A tale of two plebiscites

A couple of weeks ago Australia held a plebiscite on whether the laws of the country should be changed to allow same sex couples to be legally married.

It was a venture into the unknown for two reasons: Voting papers were delivered by mail, rather than people turning up at a polling station, and there was no compulsion to return the papers (voting in general elections and referendums has been compulsory in Australia since 1924).

Even so, almost 80 per cent of the electorate duly returned their ballots with the result being 61.6 per cent in favour of the marriage law change and 38.4 per cent against.

By any description this was a landslide, and ‘Yes’ supporters were celebrating well into the night.

But at that point, the vote had changed nothing.

The result was advisory. It is up to Parliament to pass the legislation that enables the will of the people. This it has set about doing.

However, the emphasis has now switched to how far the views and rights of the more than one third of people who voted ‘No’ should be respected and protected.

Under debate are exemptions for religious bodies that to not want to vary from their long-held rituals and traditions; whether marriage celebrants should be able to refuse a same sex couple if they feel it compromises their beliefs.

Even whether businesses can legally refuse to provide services (such as making a wedding cake) for a same sex ceremony.  

These and other questions are before the House of Representatives, with legislation expected before Christmas, but the point is the minority is being considered and where possible, accommodated.

Contrast this with last year’s United Kingdom referendum to leave the European Union, which got up by a margin of 51.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent on a 72.2 per cent turnout.

This was no landslide. The margin for Brexit was paper thin, and yet what attempt has there been to even consider the concerns of this substantial minority, some of whom fear losing the right to do business, or pursue careers, to live or travel freely within Europe that they once took for granted?

What has occurred since has been an endless round of triumphalism on the part of the victors, urged on by jingoistic declarations in the largely foreign-owned press.

People who expressed their concerns or who dared to suggest the vote was close enough to warrant a second referendum when the full consequences of leaving the EU where known, have been labelled unpatriotic, even traitors.

The prevailing attitude has been – you lost get used to it. Civilised debate, even over issues which have surfaced since the referendum, is simply shouted down.

When an attempt to railroad Brexit through without Parliamentary oversight was overturned in the High Court, the judges were labelled “enemies of the people” in one especially rabid pro-Brexit newspaper.

The fact that two areas of the United Kingdom — Scotland and Northern Ireland (and let’s not forget little Gibraltar) — voted solidly to remain in the EU have been ignored, even reviled.

In the Britain of Theresa May and David Davis the voters of Boston and Castle Point are what matter. Bathgate and Ballymena can go hang.

The prevailing wisdom in Australia is that we inherited our traditions of fairness and equality from the Mother Country and for that we should be grateful.

If it was ever the case then in the 21^st century the pupil has far outstripped the master.       

Crisis moves in Ganges clean-up

One of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s core promises when he swept to power in 2014 was a clean-up of the Ganges.

India’s main river, sacred to Hindus and therefore to the heartland of Modi’s support, is in places little more than an open sewer, polluted with human and industrial waste — and often with the half-burnt bodies from some of the least efficient ghats, or crematoriums, that line its banks.

The problem has been too tough for many past Governments, but Modi, with a can-do reputation as the former Chief Minister of Gujarat, claimed he would succeed where others had failed.  

After deciding that the previous National Ganga River Basin Authority was not up to the task, he replaced it with a new high-powered agency, the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMGC).

But there it has seemed to rest and before long critics were describing the NMGC as just another ineffective bureaucracy. Now, with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just 18 months away from the next General Election action is sorely needed.

In fact work has been progressing, and sewage treatment plants at Haridwar and Varanasi have been approved and are under way, but these large-scale projects take time and will probably not come on line until 2020.

Work has progressed at a painfully slow pace as officials found land for the plants and then negotiated with local constructors.

The same problems have arisen with the ghats on the banks of the river where the bodies of the faithful are burned and their ashes delivered to the holy river. So far only a fraction have been converted into modern crematoria.  

For the casual observer raw sewage continues to flow into the Ganges and its tributaries, and the stink is as bad as ever.

