get a 48/52 per cent result. Brexit has already cost the UK economy £200bn in just four years. It divided the nation, fallen out with its European partners, driven its government to break international trade agreements and laws, threatens the Union and ultimately threatens the future prospects of what was once one of the worlds most stable democracies. Unashamedly, Palantir has just filed to become a listed company on the NY stock exchange to use all of that experience in areas such as data collection for democratic outcomes and managing crucial aspects of public health. (4)
Social media is another seemingly uncontrollable threat. These companies have the ability to undermine and frustrate governments’ ability to manage anything at all – as evidenced recently over the pandemic. It is a matter of documented fact that social media has eroded trust in democracy and the institutions that uphold it all over the world. All of these things are now happening all over the world, all of the time – to a greater or lesser degree.
Traditional trade agreements do not cover these new technologies and even if they did, they would be outsmarted in short shrift. Whilst it seems like common sense to have a common response for greater regulatory international coordination, enforcement will always lag behind. For instance, regulations can be undermined by companies operating from jurisdictions with laxer rules. Profit offshoring proves that point, now it is known that something like $32trillion sits in bank accounts located in tax havens. Another example is Britain’s Electoral Commission. The governing body, was not just unprepared for what happened in the 2016 EU referendum, but to this day it still has not worked out how to defend democracy against a new wave of technology that knows no borders.
The global reality is that there is a fight on for technical supremacy – and it is this that drives the lack of international regulatory frameworks in the first place.
Hyper-globalised economies were exposed for their weaknesses in a global pandemic. Programmes to move from service delivery to localised resilience are already underway in many countries. Sustainability is now a key factor for shareholders and investors with a new top investment priority that centres around the environment, society, and governance. (5)
The big problem with the coming technology spike is that basic principles should apply to every country – at least in Western democracies – but they don’t and won’t. That point is made by Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who says – “Countries may devise their own regulatory (technology) standards and define their own national security requirements. They may do what is required to defend these standards and their national security, including through trade and investment restrictions. But they have no right to internationalise their standards and try to impose their regulations on other countries.” Many high profile commentators echo this position.
There was a time when international trade was relatively simple. Products were shipped to mutually benefit both parties in the transaction. But hyper-globalisation ended up with trade imbalances that heavily favoured one against the other. The trade between America and China is worth around $650bn annually – well over $400bn is in China’s favour. Whilst Trump stokes his trade war, it was American corporations that off-shored its workforce to gain the upper hand against their own domestic competitors. It was unfettered competition that drove a wedge between corporations and an embittered workforce. The result then was financially distressed households supporting a populist whose wrecking tactics of the world order are cheered on. America is now heavily focused on fighting the tech supremacy war.
Take for instance Huawei. There is no real tangible evidence that it has (or has not) engaged in state-sponsored spying or surveillance and yet America is crushing its advances by legislating against the use of its products, against it acquiring US-based companies and anyone selling chips to its supply chain anywhere in the world. In so doing, America is creating very adverse side effects for national telecoms companies (170 countries already use Huawei’s products). Many countries are now facing the prospect of extracting installed systems and going to the expense of acquiring and installing new and more expensive ones. To all intents and purposes, America is using this as an economic weapon across the world to beat back just one company. It not only wants to stop Huawei from becoming a global force, it wants to stop China from gaining the upper hand. This alone is a warning that the global system of governance, of trade, of cooperation is coming to an end in a bid for technical supremacy.
What can we reasonably expect from this new world disorder? The regulatory framework we have known has already started fracturing. By its very nature, technology’s own advancement has a systems architecture designed to do one thing – beat the system.
Greatness is no accident. Successful business leaders don’t just roll out of bed and hope for sunny weather.
They plan, prepare and perform with perfect consistency. This approach begins as soon as they wake up. What happens next mostly revolves around getting healthy, happy and organized for the day ahead. To help you do the same, consider these morning routine hacks for successful business leaders.
Wake Up Early
Before you even decide how many hours to dial back your alarm, make note of when you fall asleep in the first place. If you plan to rise and shine at 5:00 am, you should be dreaming by around 9:30 pm.
Evenings are typically our least productive time, while mornings are the most demanding. It makes sense to try and complete as many tasks as possible the night before. This way, you’ll have more time in the morning to do the things that matter and enjoy the sunrise feeling a little less stressed.
You don’t necessarily have to start each day pumping iron or running marathons. Yoga, Pilates, stretching and similar activities are just as powerful. We all know that exercise has an immense impact on quality of life. Following a simple workout routine in the mornings will help you feel better, think clearer and move faster.
Meditation or deep breathing can also be added to your schedule. Just a few minutes of mindfulness is capable of controlling anxiety, enhancing awareness, improving attention span, reducing memory loss and so much more.
Eat That Frog
Based on the Brian Tracy book of the same name, the concept of eating the frog is simple. Instead of leaving it for later, complete your most difficult “frog” task first. This gets it out of the way and staves off the associated stress. Additionally, you may find that everything you tackle afterwards feels much easier.
Set Your Aim
It should go without saying that it’s crucial to map out the direction of your day. After all, how else will you know if you’re headed down the right path? Dedicate at least 10 minutes to establishing your goals and reviewing your responsibilities for the day ahead. Don’t forget to allot times for breaks – they also matter.
Take Power Showers
Even the fiercest business leaders are guaranteed to tremble when taking on the mighty cold shower. It’s good to know that the torturous task of forgoing warm water has serious benefits. This includes increasing endorphin production, which makes you feel more alert, alive and optimistic. Cold showers are also known to:
Improve metabolism
Increase circulation
Fight common illness
Enhance skin and hair health
Eat Breakfast
The premise of having to take a chunk out of your morning time just to eat something can make it enticing to forgo breakfast entirely. However, there are many healthy foods that require little to no preparation and serve as the perfect way to start your day. This includes blueberries, oatmeal, chia seeds, nuts and Greek yoghurt.
Aim to have more protein and less sugar. The latter spikes your energy levels before bringing them down to a crash, while protein sustains you for longer.
Have That Coffee
Many entrepreneurs refuse to start their day without completing their coffee-making ritual. As long as you avoid harmful additives, a cup of Joe can be safely included in your morning routine. Green tea, which also contains caffeine, is a healthy alternative.
From here, it’s as simple as making the necessary adjustments and sticking to the schedule you set. It won’t be long before you get used to the changes.
Email marketing is one of the best marketing campaigns that you can rely on. Whether you’re creating your very first email marketing campaign or have used them before in previous projects, you’ll always have to devise ways to streamline your campaign in order for it to succeed. This way, you’ll be saving money, resources, and time that you can utilize for other processes in your company. In order to make the best use of your time, you can also turn any email into an SMS message, thus ensuring that it will be read since the likelihood of customers reading a text message is much higher than that of opening up emails. Because emails increase the ROI of all your marketing channels, improving your email marketing program will be a wise step to take. If you want to find out how you can do that, these following points and Dialed-In Local will be of great help to you.
Effective Campaign Planning Tool
Assuming that you have designed a marketing strategy that will work for your brand and vision, it is crucial that you start planning everything out. This step is important for everyone to be knowledgeable about their responsibilities, what is expected of them, the topics you’ll be covering in this campaign, measurement plans, deadlines, etc. For that, you will need planning tools, such as editorial calendar templates, which you can find for free once you look for them on any search engine. What’s great about these templates is that you can add any further details about the target audience, keywords, due dates, and suggested CTAs.
Email Marketing Service
Another step you ought to consider before launching your campaign on your own is hiring an email marketing service. There are a variety of email marketing services that you can choose from. However, not all of them might work for your campaign. If you take a look at Matthew Woodward’s Aweber review, you will find insightful information on what you will need to consider before investing in an email marketing service, such as deliverability, scalability, usability, and reliability. Of course, there are other features which will be necessary for your particular campaign, which you’ll need to list these factors. This will help you decide which service to use. Fortunately, email marketing tools will allow your trials or free plans, so you’ll be able to experiment first before making up your minds.
Automatic Email Manager
While it is imperative that you build relationships with your recipients, sending the same email over and over again can be counterproductive. To avoid performing this tedious task, you can use an automatic email manager. This will also create a more compelling experience for your audience, which will eventually turn into fans and, soon enough, into advocates. Setting up an automated system can take a bit of time and learn on your part, but it will save a world of trouble once you get the hang of it.
Use Checklists
When you’re sending out emails, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Whether you’re worried about content quality or typos, these errors can damage your relationship with your audience pretty quickly. It might even reduce the potential of getting future customers. To avoid that, you can make a checklist prior to launching your campaign in order to check the quality of emails before sending them. These checklists will effectively filter out any errors and produce error-free emails. You can find free checklist templates online for Excel or you can use a word-based checklist on Microsoft word. These templates are comprehensive enough for any email marketing campaign. However, you can create your own checklist if you have quality criteria of your own.
Employ Email Templates
When you start working on your email marketing campaign, you can either start creating templates from scratch or you can use free email templates online. What’s great about free email templates is that they are designed for specific needs. For example, if you want a Halloween newsletter, you can find templates dedicated to that purpose. If you’re looking for appropriate welcome email templates, you can easily find those as well. you can customize email templates according to your needs and without having to go through the process of testing and editing, which can take several hours of your time. Using templates can shorten that time to about half an hour.
Content Creation Tools
Content creation is one of the most important parts of streamlining an email marketing campaign. Naturally, your team will be pressured into making the perfect content in a short amount of time, which can affect the quality of the content and their productivity. Fortunately, content creation tools can help your team be productive while creating quality content and content calendar. Taxi for Email, for example, is a tool that can help users create templates that go along with your brand and vision. What is great about Taxi for Email is that it can be integrated easily into most of the major email service providers, unlike other content creation tools. In addition to this, they can minimize the risk of mistakes in your campaign content.
