Rahul Gandhi and Kamala Harris are seeking to end poverty for millions with new policies.
Rahul Gandhi and Kamala Harris are seeking to end poverty for millions with new policies.
Rahul Gandhi and Kamala Harris are seeking to end poverty for millions with new policies.
Rahul Gandhi and Kamala Harris are seeking to end poverty for millions with new policies.

Kamala Harris and Rahul Gandhi are taking politics back to basics


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Two politicians in two different parts of the world are trying to turn forthcoming elections in their respective countries by persuading voters that they care. And they’re doing it by promising to put money directly in the pockets of ordinary people. Are their plans shrewd attempts to win votes, or serious attempts to reduce social inequality?

In India, the world’s largest democracy, Rahul Gandhi has promised a minimum-income scheme for the poorest 20 per cent of households. It is an enormously ambitious plan for India, a nation of more than 1.3 billion people that is struggling to break out of its status, defined by the World Bank, as a “lower-middle-income country”.

In the United States, sometimes referred to as the oldest democracy, Kamala Harris is promising an average $13,500 pay raise for every teacher. This is an extraordinary attempt to end in-work poverty for a highly educated group in the richest country in the world.

What links Mr Gandhi and Ms Harris is the point at which their policies intersect. They are, in their grand design, attempts to find solutions for social injustice.

Mr Gandhi, leader of Congress, India's main opposition party, has said that if he wins upcoming elections, 50 million of the country's poorest families would be guaranteed payments of 72,000 rupees (Dh3,840) a year. The scheme would be called Nyay, meaning "justice". Mr Gandhi describes it as India's "final assault on poverty".

And Ms Harris, who is running to be the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nominee in a crowded political field, sees the issue of teachers’ pay as crucial to America’s future. Teachers in the US are more likely than other professionals to work a second job. One million – roughly 40 per cent – are reportedly not covered by Social Security. Those working in public schools earn 11 per cent less than similarly qualified professionals in other fields. In 30 of America’s 50 states, average teacher pay is less than the living wage for a family of four.

These are the many reasons why teacher protests for higher pay and better benefits continue to break out across the country. Ms Harris’s campaign describes the plan as “the largest investment in teachers in American history”. Discount the hyperbole, and it is still one of the most ambitious proposals by a US presidential candidate to invest in education and in the next generation.

The proposals advanced by Ms Harris and Mr Gandhi should not be dismissed as cynical “competitive populism”.

That phrase has been used by Indian commentators in reference to the Congress leader’s plan, mostly because Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently pledged 6,000 rupees (Dh320) a year to small and marginal farmers, holding cultivable land of up to two hectares. As for Ms Harris, it would not be unusual if she was seeking to use teacher pay as a wedge issue between her campaign and that of the dozen or so other Democrats running for the party’s nomination.

But isn’t politics meant to be about such bread-and-butter issues? Isn’t it entirely right and proper for politicians to try to force the national conversation towards an overarching narrative of social compassion?

Yogendra Yadav, an Indian academic and co-founder of the socio-political organisation Swaraj Abhiyan, recently said that Mr Gandhi’s plan is to be welcomed for taking the election “back to basics”. Rather than highly charged security issues and muscular nationalism, he said, “we are debating, discussing, as we should, something real, substantive, that really affects the lives of [millions] of people in this country”. The minimum income scheme “at least begins to acknowledge that the poor need a stimulus,” he added.

The same, albeit in a slightly different context, could be said of Ms Harris’s proposal for America’s teachers.

In his new book, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind, the economist Raghuram Rajan, of the University of Chicago, addresses the need for social protections or, at the very least, opportunity for all. He compares the West and India in terms of the rising sense of economic hopelessness.

In the US, for instance, growing income segregation and market demands “are creating a meritocracy, but a hereditary one”. In India, Mr Rajan says, there has not been enough investment in providing jobs for people of “moderate education” and in creating opportunity for the poorest of the poor.

These factors have affected the politics of both countries. After Donald Trump's election, the Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel explained the rise of populism in terms of the ceaseless human search for justice.

The economic policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were based on the belief that the market could fix everything. After them, a new clutch of centre-left leaders took charge. But Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder didn’t tinker much with the system. Crucially, they did nothing to make it fairer. This meant, in Mr Sandel’s words, that market economies became “market societies”, soulless and valueless constructs that discourage the expectation of justice.

Mr Gandhi and Ms Harris’s sweeping proposals go some way towards plugging that gap.

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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THE CLOWN OF GAZA

Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah 

Starring: Alaa Meqdad

Rating: 4/5

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.

The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.

Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.

However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.

Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.

Company info

Company name: Entrupy 

Co-founders: Vidyuth Srinivasan, co-founder/chief executive, Ashlesh Sharma, co-founder/chief technology officer, Lakshmi Subramanian, co-founder/chief scientist

Based: New York, New York

Sector/About: Entrupy is a hardware-enabled SaaS company whose mission is to protect businesses, borders and consumers from transactions involving counterfeit goods.  

Initial investment/Investors: Entrupy secured a $2.6m Series A funding round in 2017. The round was led by Tokyo-based Digital Garage and Daiwa Securities Group's jointly established venture arm, DG Lab Fund I Investment Limited Partnership, along with Zach Coelius. 

Total customers: Entrupy’s customers include hundreds of secondary resellers, marketplaces and other retail organisations around the world. They are also testing with shipping companies as well as customs agencies to stop fake items from reaching the market in the first place. 

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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TO ALL THE BOYS: ALWAYS AND FOREVER

Directed by: Michael Fimognari

Starring: Lana Condor and Noah Centineo

Two stars

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