Earlier this year Modi was reportedly outraged when told that more than three quarters of the sewage dumped into the river was still untreated.

Which is why the NMGC has turned to a new project which it hopes will produce short term results — bacterial bioremediation, or to put it simply, sewage-eating microbes.

In pilot projects in India and other places around the globe this method has attacked raw sewage in watercourses and significantly reduced stench.      

The NMGC says bioremediation is significantly less costly and shows clear results six to eight months after the microbes are released into polluted water.

“Implementing these techniques prevents degraded quality of water from flowing directly into the Ganga and its tributaries,” the agency said.

Maybe, but at best this is a face-saving exercise that may give the BJP some breathing space on the issue as it ramps up its re-election campaign in 2019. Modi’s much vaunted declaration that the Ganges will “flow pristine from the mountains to the sea” is still a long way from reality.

For the moment large stretches of the river still run a sullen black, interspersed with bobbing plastic and other waste that make it a rich breeding ground for millions of mosquitoes

Should Modi get another five years in which to fulfil his pledge a great deal more will have to be done.

Beware globalisation’s new champion

When United States President Donald Trump lands in Beijing during his marathon Asian tour we can expect (as much as we can expect anything from this mercurial leader) for his talks to centre around North Korea, terrorism in general and attempts to win back jobs to the US.

It is unlikely there will be much reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature project, the so called One Belt One Road (OBOR) — a plan to put a 21^st century slant on the medieval Silk Road trading network that once connected East Asia with Europe. Protectionist Trump simply won’t be interested.

In promoting the OBOR, Xi has styled himself as a sterling supporter of globalisation at the same time as the US seems to sinking back into it its pre-war isolationism under Trump’s America First slogan.

Earlier this year Xi became the first Chinese leader to speak at the summit of capitalism, the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, where he attacked protectionism as “locking oneself in a dark room in order to defend oneself, but in doing so cutting off all light and air”.

All this sounds like manna from heaven for supporters of globalisation who in recent years have taken a great deal of flak from a variety of pressure groups who argue it is creating wealth for the already rich West at the expense of the poor — but on closer inspection, the devil is very much in the details.

The OBOR Belt consists of three overland routes, or economic cooperation corridors, through 25 countries. The Road is actually a trade route connecting China to Europe through the South China Sea (which China claims as an integral part of its territory) to the Indian Ocean in one direction and from China though the South China Sea to the South Pacific in another.

In all, the initiative will involve 64 countries and 15 Chinese Provinces.

However, as Lindsay Hughes, of the Indian Ocean Research Program, points out in his analysis, the infrastructure required to support these routes is going to come at great cost and Beijing will take steps to ensure to bears as little of the burden as possible.

He says the OBOR will require massive investment in transport and port facilities along its length.

“One of the criticisms of the Silk Road plan is that host countries may struggle to pay back loans for huge infrastructure projects being carried out and funded by Chinese companies and banks,” Hughes says.

In fact the initial enthusiasm from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh is beginning to wear thin as they count the cost of picking up much of the tab.

The feeling was summed up in a report in the Asia Times which stated the $56 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor had yet to translate into a game-changer for its sponsors.

“Worse than that, the unparalleled tax breaks and mounting security costs involved have already saddled Islamabad’s Exchequer with a hole in its finances of more than $2.5 billion,” the report states.

China is offering loans to cover the amount, which is great business for its banks at six per cent interest, while all but the most menial tasks involved in building these corridors is going to be done by Chinese workers, keeping the jobless rate down at home.

One country that is staying aloof is India, long suspicious that the whole project is part of a plan to encircle and neutralise it as China’s main rival in Asia.

That aside, New Delhi believes it is simply a bad deal for everyone except China, a point made by Minister for External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj when she emphasised the need to first build trust in the region.

In this she was echoing Prime Minister, Narendra Modi who said economic growth in the region could occur “only when there is a climate of mutual trust and confidence, respect for each other’s sensitivities and concerns, and peace and stability in our relations along our borders.”

A warning to all that President Xi’s new status as the champion of globalisation should be treated with the utmost caution.