Utilize Email Rendering Test Tools
One major problem that email marketers often have to deal with is that emails are not rendered correctly for all email clients. Your clients are probably using different screen sizes, some of them might even be using their phones. It goes without saying that such an error can deter your clients away. At the same time, fixing the rendering issue can consume a lot of your time. For that reason, you can use email rendering test tools, such as Litmus and Acid, to minimize time spent on the testing process, increasing email quality in the process.
Track Your Progress
Measuring your performance will help you review your campaign and determine which metrics to focus on to increase the size of your email list. This process doesn’t necessarily have to involve complex analytics or data. All you need to do is to decide what went well and what didn’t at the end of the month. This will help you decide whether or not to improve your email content or your CTAs.
Creating an email campaign may sound more difficult than it actually is. However, if you use the right tools and take the right steps, you’ll have a great email marketing campaign in place in no time. These steps are crucial for the quality of your campaign, especially for start-up owners, who are already swamped with other duties, like content marketing, creative designing, social media management, and SEO.
The buyer’s journey isn’t a straight line from clicking the advert to purchasing, it is a multi-stage journey that depends on the impact of the purchase. Buying your weekly shop online is going to have a different buyer’s journey when compared to a large impact purchase such as medical treatment or housing. When you are making a bigger buying decision you are more likely to do more research around the topic to make sure that your purchase decision is right.
One thing that is clear is that more and more buyers are turning to online searches and reviews to help make an informed decision. 53% of shoppers say that they always do research before they buy online.
We didn’t realise this was potentially hurting this until one of our long term customers mentioned they had seen a negative review from a disgruntled customer when they were searching for our brand online. They mentioned that it wasn’t a good look for us – of course they would continue working with us because they knew the quality of our service but it would likely put off new customers.
This was news to us, but to our dismay he was correct. A customer who had not fully understood our service before using us had left a review on his business blog and it was ranking on the first page of Google for our brand name search (even though we had given him a full refund and let him keep the web assets we had created for his company) – hardly an ideal situation.
So we tried to figure out what exactly we could do, we reached out to him to see if we could resolve it with them but they never got back to our communication attempts. So we were a bit stumped, this is where I dived down the rabbit hole and found out about the world of online reputation management. This was a huge industry that I had never even heard of.
What do I mean by your brands “online reputation”?
So before we dive too deeply into this rabbit hole. What do I mean by “online reputation” – it all comes down to the perception that consumers have of your brand online but this doesn’t really tell you practically what it is.
When I am talking about online reputation I am talking about what happens when people look for information on your brand online. Are they greeted by positive reviews and articles or negative pieces?
These pieces of information will form the customers opinion of you before you ever speak to them. Think of it this way, when you’re looking for a restaurant for a meal with your family, you probably have a threshold of what review stars you’re willing to accept. If you see 2 stars for example there’s a good chance you’ll flick past this restaurant without second thought.
The same happens when people are looking for your business.
So How Can I Check My Online Reputation?
Checking your online reputation is very easy for the most part, at least at a broad level. You can just search for things your customer might be searching on Google.
Here are some examples:
Brand
Brand review
Review of Brand
Is brand good?
Is brand legit?
Is brand a scam?
Should I use brand?
For further inspiration you can look in your Google Search Console if it’s connected to your website as this will provide you with what customers are actually searching.
Example of bad online reputation
The True Cost Of Not Controlling Your Online Reputation
It’s hard to put an exact figure on the cost of not controlling your online reputation but one thing’s for certain is that it can affect all your marketing efforts. As we mentioned earlier over half of customers research online before making a purchase. With the dominance of Google search receiving over 85% of online searches this is probably the search engine that you should be mainly focused on maintaining.
If people are searching for your brand and they’re encountering negative articles there’s a high chance that they will at least consider using another brand or product. A staggering statistic supporting this one found in a study by Moz which showed if a customer can uncover just one negative article about a business or service 22% of people say they will decide not to purchase the product.
So you should be always monitoring your brand related searches to make sure that there aren’t negative results. Especially if you’re investing heavily in marketing efforts such as pay per click, you could be attributing poor campaign performance to advertising factors when in reality it’s a reputation issue that you’re not aware of.
To give an example of this if over 50% of shoppers are turning to online research before purchasing and 22% of them won’t purchase as you have a negative review this means that your ads could be under performing massively.
100 shoppers come to your site to purchase your product but 50 of them search online to make sure they’re making the right decision but during this research period they uncover a negative review or article this means of the 50 you could lose 11 customers.
For our industry losing 11 potential customers would be well over 6 figures per year lost.
Why we choose to outsource to Reputica to fix our reputation
We initially started to try to fix our online reputation ourselves, we thought how hard could it be? We started to ask customers to write reviews of our service on popular review platforms like clutch, yelp, Facebook etc. but this didn’t remove the bad review that was haunting us.
So we reached out to Reputica, a popular reputation management company as we realised that this wasn’t something we were going to be able to fix easily. When we spoke on the phone with their staff they were confident that they would be able to help us as they had done it for many other companies who were in the same situation.
The way that they explained the value of their service was, it allows us to keep our focus on what we’re good at, while they handle what they’re good at (managing our online reputation).
This made complete sense, we had spent so much time and resources trying to fix this issue that when we broke it down, we should have just paid Reputica from the start. Plus, they also uncovered some further issues with our online reputation that we didn’t even consider that they began monitoring and working towards fixing.
We’re able to focus on our business and maintain the service standards while Reputica protects our reputation, they send us reports of their activities and keep us informed of any changes they think that we should be aware of.
While it’s hard to put a value on the service we’re confident that removing this review from the search results will make all our marketing efforts be more efficient.
The main benefit on a personal level of using Reputica is being able to switch off from this stuff, running a business is hard enough without adding more and more tasks to my weekly checks. I always think of my brain as a computer and if I keep on adding tasks that I’m not specialised or trained in that I’m just using up RAM that is already nearly maxed out.
The article will discuss the recent attacks against Muslims in Delhi and try to examine the ‘Hindutva’ (defined as extreme Hindu nationalism) organisation, mainly the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose leaders and members not only participated in building a hateful environment, but were also found to be taking part in attacks against Muslims in Delhi. The term Hindutva is a far-right-wing ideology and it was first used by V.D. Savarkar, who defined it in his book Hindutva: Who is Hindu?, published in 1925. Since then it has become the core philosophy of the RSS, whose political front is India’s current ruling party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Hindu Mahasabha, a right-wing Hindu nationalist outfit, was formed by Savarkar in 1917. A few years later in 1925, another Hindu right-wing organisation was formed called RSS. Both organisations had very similar ideas, and they declared their primary objectives were to protect Hindus and only Hindus were allowed to become members of these organisations. A person could be a member of both organisations, (i.e. RSS and Hindu Mahasabha), at the same time. Neither Hindu extremist organisations extended their support to India’s struggle for freedom against British colonial rule, and also did not participate in the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930 or the Quit India movement of 1942.Under the leadership of Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha was opposed to Mahatma Gandhi’s gestures to Muslims and towards the Muslim League president Jinnah. (Siddiqui, 2018)
The founders of the RSS were Hedgewar, and Savarkar. Hedgewar became its first leader, and afterwards Golwalkar took over as the leader of the RSS.
The link between far-right ideologies in South Asia long predates the relatively recent rise of right-wing populist leaders. In the 1930s, the RSS leaders praised the ideas of Italian fascists and German Nazis and kept contact with these parties in order to help advance their extreme right-wing organisations. The RSS leaders wanted to build India along the lines of Hindu nationalism and Hindu supremacy. The founders of the RSS were Hedgewar, and Savarkar. Hedgewar became its first leader, and afterwards Golwalkar took over as the leader of the RSS. Since its inception, the RSS has opposed the Congress Party’s ideas on nationalism and secularism. (Siddiqui, 2019a) They wanted to build ‘Hindu Rastra’ and opposed the Congress Party’s struggle for India’s independence movement, which was then led by Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Maulana Azad. In their writings, they argued that India should resolve its “Muslim problem” in a similar way that used by the Nazis dealt with their “Jewish problem”. The RSS is the oldest fascist organisation to have survived so long.
The BJP is the political front of the RSS and most of the BJP leaders, including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have been members of the RSS. Even before becoming Prime Minister, Modi had reaffirmed his commitment to Hindutva: “The nation and Hindus are one. Only if Hindus develop will the nation develop. Unity of Hindus will strengthen the nation” (Organiser February 11, 2007 cited in Noorani, 2015). BJP and RSS are fully committed to the ideology of Hindutva, which is deeply rooted in hatred of India’s religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians. (Siddiqui, 1992; and also see 1990) At present, the RSS has millions of members spread throughout most parts of India with more than 50,000 shakhas (branches). It also runs thousands of schools where young minds are poisoned with hate against Muslims. In Uttar Pradesh State alone, there are some 20,000 RSS controlled shishumandir schools which teach that the Muslims and Christians are unreliable people stirring up hatred against both Muslims and Christians, with children being taught that both these groups are foreigners and outsiders.
Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Express Photo By Amit Mehra
What does a ’Hindu Rastra’ really mean? The literal meaning is the establishment of a Hindu state for the benefit of the Hindu community. It also means the subversion of secularism and reducing the Muslim community to the status of second class citizens. The actual aim is to create an authoritarian state which will suppress Hindus and Muslims alike, depriving them of their democratic rights and destroying the federal structure of Indian polity, and subjecting to unprecedented levels of exploitation of both Hindus and Muslims by the domestic corporate-financial oligarchy and international financial capital.
The RSS/BJP invests money in education and introduces indoctrination at school level. So, the more the state retreats from social welfare responsibility, the more it becomes possible for these communal forces to move in and propagate their belief in as truth, which is very narrow, sectarian and divisive. (Siddiqui, 2016a) The RSS also has a long term strategy to subvert intellectual spaces, capture institutions of higher education and research, not through logical debates and facts, but through violence and intimidation and often with the aid of the state machinery. (Siddiqui, 2009) The danger is that the authoritarianism is spreading across educational institutions. From control of syllabus to control of thoughts is conducted according to the wishes of the Hindutva, which is the real danger of fascism hanging over India. Fascism assumes different forms according to historical, social and economic conditions and national peculiarities. In India, fascism seems to be emerging under the garb of nationalism, which is causing havoc to India’s constitution and democratic morality. If India would like to be part of the civilised world, its leaders should safeguard the rule of law and uphold the constitution and pluralistic values.
II. The Ideology of the RSS
Golwalkar led the RSS for many years and he was seen as its ideological guru and defined Indian nationalism in his book, We or Our Nationhood Defined, (1947: 42) as:
“The non-Hindu people in Hindustan must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture … they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights”.His sympathies for the views of the Nazi Party are evident from the following passage from his book: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well- nigh impossible it is for races and cultures having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”.
The RSS justifies violence against Muslims as necessary in the name of national security and for the so-called wellbeing of Hindus. Despite the fact, that the Hindus constitute the majority of India’s population of nearly 80%, while the Muslims constitute only 17% of the total population. The will to secure the Self has as its corollary the will to make insecure the others. In the 2002 Gujarat riots, thousands of Muslims were killed by Hindu right-wing extremists including members of the RSS/BJP. The anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat portrayed a stereotypical image of Muslims as constituting a danger against the Hindus, with the Hindus needing to be secured. Violence against minority Muslims is facilitated and justified in the name of achieving security for Hindus.
Despite the fact, that the Hindus constitute the majority of India’s population of nearly 80%, while the Muslims constitute only 17% of the total population.
The word often used to describe the RSS is “paramilitary”. In its near-century of existence, it has been found by several judicial commissions to have carried out attacks against minorities, particularly Muslims. Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead in 1948 by a member of the RSS, which led to the banning of the RSS for a short period. It was only allowed to begin again with the promise to abide by the law and not to indulge in violence against minorities. The RSS doesn’t, by itself, engage in electoral politics, but does so thorough the BJP, the party that has governed India since 2014, and that has, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, been remaking India into an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist state. (Siddiqui, 2019a)
Gopal Godse, brother of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, revealed in his book Gandhi’s Murder and I, that he accepted the close relationship between Savarkar and his brother Nathuram Godse. In 1948, Savarkar was charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Soon after, he was acquitted by the Sessions Judge, only because the law required independent corroboration. However, later on in 1970, the report of Gandhi’s assassination by Justice J. L. Kapur, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, found a “conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group“. (Noorani, 2002)
Narendra Modi, after becoming Prime Minister in 2014, set about to further demonise the Muslim community by fulfilling the RSS agenda–a uniform civil code, the building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, and in Kashmir, the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. On all these three issues, the government passed bills through parliament, which further undermined the democratic rights of the Muslim community in India. (Siddiqui, 2019b also see 2016a)
The Modi government has imposed a curfew and closed down the internet for the last 10 months in Kashmir. The security forces have been given more powers to arrest, intimidate and create fear among the local people. Kashmir is getting out of control. The agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has put the BJP government on the defensive.
However, the BJP government’s anti-Muslim policy have still got support from India’s big businesses, the middle classes, and right-wing Hindu organisations, and is also supported by large sections of India’s media, both print and electronic. (Siddiqui, 2019; also see 2018)
Since the BJP came to power in 2014, Muslims have often been attacked and killed in the name of protecting cows in mostly Northern states where the BJP has strong support.Christopher Jaffrelot (2019), who has written extensively on the RSS/BJP, argues that lynchings are due to the close cooperation between the RSS/BJP and the law enforcing agencies, namely the police.
III. Recent Riots in Delhi
The planned attacks against the Muslims in Delhi are a serious threat to the very foundations of India’s pluralism and democracy. As we saw last February, members of the BJP/RSS succeeded in carrying out their attacks against Muslims in Delhi, by killing more than 60 people and also burning hundreds of houses and shops. It is a blot on the government and institutions including the police that most mainstream organisations and the media have not exposed the treachery of the RSS/BJP and have acted hand in glove with the BJP.
Delhi, the capital of India, was taken over by communal riots for four successive days in the last week of February 2020. The violence was a calculated attempt by Hindu extremists to tear apart the fabric of society. The violence also coincided with the visit of the US President Donald Trump to New Delhi, which appeared to be part of a nefarious plot by the RSS and other Hindu extremist elements to undermine the rule of law. Moreover, the failure of the law enforcement agencies to crack down on the rioters in the initial phase of the riots made matters worse. The police in Uttar Pradesh state were not free from blame either, and their behaviour at Aligarh Muslim University, and that of the Delhi Police at Jamia Millia University, where excessive use of force was used, was very undemocratic and brutal against students from a predominantly Muslim community.
A few days before the riots in Delhi, the RSS/BJP leaders were found to be publicly instigating their party members to attack Muslims, but the police failed to register first information reports (FIRs) against the BJP leaders, including the party Legislatures and Member of Parliaments, who were accused of making hate speeches: Kapil Mishra, Abhay Verma and Anurag Thakur.
Scenes of destruction at Bhajanpura in Northeast Delhi during the riots | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint
The London based Economist (February 27, 2020) noted regarding the hate campaign and violence in Delhi: “Inflammatory rhetoric from Mr Modi’s party makes things worse. During local elections in the capital in February, one of his candidates led crowds in chants of “Shoot the traitors!” In reference to groups protesting the citizenship law…the riots were triggered by a local politician who declared that if the sit-in by Muslim women protesting against the citizenship law was not lifted by the time United States President Donald Trump left India, his supporters would no longer remain peaceful. Soon after, mobs went on the rampage in Muslim neighbourhoods, often with police looking mutely on, or, say many witnesses, aiding the attackers.”
Similar accounts of the violence and attacks against Muslims were noted by others. India’s newspaper, the Telegraph’s correspondent reported (February 25, 2020): “[The] violence is well planned and organised and is the direct result of incitement by BJP leader Mishra. The police did not take any action against him when he held a procession on Sunday provoking his supporters to clear the peaceful protest.” The real perpetrators of the riot were not the two individuals, but those who created an atmosphere of hate, which drew the crowds to take sides in a petty incident. It seems that this violence was planned and carried out by the RSS/BJP members.
The researcher on Hindu-Muslim violence, namely Ward Berenschot argues in his study Riot Politics, “Hindu-nationalist organisations stepped up their activities in the months preceding riots. According to several informants, the RSS started organising new weekly meetings in Isanpur in the months before the riots, which were then discontinued after the riots. This increased activity of RSS and Bajrang Dal units was also noted in other parts of Gujarat, which suggests that the preparation for the violence had been under way before the burning of the train coach in Godhra.”
Another prominent researcher, Paul Brass, who has carried out studies on communal riots and also he has done extensive fieldwork in Western Uttar Pradesh. His work Theft of an Idol is of seminal importance (Princeton University Press, 1997). He argues: “The riotous events I have here documented were not primarily ‘spontaneous’ occurrences or chance happenings and that there were identifiable culprits who had conspired to produce or who had committed acts either designed to produce or whose effects were to produce riotous and murderous results… the kinds of violence that are committed in ‘communal riots’ are, I believe, undertaken mostly by ‘specialists’, who are ready to be called out on such occasions, who profit from it, and whose activities profit others who may or may not be actually paying for the violence carried out. The local politicians and authorities are often either incompetent or they themselves desire the riots to take place, and are willing to place a communal interpretation on the precipitating incidents.”
Since BJP government came to power in 2014, Muslims are often attacked and killed on the name of ‘protecting cows’ in mostly Northern states where BJP has strong support. (Siddiqui, 2019b; also see 2016b) As Christopher Jaffrelot (2019), who has written extensively on the RSS/BJP, argues on lynching about the close cooperation between the RSS/BJP and the law enforcing agencies, namely police: “Not only has the Prime Minister abstained from condemning lynching, some legislators and Ministers have extended their blessings to the lynchers. Whenever lynchers have been arrested, the local judiciary has released them on bail. If the executive, legislature and judiciary do not effectively oppose lynching, India may remain a rule-of law country on paper and, in practice, a de facto ethno-state.”
Since BJP government came to power in 2014, Muslims are often attacked and killed on the name of ‘protecting cows’ in mostly Northern states where BJP has strong support.
These people’s protests against the CAA had a special emotive content in the national capital, symbolised by the Shaheen Bagh protests led primarily by women and children, also added to and intensified the Hindutva communal manoeuvres. On December 24, 2019, barely a fortnight after the passing of the CAA in Parliament and approximately 10 days after the Shaheen Bagh protests began, BJP leader Kapil Mishra likened the women and children protesting at the site to Pakistani agents. These were desperate efforts by the RSS/BJP, which were targeted towards polarising voters on pro- and anti-Hindutva lines and thus defeating the rival candidates in the Delhi local election.
A fact-finding report released on 17th July 2020 by the ‘Delhi Minorities Commission’ on the violence unleashed in Delhi in February 2020 has shed light on the collusion between state and non-state actors in a planned and targeted attack on members of the Muslim community. (The Wire, 2020) It also brought out the deliberate inaction by police officials, and the incitement of violence by members of the RSS/BJP, and also several central government BJP ministers used misogynist and communal slurs to refer to the anti-CAA protests led by Muslim women since December 2019. At a rally in Uttar Pradesh, chief minister Yogi Adityanath said, “Men are sleeping under quilts; women, kids are pushed forward to protest against CAA”. Historically, during any episodes of communal violence, women’s bodies are used to take revenge against a community. The episode of violence unleashed in Delhi reveals yet again a similar exertion of power with impunity. A similar pattern of violence had emerged in Gujarat by then BJP state government of Mr Modi in 2002 and Muzaffarnagar in 2013.
In February 2020 riots in Delhi, Muslim lost their property, businesses, their houses were looted and burned and their jewelleries, documents, money, amongst other valuables, were taken by the attackers. Women protesters from the Chand Bagh sit-in protest site, claimed that they had been beaten up by male police officials. The police did not help or support them when the mobs were attacking people in the area. In all, 11 mosques, 5 madrasas (or religious schools) were burned down and also a Muslim shrine and a graveyard were attacked and damaged by the Hindu extremists, the fact-finding team from the commission said in its report released recently. “Seemingly, to crush the protests, with support of the administration and police, a retaliatory plan of pro-CAA protesters was worked out to trigger violence at a large scale,” it said. The Minority Commission also noted that witnesses spoke of police failure to intervene in the rioting. “Multiple testimonies collected by this Fact-Finding Committee recount reports of police inaction even as violence unfolded before them, or of police not arriving despite being called repeatedly,” it said. (Wire, 2020)
The fact remains that the collusion between the government, the rioting Hindutva aggressors, the police, and the activists of the ruling dispensation, was the most prominent factor throughout the four days. In spite of this, the Delhi Police in its investigations have primarily targeted Muslims.
Women from Muslim community protest against CAA and NRC in Mumbai. Credit: PTI Photo
IV. Anti-minority Politics
During the last parliamentary election in India, the BJP campaigned to polarise people in a political experiment which attained unprecedented success. It aimed to consolidate India’s Hindu majority at the cost of Indian Muslims. Modi’s trusted aide Amit Shah, a hard-line Hindutva leader, was given the task of being the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national president, to recondition the saffron party on visibly extremist lines. Amit Shah was rewarded with becoming the home minister. Another Hindu extremist, RSS hard core activist and founder of the Hindu Sena Yogi Adityanath, was made Chief Minister of the UP state, India’s most populated state. (Siddiqui, 2016a; also see 2016c)
In 2019, the BJP attained a larger majority, which enabled the party to fulfil its dream of adopting laws which are seen as discriminatory against Muslims. In the past 12 months, India’s parliament has adopted a number of laws related to the Muslim community, which were promised by the RSS/BJP in the past.
First, the Modi government passed a law through Parliament criminalising the Muslim practice of instant ‘triple talaq’ (divorce). The irony was that India’s Supreme Court had already invalidated itself. It was under stood by many that making the pronouncement of the ‘triple talak’ a criminal act would be exclusionary and discriminatory against Muslims as there was no law to protect women of other religions who were abandoned by their husbands. Politically it seems that this was a direct attack on Muslim identity and citizenship, which enabled the Modi government to move much closer towards the RSS’s long-term agenda of implementing a Uniform Civil Code with an intentional Hindu majority bias. (Siddiqui, 2018)
Second, the abrogation of Article 370 was a clear case of constitutional overreach. The article was the culmination of the RSS’s long-term historic aversion to a Muslim-majority state enjoying autonomy under the constitution. The Article 370 was prepared by the Nehru government in the early 1950s, when Nehru also made a promise in the United Nations that the region of Jammu and Kashmir would remain disputed until plebiscite takes place and kept the provision to provide special status to the only majority-Muslim populated state in India, which led to a carefully crafted political-legal arrangement, which gave the Jammu and Kashmir state special status under Article 370 of the Indian constitution.
Third, the Supreme Court’s judgment in November 2019 sanctioned the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya city in order to put an end to a long-running dispute regarding the Babri mosque between Hindus and Muslims. The apex court accepted that the mosque, which stood on disputed land, was demolished illegally by Hindu extremists in 1992, but at the same time, the court handed over the premises to the Hindutva organisations, who according to the court were behind the crime.
Fourth, the Modi government inflicted its most savage strike on the dignity of Indian Muslims. The CAA introduced religion for the first time as a criterion for acquiring Indian citizenship and barred Muslim refugees, which undermined the spirit of India’s constitution, whose core values are liberty and equality. The constitution prohibits any discrimination between people on the basis of caste, creed, religion, or colour. But the CAA, which allowed fast-tracking of citizenship only for non-Muslim refugees, sent out a clear political message that the government regarded Indian Muslims as second-class citizens. The women sat for months to protest against the CAA citizen bill, the BJP government accused them of being antinational and pro-Pakistani. With the mainstream behind the BJP, any solidarity and sympathy for those protestors was defused by the government.
The Muslims peacefully protested against these above laws, and due to the tense political environment eventually communal violence broke out in the national capital, Delhi, in February 2020. Over 60 people were killed; most of them Muslims, and their properties were destroyed with an intention to cripple them economically.
India had barely recovered from this damage when the coronavirus pandemic hit the country. During the recent outbreak of the corona pandemic, the RSS/BJP launched a disgusting campaign by blaming Muslims for the spread of the virus to kill and harm Hindus. Burying all reason and rationality deep, the BJP leaders led a vicious campaign to portray a Muslim organisation, Tablighi Jamaat, and Indian Muslims as a whole – as the only reason coronavirus infections spread in India. The government and mainstream media blamed corona virus on Muslims and divided the people on the basis religion.
Let us briefly look at the socio-economic status of Muslims in India. In 2005 a judicial commission was appointed by the Congress Party, which was called the Sachar Commission to “obtain relevant information and conduct a literature survey on the relative social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India”. The Sachar Commission did this job extensively and unambiguously underlined that Muslims were far more disadvantaged than Hindus in every respect, particularly on socioeconomic and educational fronts. The prevalent poverty and illiteracy in the Muslim community is largely responsible for its backwardness. The commission also gave a number of recommendations in order to improve the socio-economic conditions and uplift the Muslim community from poverty. However, fifteen years have passed since its recommendations were presented, but nothing was done by the successive governments to address these issues.
A recent US State Department’s annual report was presented to the US Congress on the current situation of minorities in India. It presents a detailed account of the protests and criticism against the Indian government’s decisions on the CAA and Article 370.The report, released by US Secretary of State Mr Pompeo, notes: “religiously inspired mob violence, lynching and communal violence”, and says that “some officials of Hindu-majority parties, including from the BJP, made inflammatory public remarks or social media posts against minority communities”.
The annual report further notes: “In December, (Indian) Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which accelerates citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered the country on or before December 31, 2014, but not for similarly-situated migrants who are Muslims, Jews, atheists, or members of other faiths,” (pp.27) On Article 370, the US report notes: “In August, the central government revoked the semi-autonomous status of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir and split it into two union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh… The revocation sparked protests, criticism from Muslim leaders.” (pp.29)
Hindus accounts for nearly 80% of India’s population, Muslims are the second largest group of 14.9% and the rest religious groups are Christians 2.4%, Sikhs 1.8 and Buddhists 0.9%. Indian constitution provides protection to minorities and also clearly states that India is a secular state, then a secular state should not be concerned with the religion, which its citizens profess and practice. In making and implementing public policies and laws, in executive actions, public employment, education, and in dispensing justice, religion of the citizen should irrelevant. Public policies are based only on welfare of the citizens. Secular state treats all its citizens equally irrespective of their religion and faith. The Hindu extremists derive their power from state recognizing them as representatives of the majority community which they are not. A secular state is not even supposed to recognize any community. Any such recognition triggers off competitive communalism/fundamentalism and competition for more communal rights and greater share in power and state resources. Communal membership is more or less birth based. The state is reduced to protecting and promoting the hegemony of the fundamentalist/communal elite.
However, a secular state does not emerge from the vacuum. Though Indian Constitution is secular, state in India strengthens cultural entrepreneurs. As the majority in the scenario are more influential and powerful, they corner larger share in social space and national resources. For example, Supreme Court Judgment stating Hindutva is way of life, or anti-cow slaughter and anti-conversion legislations euphemistically named as Freedom of Religion Acts or non-protection of minorities by security forces during communal riots and targeting Muslim minority in police encounters. Nothing is so sacred that it should be put beyond the rational scrutiny. But that does not mean disrespecting the sentiments of the believers. One has to be not only rational, but also reasonable person when we share political space with members belonging to different communities.
V. Conclusion
The study has found that this contemporary form of fascism can be seen as a way of imposing the dictatorship of international finance capital on India while providing it with some kind of a mass base. At present, the major Indian capitalists have formed close alliance with the foreign capital and they find Hindu right-wing nationalism more suitable to serve their interests. The RSS/BJP plays a central role in this. This political group took no part in India’s struggle for independence from Britain – none of its members went to jail or participated in any anti-colonial movement. As Kavita Krishnan (2017) has emphasised, “There is a wealth of documentary evidence to show those of the RSS’ “ideological fraternity” collaborated with the colonisers and were inspired by Italian and German fascism. Savarkar promised to be the “the staunchest advocate of loyalty” to the colonial government”.
The RSS/BJP is not a liberal bourgeois party as we have seen in the West, because the origin of the RSS/BJPP is very different and their mode of functioning that accommodates different kinds of voices. (Siddiqui, 2009b)The necessity of fascism in the contemporary juncture arises from the tension between the existences of a polity in which a mass base is necessary while at the same time we live in a globalised world where the rule of international finance capital dictates the terms. This tension produces fascistic tendencies in a developing country like India.
At present, India faces an immense threat from fascism in the guise of Hindu nationalism. The process of uneven development and deepening socio-economic crisis has created conditions of backwardness and poverty, which in turn had created an opportunity for right-wing Hindu organisations to organise people on the basis of religion.
The study finds that with the adoption of neoliberal economic policy, India is surrendering its sovereignty to global finance capital. (Siddiqui, 2019a) There seems to be a “fusion” of the interests of the business and the state, which is close to an explicit definition of fascism and all these are hallmarks of fascism in India. The fusion of neo-liberalism and Hindutva is being cemented with more support from big business. Finally, the semi-fascist authoritarian right wing Indian government promises no prospects whatsoever to farmers, workers, minorities, tribal people and Dalits and provides illusory hopes to the majority of the people. The RSS is trying to divide the society along religious lines. This will shake the foundations of India’s pluralistic character.
Dr. Kalim Siddiqui is an economist, specialising in International Political Economy, Development Economics, International Trade, and International Economics. His work, which combines elements of international political economy and development economics, economic policy, economic history and international trade, often challenges prevailing orthodoxy about which policies promote overall development in less developed countries. Kalim teaches international economics at the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, University of Huddersfield, U.K.. He has taught economics since 1989 at various universities in Norway and U.K.
References
Noorani, A.G. (2002). Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection, New Delhi: Left Word Books. ISBN:
Siddiqui, K. (2019a). “The Economic Performance of Modi’s Government in India: The politics of Hindu right”. World Financial Review, July/August, pp. 12-26.
Siddiqui, K. (2019b). “Economic Transformation of China and India: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective”, Asian Profile, 47(3): 243-259.
Siddiqui, K. (2018a). “Hindutva, Neoliberalism and the Reinventing of India”, Alternatives Sud (in French) 25(1): 39-60. ISBN: 978-2-84950-662-2.
Siddiqui, K. (2018b). “Hindu nationalism and the Consolidation of Hate Politics in India”. The World Financial Review, September/October. ISSN 1756-3763.http://www.worldfinancialreview.com/?p=34510.
Siddiqui, K. (2016a). “The Economics and Politics of Hindu Nationalism in India”. Asian Profile, 44(6): 497-507.
Siddiqui, K. (2016b). “A Critical Study of Hindu Nationalism in India”. Journal of Business & Economic Policy, 3 (2):9-28. ISSN 2375-0766. (Print), 2375-0774 (Online) USA.
Siddiqui, K. (2009a). “Globalisation, Hindu Extremists and Violence in India”, Klassekampen, (in Norwegian), 16 February, p.10-11, Oslo, Norway. http://www.klassekampen.no/
The 1st Presidential debate of 2020 held last night, September 29, was a reflection of the growing systemic social crisis in the USA. This is what we saw:
1) a refusal of the representatives (Trump & Biden) of the two wings of the Corporate Party of America to propose any actual solutions to the multiple crises now all intensifying across the country—health, economic, racism, and climate.
2) identity politics run amuck, now writ large at the highest political levels—i.e. the Great Distraction in full force, crowding out and preventing solutions to the crises.
3) a harbinger of political chaos just around the corner—at both a street level and in the major political institutions of the country—and the collapse of Democracy before our eyes.
The commentary of the media following the chaotic exchange (none dare call it a debate) focused on the ‘form’ rather than the content of the exchange: Trump went wild interrupting Biden and stealing much of Biden’s time. The moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, was either incompetent in his inability to stop Trump or else willing to let him continue and intervening only when Trump had succeeded in drowning out most of Biden’s talk. Biden too was unable to deal with Trump’s antics, at times taking Trump’s bait and falling into his trap.
But what’s so new about all that? That’s Trump, who came to give a speech to his 40% voter ‘red’ base—i.e. the third party at the debate!
Nevertheless, the media talking heads were shocked that Trump would engage in such an egotistical, disrespectful disregard for the rules of the debate which he had pre-agreed to. To the media the ‘form’ of the debate was thus more important than any content that might have addressed today’s multiple real crises.
1) The Multiple Crises Ignored (Economic, Health, Race, Climate)
Biden raised the New York Times’ story released over the weekend in which Trump’s tax returns showed Trump paid only $750 in total federal income taxes over two years, 2016-2017. Trump of course denied it as ‘fake news’. And that was that. There was no follow up discussing the four decades long tax system rip off. Nor about why both parties (i.e. both wings of the one party) since 2001 have given investors, corporations, and the wealthiest US households more than $15 trillion in tax cuts. GW Bush $4.7T, Obama $6.1T, Trump $5T with both parties agreeing to another $650B just last March.
Nor was there any mention of the escalating income inequality on both Republican & Democrat watches that was enabled by the $15 trillion tax redistribution to corporations and the rich. Nothing was said why Trump’s tax rip off resulted in wealthy investors getting $3.4 trillion in stock buybacks and dividend payouts in just the last three years; or why under Obama they got more than $6 trillion in buybacks & dividends on his watch!
And nothing was said by either of them why there are still 40 million American workers jobless, or why tens of millions of those lost jobs will never return, or why a long line of big corporations are now announcing permanent layoffs by the tens of thousands.
Biden never bothered to raise the point why millions of small businesses have gone under and millions more are about to do so. He could have quoted the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), the trade association arm of small businesses in the US, and its recent forecast that 21% of the roughly 30 million small businesses have already, or soon will close, if no real fiscal stimulus and bailout is passed. Trump of course ignored that altogether. He no doubt would have called the NFIB survey ‘fake news’.
There was a brief exchange on US manufacturing by both candidates, but both were wrong on the facts. The business cycle in 2008-10 destroyed millions of manufacturing jobs, only some of which came back and then mostly as two tiered, temp, low paid, no benefits jobs. The current recession is now in repeat mode in manufacturing. Production is up but jobs aren’t being restored. Biden could have indicated manufacturing was in a recession for the six months prior to Covid but he didn’t. And neither candidate discussed why free trade deals, in addition to the recessions, have destroyed at least 4 million US manufacturing jobs. Biden clearly will not go there since he and the Democrats, like the Republicans, are champions of free trade deals. The Dems praised the recent phony NAFTA 2.0 agreement negotiated by Trump. Trump’s promise to bring back those jobs in 2016 has been all smoke and mirrors. But did Biden bother to cite the facts?
And what about trade? Trump claimed his trade wars have been a glowing success. Is that why he’s had to subsidize the farm sector with $49 billion in cash handouts since 2018 (with $17B more promised)! If his trade wars have been so successful, why has he had to funnel billions of dollars in hand outs to his agribusiness buddies? Why have more than 10,000 small farmers gone bankrupt annually in recent years? Biden said nothing of the subsidy to agribusinesses still earning billions in profits or the bankruptcies of small family farms. For Biden the ‘trade problem’ is not the escalating subsidies to business or the destruction of jobs in the millions; it’s just a China deficit issue, the numbers of which he couldn’t even quote correctly.
So far as the health/Covid crisis is concerned, there was an exchange in last night’s ‘debate’. But it came down to Biden saying we should wear masks and Trump saying a vaccine was around the corner. That’s it. Biden noted correctly, of course, that Trump has grossly mismanaged the handling of the virus response. To which Trump simply retorted Biden would close down the entire economy again. Trump’s position is ‘Horror of horrors! We can’t save grandma and grandpa if the profits of our nail salons are the cost’! Biden’s position: Yes we can. Let’s all wear masks.
But where was the discussion that the US total reliance on private businesses and ‘markets’ has in large part been responsible for the magnitude of the Covid crisis in the US? The US had outsourced its production of PPE to China and elsewhere before the crisis. There was no mention of that, because both parties have agreed for decades to provide business tax incentives to move operations offshore. There was not a word about the responsibility of US businesses that conveniently offshored critical US goods like PPE and now testing agents to ensure greater profits for themselves. Now, with a second Covid wave imminent this winter, the US still lacks reagents and other pharmaceutical materials needed to do effective testing. Six months into the Covid crisis US business continues to offshore production of critical health supplies, despite US deaths are now predicted to exceed 400,000 by year’s end. That’s more US dead in less than a year than occurred during nearly four years of World War II. But still no war production plan is in place in the US. Neither Trump or Biden has proposed one. Trump, the great admirer of private business and stock markets, is still reluctant act like a ‘war president’ in the worst war confronting the US since 1941. Why? Because he knows that means stepping on the toes of his business buddies and election campaign contributors. For the same reason Biden won’t go there.
For Biden to propose putting the US on a war production footing would mean seizing the necessary production assets of private business, including big pharma companies, and returning it all to the US under a central war production plan. His wing of the Corporate Party of America is no more interested in doing that than Trump’s wing. Nor Trump or Biden explained how a vaccine might be fairly distributed to all Americans next year, or how a million tests a day would be produced and administered.
Biden not surprisingly defended Obamacare, the ACA, focusing on how it protected pre-existing conditions. Trump bragged about how he gutted it by ending the individual mandate.
But what did either say about the fact nearly 50 million workers and families are again uninsured? And at least another 30-40 million grossly under-insured? Biden’s answer was to add the ‘public option’ to Obamacare—which Obama himself pulled from the ACA in 2010. That way private employers can keep their tax write offs for continuing to provide their employees health insurance while the health insurers can continue to reap record profits from both private employer plans and the ACA. Biden specifically rejected any notion of Medicare for All. Trump said he had an alternative plan to replace ACA—which he’s been saying for three years but not showing!
In short, both candidates provided no answer to how to manage the continuing Covid crisis, nor to the even worse general health crisis in the US. The USA remains in the ranks of 3rd world banana republics when it comes to the health security of all but the wealthiest of its citizens.
And what about the discussion of race relations and policing in America? Here a heated exchange did occur. Biden’s answer was to get local police departments, politicians and select community leaders together to ‘unite America’. Somehow that would end systemic racism and institutionalized police repression. Trump attacked that idea as well as race ‘sensitivity’ training programs in general, which he recently declared cancelled. According to Trump, the programs were demeaning to whites and suggested they were reverse racists. White folks don’t want to be reminded of that, he said. Even more, they don’t want to be forced to ‘role play’ as blacks. It’s demeaning. And that was that, i.e. the full extent of the discussion of systemic racism in America: let’s do more sensitivity training (Biden); let’s not because it’s reverse racism and might make his white folk political base uncomfortable. They don’t like being role played as black (Trump).
And climate change? Biden’s answer was to rejoin the Paris Accords and maybe spend some more money on alternative energy infrastructure, as he went out of his way to reiterate his rejection of the notion of a ‘Green New Deal’. Trump’s answer to climate warming was it was too expensive for American business, even though they’re reaping historical maximum profits and getting trillions of dollars of tax cuts and subsidies every year. Trump then attacked Biden for California being consumed by forest fires, saying the Dems there have mismanaged the forest floor by not raking up enough leaves. Biden said nothing in return about the fact that 65% of California’s forests are federal land, and if anyone was responsible for not ‘raking the leaves’ it was Trump’s own Interior Department. But he did say there were larger storms in Iowa, whatever that meant. Neither candidate has a clue what to do about the climate crisis.
In summary, neither Trump or Biden addressed the real issues or proposed any credible solutions to the multiple crises afflicting America today— multiple crises now intensifying, converging, and exacerbating each other.
2) Identity Politics Run Amuck
What we also saw in the first presidential debate is a reflection—at the highest level of politics and within the US elite itself—of the country’s descent into the muck of identity politics.
US society is becoming mired in the plague of identity politics. At all levels, the focus is increasingly on extreme individualism—often at the expense of the public good. Rational discussion and solutions to collective crises are crowded out of public discourse. Replaced by fear-mongering appeals to identity among their political supporters by the politicians and elites of both wings of the Corporate Party of America.
White European Americans are fearful their culture, jobs, and ‘way of life’ is about to give way to the ‘others’—i.e. all the peoples of color whether Latin, Muslim, and other immigrants coming into the country; and to those of color (African Americans) already here but growing in number as well.
Like the Jews in Germany, large sections of white European Americans see black Americans as the ‘others’ living within our midst but not really one of us. Like the German Jews, they are the foreigners allowed to come here by past politicians. As in Germany, the ‘others’ become the ‘enemy within’ and the symbol of all the causes of their economic and social fears, insecurity, and anxiety—as politicians and elites re-direct the cause of social decay from their policies to the ‘others’—i.e. the Latin immigrants, blacks, LGBTQ, etc. Immigrants, blacks, and gays are the cause of their declining standard of living, their culture, and their way of life—so say the Trumpublicans and their media; white European ‘deplorables’ are preventing you people of color from achieving your rightful identity as equals to white European Americans—so say the Democrats and their media.
It’s all part of the ‘Great Distraction’, designed to allow the elites of both wings to continue to pick all our pockets while we’re preoccupied with identity issues and politics. So long as we’re immersed in issues of identity that separate us there’s no need to divide and conquer so they can continue to pick our pockets. Identity means by definition we’ve divided ourselves from each other.
Technology of course plays a conscious role in enabling the descent into extreme individualism and dead end identity.
The youngest are mesmerized by their electronic gadgets that enable them to focus neurotically on themselves for hours upon hour every day, absorbing most of their waking lives. Young adults are immersed in social media sourced news and pseudo-facts. As they come to realize they are condemned for life to lives of indentured, low pay, part time and temp service employment, they desperately seek and embrace simplistic ideologies as an explanation for their plight. Middle age adults become increasingly insecure and fearful as they see their families’ futures dim and realize they are approaching older age and retirement without pensions and sufficient income to keep themselves from poverty. They look for a ‘strongman’ to save them quickly.
They all become fodder for clever manipulation, fear mongering by media talking heads, and conspiracy theories multiplying daily on social media that substitute for the thinking and the evaluating of facts and opinions that is necessary for rational thought. The network does the thinking for them. People fearful and in crisis grab the nearest exit and short cut to explain their situation and grab a solution.
The capitalist media no longer consists of objective presenters of facts and events but subjective interpreters and spinners of facts and events. The subjective media is the new priest providing the congregation of the fearful and desperate the answers it wants them to absorb—except now it all occurs on a daily and by the minute basis instead of just on Sunday mornings. The result is predictable: when confronted with objective facts, such facts are rejected since they don’t conform to their rapidly expanding fantasy world of conspiracies and the messaging of media spin doctors.
Tell me what I already believe or I’ll listen to someone else who will! Don’t tell me what I don’t want to hear’. Tell me something so that I can cheer: ‘Hooray for our side’.
People are so concerned trying to understand who they are that they are unable to see who they are becoming, manipulated by the political elites who have found playing the identity card works well for keeping folks—white and non-white—from understanding the real source of their fears, their anxieties, their growing angst. That real source originates in the policies of both parties that are ever-enriching their wealthy elites at the expense of the rest of society.
Identity politics is the Heroin fix necessary to create the social stupor of the Great Distraction. And the flip side of the Great Distraction of identity politics is the Big Rip-off—where the same elites and politicians of both wings of the Corporate Party of America pick our pockets.
What we’ve just seen at the highest level in yesterday’s 1st presidential debate is the same focus on Identity politics, albeit now write large at the highest level. The same Great Distraction that has been intensifying in America for years. The same Big Rip Off in action!
In the first presidential debate both Biden and Trump immersed themselves in a personality food fight, like teenagers in a high school cafeteria: Trump attacked Biden as ‘sleepy Joe’ who Trump even suggested failed to graduate from college. Adding that to Trump’s pre-debate comments that Joe has early onset dementia and has to take performance drugs to stay awake and debate. Biden in turn declared Trump a clown. A neurotic egotist. Sick. Mentally unfit. And told him to just ‘shut up’.
The disease of identity politics in America has thus bubbled up like foul smelling swamp gas from society at large, to the very top echelons of the American political elite. Every election cycle we say the quality of the candidates put up to represent can’t get worse; but it does.
Listening to the media commentators at CNN and other outlets after the ‘debate’, the talking head experts were perplexed and repeatedly asked each other why any voter would continue to support Trump after his childish performance in last night’s debate? Conversely, at Fox the spin was his performance was precisely why his base continues to support him. What the former don’t understand, and the latter won’t admit, is that Trump’s 40% base remains solid no matter what he says, how he says it, or what he does. And that’s for a fundamental reason that also has to do with Identity.
For white European Americans, Trump is the bulwark against the ‘others’. He stands unequivocally against the changing demographic where White Europeans will soon no longer constitute the majority. They fear should that happen, not only their jobs but their culture, their values, their religion, and ‘their America’ will be no more! That single, fundamental reason is why they overlook everything about Trump and still support him regardless of his racism, his misogyny, his proto-fascist inclinations, his disrespect for democratic practices and norms, his verbal slips about ‘suckers and losers’ in the military, and all the rest. Nothing matters except he hold back the wave of colored folks of varying hues that will take away their America.
And with more than 350 million guns in America (and more than 15 million assault rifles) many of them are prepared to go to violent extremes if need be. Many are just waiting for the ‘Big Dog
Whistle’ from Trump.
3) A Political Crisis of Unimaginable Dimensions
In an essay entitled, ‘A Most Dire Warning’ a couple weeks ago this writer predicted the most likely scenario following the November 3 election. It included Trump taking legal action to stop the mail in ballot vote counting by turning to his now many Federal District and Appeals court judge appointees. The scenario includes Trump declaring himself the winner on November 3-4, knowing that more Republicans will vote directly that day than will mail in ballots than Biden supporters will vote directly. CNN polls show 66% of Trump supporters will vote directly vs. only 22% Biden supporters. That means Trump will likely show an early lead, supported by exit polling. But he must stop the mail ballot counting or he may lose in the end. He will rely on his soon 6-3 US Supreme Court majority to support Appeals court decisions to stop the voting in select swing or blue states. There is a precedent for this already. It’s exactly what the Supreme Court did in 2000 to ‘select’ George W. Bush as president. It stopped the vote recount in Florida to give Bush the presidency. Only this time it will be multiple states and the original mail in ballot vote counting that may be halted. Protests that erupt will be met with physical police force. That too is being planned. Protestors will be identified as ‘Antifa’ and ‘BLM’ militants and repressed. The federal police force created in 2002 for the first time in US history—called the DHS—are the favored instruments. But Trump may call on his radical fascist street supporters to assist where necessary as well. And the more the street level social chaos the more likely the Supreme Court will tend to try to settle the dispute to end the street chaos.
In yesterday’s debate, the moderator asked Trump if he would call on his street supporters to not get involved. To this he answered, “Proud Boys ( a widespread neo-fascist group in America today) Stand Back. Stand By”. Immediately the radical right, hearing these words, began to mobilize and prepare for Trump’s ‘big dog whistle’ on November 4.
Trump will not accept the outcome should he lose on November 3. Nor in January 2021. He said “we might not know for months” the final vote count. That means well beyond January 2021. In the meantime, he further noted he’s “counting on the Supreme Court to look at the ballots”. Will the SCOTUS review the tens of millions of mail in ballots directly! Trump concluded “This is not going to end well”.
For his part, Biden declared to the TV audience “He can’t stop you from the outcome of this election”. If we get the votes, he’s not going to stay in power”. But what Biden fails to understand is we may not get all the votes if the mail ballots end up not being counted—as happened in 2000 in Florida thanks to the same Supreme Court that is soon even more in Trump’s camp today than it was in Bush’s in 2000! Biden’s pre-debate statement that the US military will ‘escort him out of the White House’ was wishful thinking as well. The Pentagon generals the next day publicly stated they would not get involved. So who will ‘escort’ Trump out? The Democrats have no executive arm; Trump does: the DHS swat teams and most of the police departments in the country that support his election. And then there’s the Proud Boys neo-fascists who may just descend upon Washington D.C. and take up positions around the White House, armed with their AR-15s when Trump blows his whistle. Who’s going to try to escort Trump out in that scenario?
The exchange by Trump and Biden on what each would do on the day of the election and after was undoubtedly the most important exchange of the entire 1st presidential debate. All the rest was irrelevant verbal bombast, appeals to identity politics, and personality clash. Viewers of the debate learned nothing about how America might extract itself from its intensifying multiple crises. What they learned is that a political crisis may be coming, the likes of which haven’t been seen in America since 1860.
Dr. Rasmus is author of the January 2020 published book, The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the Progressive Radio Network. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.
Online betting is hugely popular all over the world, and the range of bookmakers that now offer sports betting odds and casino games is constantly growing.
Many betting site users play for fun and don’t worry too much about profit and loss, but on the flip side, lots of bettors take their wagers seriously, with some even taking the plunge and doing it full-time.
It is very difficult to turn over a long-term profit through online betting, and given the variance that happens in sports, nothing is ever a guarantee. But if you are looking to become more skilled at sports betting, the below five tips are a great place to start.
1. Focus on skill rather than luck
Casino games are undeniably fun, and if you play online slots with big jackpots there is of course the opportunity to earn big payouts, but ultimately this is not the best way to make money through betting sites as you cannot overcome the house edge.
There are also a number of sports betting markets that are more luck-based than skill-based, and you want to avoid these. For example, you can bet on who will win the toss in cricket matches, and whether there will be an odd or even number of points scored in a frame of snooker.
You are simply leaving too much to chance in these situations, and there are far more efficient ways to find value.
2. Know your sport inside out
Just because there are 20+ sports listed on betting sites like 888sport, that does not mean you should be betting on all of them. In fact, the more you can focus on one particular sport, or even one league, the better.
Many recreational bettors wager on big events across a range of sports, but advanced punters will hone in on one specific competition, more often than not.
It is also worth being an expert in something that is less mainstream – for example, Polish basketball – as your knowledge may indicate to you that the odds may not be completely accurate. Meanwhile, it is highly unlikely that Premier League or NFL odds will be wide of the mark.
3. Shop around for the best odds
Regardless of your opinion on how a match will play out, the odds are the only thing that should dictate whether or not you bet on it. It should only be a bet if you genuinely think you are getting good value.
For various markets, there may be some difference between the odds across different betting sites. This is why it is crucial to look for the best price, rather than just settling for whatever you can see on the betting site you are logged into.
Be sure to compare odds across a selection of bookmakers. It is hard enough to win bets as it is, so you want to be paid out properly when you do manage it.
4. Claim betting offers
The vast majority of online bookmakers have betting offers and free bet promotions for users to take advantage of, and many of them are well worth a look.
Betting sign up offers can be very lucrative, and often come in the form of free bets of a deposit bonus. Existing customer promotions are also excellent, as you can get free bets, enhanced odds, and more.
Keep an eye on the promotions section of the betting sites you are registered with, and make sure you have opted into anything that could be beneficial.
5. Maintain your discipline
This is a vaguer suggestion, but discipline is so important in online betting. If you go on a winning run, don’t start upping the stakes. Likewise, if you lose a few bets, don’t go chasing that money by placing silly wagers.
Some punters like to keep track of all of their bets through a spreadsheet, and this might not be a bad idea if it helps you see what you are doing well and where you may be going wrong.
Setting a bankroll is also smart, and it is suggested that your stakes are somewhere between 1-3% of your bankroll, unless you are placing lots of bets every day, in which case you should reduce the stakes.
Having a good reputation can have a massive impact on success and access to the best opportunities so, if it carries a bad reputation the damage can be significant. A great reputation will open doors to fantastic opportunities and unhindered access to your ideal client base. Check ideas for more charitable approaches that can pay off for your business’ success.
Why a charitable mindset can pay off for a business?
There are many reasons as to why a charitable mindset can pay off for a business.
First, giveaways and contests are considered as a form of charity. With that comes a lot of benefits. It helps to promote the business with more visibility. Customers always love to receive freebies so having a giveaway or a contest will engage them. This will simultaneously grow your network as it is likely to attract new customers which also generates leads as they give emails. By running these events you are showing your appreciation to your customers.
Second, many businesses who give to charities can pay off for a business. It builds a more generous, and positive workplace environment. This shines a positive light on your brand which can attract more customers. Also, by donating money to the charity you get incentives from the government. These include tax reduction, which can be essential in paying off for a business.
Last, competitions on the social media are a great way to build your following and grow your brand awareness by creating excitement. Trust is built between your competitions’ followers of and the brand. This is because there will interaction with them that they see immediately, hence developing trust.
Why reputation is important?
Reputation is very important for any business as it give access to more business opportunities, a better selection of prospective employee, higher company value and lower marketing costs. But most important it can also it can influence the opinions on the company’s product or service.
A good reputation creates trust; customers are much more willing and ready to buy from a business. Having a good reputation not only commands the customers’ trust but also influences buyers. This helps to improve the trust in the actions of your business. It eliminates any doubts about a product or service when customers purchase from you so, they don’t have to think twice about their decisions as they think high of the brand.
Also, customer will be more willing to share more and valuable information about their needs. So, reputation influences not just trust but a positive purchase intention as well as leads.
A good reputation can also influence the influencers. They have the power to affect persons way of thinking and decision making as they are the opinion leaders. This means that if your business has a good reputation, the influencers will think more of you and hence the followers of these influencers would become confirmed buyers of your products or services creating a ripple effect.
Charitable action’s attributes Giveaways and Contests
Most of the time giveaways and contests are cost and time efficient. This is because the only cost is the prize so when it’s successful it covers the cost.
Giveaways and contests have a lot of benefits. Some of them are; increase website traffic, increase brand reputation, build your email list and gather user generated content. However, there are some disadvantages such as inactive followers and undervaluing your products. Overall, the advantages do outweigh disadvantages. This is because the problems stated above can be easily fixed with rules and terms and conditions.
Other places such as social media companies and influencers can be charitable and do giveaways. As they can offer their services if they don’t sell products, customers just need something interesting and valuable.
Conclusion
By adopting a charitable mindset so giving to an actual charity or running giveaways or competitions will pay off for your business’ success. These actions have many benefits to them and a great tool for brand awareness when its successful and is done right.
It can come across and be associated with some high short-term cost, but it’ll pay off in the long term as the reputation of the business grows and the benefits of these actions will become more noticeable in the long-term.
While filing a personal injury claim without legal guidance may seem like a daunting task, completing the necessary paperwork without a personal injury attorney’s expertise still lies within the realm of possibility. Unfortunately, filing a claim without a lawyer’s advice isn’t the wisest choice for every accident victim. After sustaining an injury that requires multiple hospital visits, you may need to recruit the expertise of a competent attorney like Schwartzapfel Lawyers to recover treatment costs in full.
Want more insight about when to contact a personal injury lawyer? Read this article.
If you identify as a self-sufficient individual, you may derive satisfaction from doing things yourself. Whether it’s yard maintenance, plumbing, or legal matters, many prefer to complete tasks themselves rather than paying an expert. With attorney fees on a seemingly perpetual rise, it can be tempting to adopt the DIY approach for every to-do list item that arises. Many injury victims have posed the question: Can you apply the same DIY mentality to litigation?
Even if you’ve never fought firsthand in one of these dreaded legal battles, you know how costly lawyers’ fees can be. The prospect of seeing only 70% or less of your compensatory payments can be very disheartening. However, is it the best idea to file a personal injury claim without a lawyer’s insight, given all that could go wrong when up against huge insurance companies in court? For those set on filing themselves, be sure to follow the steps below to a tee.
Take photos of the damage
Whether it be an injury inflicted on your physical body or property damage, it’s crucial to take a considerable amount of photos. You never know when it may be necessary to present a judge with photo evidence during your court hearing.
The first thing a personal injury lawyer will tell you upon hiring is to document the accident scene with photo and video evidence. With these kinds of cases, the proof is in the damage left behind through negligence, fraud, or malpractice. If you’re physically capable, visit the scene and contact witnesses to gather more details.
Seek medical treatment
We all know how difficult it can be to find affordable medical care, especially on the job site. Even if you don’t experience any immediate symptoms, consulting with a medical professional could be the difference between winning or losing your personal injury case.
Just because you don’t feel pain right now doesn’t mean that you won’t later on. Many conditions present with delayed symptoms. The same logic applies to property damage repairs. For example, a broken roof can cause mold infestations in the future, even if it doesn’t negatively affect your life immediately following the incident.
Aside from preserving your physical health, there are other benefits of contacting medical professionals shortly after the accident. For one, it’s a vital step in scoring a favorable ruling. Any competent defending party will argue that the accident in question must not have been severe because you didn’t immediately seek treatment. In simple terms, immediate medical treatment indicates the severity of the injury.
Filing a claim
The first step in filing your claim is informing all the individuals you hold responsible that you plan to file a claim, including the individual parties and their insurance providers. This step can help speed up the process of getting your claim settled.
Most entities will recognize the bad publicity and financial damage that a court case can cause and decide to settle in response. Reaching out to these responsible parties works to demonstrate that these injuries were severe enough to call for drastic action on your part; not just a scheme to get undeserved compensation for a minor incident.
Collect medical records and review the details of your injuries
After informing the negligent parties in question, it’s time to review the details of your injury. Upon receiving the medical treatment you need, you’ll need to collect as many medical records as you can and familiarize yourself with the full extent of the bodily damage caused by the defendants.
As a next step, inquire about what medical treatment you’ll need going forward and collect invoices and records of lost wages. This documentation will all come in handy in court.
Try to agree on a settlement
You have the right to demand compensation from an insurance company or negligent party before or after filing a suit.
As the claimant, you’ll need to determine how much you’re willing to accept in damages. The chances are that the respondent (those who must pay the damages) will have a different figure in mind. The negotiation process for a personal injury claim is no different than any other kind of negotiation.
During this process, the opposing parties will exchange possible amounts deemed appropriate until a compromise is reached.
What if both parties can’t reach a compromise? In these cases, the courts will have to step in and intervene. If the case continues to trial, it’s the judge who will ultimately decide an outcome after hearing both sides’ arguments. Sometimes, the case may even see a jury. If you’re interested in learning more information about how to get the most from your claim, read through this article.
In summary
Keep in mind that the law dictates how long one can wait to sue for personal injuries. If you fail to meet this deadline, you can never file again for the same injury. With this stipulation in mind, you’ll need to act fast. While it can be overwhelming to balance your medical treatment and your legal responsibilities, it will be well worth the effort expended.
By Danny Leipziger
China cannot continue to rely on exports to drive its growth, but what are the alternatives?
China ran a $1.2 trillion trade surplus last year, and despite admonitions from the IMF to rely...
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Paul Williamson is managing director at Selling My Business, business transfer agents founded over 60 years’ ago, specialising in both the acquisition and sale of UK companies.
Technology to Fracture Global Trade and Relations
By Graham Vanbergen
The article “Data Overtakes Oil as Leading (Geopolitical) Global Commodity” published three years ago became the subject of much debate and deliberation. At the time, many economists and political commentators decried the notion as nonsense – and some still do. “Data, the leading reason why tech exists in today’s world has overtaken oil as the number one traded global commodity and is now worth exactly double budgeted global defence spending. Like oil and military spending, data is the new geopolitical ammunition of the 21st century.” Whilst that statement is now recognised by just about everyone as common knowledge, Graham Vanbergen stresses the next big shift to take place will be just as rapid, game-changing and threatening. (1)
The reality is that data today is not just the main driver of everything from shipping to science, from shopping to share-dealing, it is about to change the way we live. It will change our understanding of economics, health, national security, politics, geopolitics and even the principles of democracy.
It is nothing new to say that the biggest corporations in the world by revenue manage everything from energy, retail, automotive, healthcare, commodities, financials, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals – and they so with one common factor – data. What happens next though will somehow surprise us all once again, like the 2008 financial crash and the Covid pandemic did.
The fine balance of international trade agreements that dominates agreed flows of goods and services are showing signs of stress and decay. For instance, the World Trade Organisation started life as GATT in 1948 and required overhauling in 1995. As the World Trade Organisation selects a new director-general this month, the Geneva-based group will be faced with one acute challenge: that there is no longer a great deal for support for it. Frank Lavin, CEO of Export Now says – “For its part, the WTO is faulted for its inability to complete a trade round… with no successful trade-rounds for 25 years. To put it politely, the WTO is not designed for success. Unlike the World Bank or the IMF, the WTO has no weighted voting based on a member’s economic role or financial contribution. (2)
The WTO is really designed for textiles, food, cars and commodities – but not artificial intelligence, software and big data – and unlike the former, the latter can be transported in seconds to anywhere in the world, with or without international or domestic governance. These new products are now challenging the institutions that support civil society and chips away at protective laws that govern such things as economic activity, workers terms and conditions, privacy, democracy and the making of geopolitical decisions. It will challenge the very basis of our understanding of not just how our economies are shaped but also how our democracies evolve in the years ahead.
For context, in the last two years alone, an astonishing 90 per cent of the world’s data has been created. Approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are now produced by humans every day, 40 per cent of which, is now machine-generated. By the end of next year, the entire digital universe will be ten times the size of what it was this year at the beginning of this year as exponential growth continues. Systems have gone from storing gigabytes to petabytes and then on to zettabytes (one trillion gigabytes) and now yottabytes (1,200 zettabytes). (3)
Whilst the digital age was getting a firm and steady grip of every aspect of our lives, a market accelerator unexpectedly appeared. We have witnessed how economies are rapidly changing as a result of the Covid19 pandemic. It’s not just the obvious like traditional bricks and mortar shops being rapidly replaced with online retail, it’s telemedicine, fin-tech and home-working. Many businesses are rapidly digitising their operations. Those that don’t quickly evolve face extinction as their competitive edge is snatched from underneath them.
More regulated countries, face the dilemma of falling behind. One example is how the ubiquitous state surveillance system in China has not only shaped how the state delivers public services but also how to control, punish and administer its citizenry, and in so doing, cornered the global facial recognition systems market now being sold to countries all over the world.
This then leads on to concerns over democracy and national security and the inherent risk of geopolitical fallout. Technology can be as regulatory free and borderless as two parties desire. Take for instance Palantir Technologies. It is a private American software company that specialises in big data analytics. It was born in the intelligence community, initially funded by America’s huge Department of Defence, given additional seed-funding by the CIA and is used extensively by the National Security Agency. It helps to manage America’s warfare monitoring, counter-terrorism observation and was the architect of GhostNet, a cyber-espionage network that targeted the UN and various national embassies – alongside hacking operations of foreign defence systems. It played a starring role in the huge Facebook/SCL Elections scandal that dragged Brexit over the line in 2016, which required just 1.2 million votes to get a 48/52 per cent result. Brexit has already cost the UK economy £200bn in just four years. It divided the nation, fallen out with its European partners, driven its government to break international trade agreements and laws, threatens the Union and ultimately threatens the future prospects of what was once one of the worlds most stable democracies. Unashamedly, Palantir has just filed to become a listed company on the NY stock exchange to use all of that experience in areas such as data collection for democratic outcomes and managing crucial aspects of public health. (4)
Social media is another seemingly uncontrollable threat. These companies have the ability to undermine and frustrate governments’ ability to manage anything at all – as evidenced recently over the pandemic. It is a matter of documented fact that social media has eroded trust in democracy and the institutions that uphold it all over the world. All of these things are now happening all over the world, all of the time – to a greater or lesser degree.
Traditional trade agreements do not cover these new technologies and even if they did, they would be outsmarted in short shrift. Whilst it seems like common sense to have a common response for greater regulatory international coordination, enforcement will always lag behind. For instance, regulations can be undermined by companies operating from jurisdictions with laxer rules. Profit offshoring proves that point, now it is known that something like $32trillion sits in bank accounts located in tax havens. Another example is Britain’s Electoral Commission. The governing body, was not just unprepared for what happened in the 2016 EU referendum, but to this day it still has not worked out how to defend democracy against a new wave of technology that knows no borders.
The global reality is that there is a fight on for technical supremacy – and it is this that drives the lack of international regulatory frameworks in the first place.
Hyper-globalised economies were exposed for their weaknesses in a global pandemic. Programmes to move from service delivery to localised resilience are already underway in many countries. Sustainability is now a key factor for shareholders and investors with a new top investment priority that centres around the environment, society, and governance. (5)
The big problem with the coming technology spike is that basic principles should apply to every country – at least in Western democracies – but they don’t and won’t. That point is made by Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who says – “Countries may devise their own regulatory (technology) standards and define their own national security requirements. They may do what is required to defend these standards and their national security, including through trade and investment restrictions. But they have no right to internationalise their standards and try to impose their regulations on other countries.” Many high profile commentators echo this position.
There was a time when international trade was relatively simple. Products were shipped to mutually benefit both parties in the transaction. But hyper-globalisation ended up with trade imbalances that heavily favoured one against the other. The trade between America and China is worth around $650bn annually – well over $400bn is in China’s favour. Whilst Trump stokes his trade war, it was American corporations that off-shored its workforce to gain the upper hand against their own domestic competitors. It was unfettered competition that drove a wedge between corporations and an embittered workforce. The result then was financially distressed households supporting a populist whose wrecking tactics of the world order are cheered on. America is now heavily focused on fighting the tech supremacy war.
Take for instance Huawei. There is no real tangible evidence that it has (or has not) engaged in state-sponsored spying or surveillance and yet America is crushing its advances by legislating against the use of its products, against it acquiring US-based companies and anyone selling chips to its supply chain anywhere in the world. In so doing, America is creating very adverse side effects for national telecoms companies (170 countries already use Huawei’s products). Many countries are now facing the prospect of extracting installed systems and going to the expense of acquiring and installing new and more expensive ones. To all intents and purposes, America is using this as an economic weapon across the world to beat back just one company. It not only wants to stop Huawei from becoming a global force, it wants to stop China from gaining the upper hand. This alone is a warning that the global system of governance, of trade, of cooperation is coming to an end in a bid for technical supremacy.
What can we reasonably expect from this new world disorder? The regulatory framework we have known has already started fracturing. By its very nature, technology’s own advancement has a systems architecture designed to do one thing – beat the system.
About the Author
References
(1) The European Financial Review: Data Overtakes Oil as Leading (Geopolitical) Global Commodity
(2) Forbes: Can The WTO Be Saved?
(3) TechJury: How much data is created
(4) Wikipedia: Palantir Technologies
(5) Harvard Business Review: The Investor Revolution