Multinationals eye water privatization in First World
MONTREAL: The handful of multi-national companies that have fattened themselves on the privatization of public water systems in developing countries in the past dozen years are now eyeing nations like the United States, where they believe their profits will be safer, says a report.
The European firms now operate in 56 countries and two territories, up from a dozen in 1990, as they build revenues that have the potential to reach three trillion US dollars, says the study prepared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) from the Washington-based Centre for Public Integrity.
The companies — France’s Suez, Vivendi Environment and Saur; Thames Water, owned by Germany’s RWE AG; United Utilities of England, and US firm Bechtel — have been aided by the World Bank and other international financial institutions (IFIs) which have increasingly insisted that developing countries privatize utilities as a condition of receiving loans.
The process has left millions of the world’s poorest without clean water and facing severe health risks, including the worst-ever outbreak of cholera in South Africa, says the report, which is being released in 10 parts between now and Feb 14.
“The investigation showed that while these companies claim to be ‘passionate, caring and reliable’, as one company states, they can be ruthless players who constantly push for higher rate increases, frequently fail to meet their commitments and abandon a waterworks if they are not making enough money,” adds the study, based on a year-long investigation in South Africa, Australia, Colombia, Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada.
Now, stung by huge losses in economically embattled countries like the Philippines and Argentina, the firms are putting their money into more stable environments, such as the United States, where the multinationals have recently purchased the three largest private-sector water utilities.
They are also lobbying Congress “to pass laws that would force cash-strapped municipal governments to consider privatization of their waterworks in exchange for federal grants and loans”, notes the report.
“They have good guaranteed revenue streams here, which was the big problem in the developing countries — there was a big requirement for infrastructure investment but they didn’t want to sink (the money) there,” said Sara Grusky, policy analyst at Public Citizen’s ‘Water for All’ campaign.
“We are poised to have a big battle to keep water in the public domain.”
While the firms are already involved in the privatization of some cities’ water supplies, a subsidiary of Suez last month lost its contract with the city of Atlanta after the project failed to generate the profits the city had calculated it would use to finance its sewage system.
But it is in the developing world where the multinationals reaped huge rewards since 1990, documents the report. For instance, Vivendi’s parent company, Vivendi Universal, reported that its water-related revenue more than doubled from 1990 to 2002, from $5 billion to more than $12 billion.
During that same period, the World Bank loaned about $20 billion to water-supply projects, stipulating that privatization take place in about one-third of them, adds the study.
“While it is clear that considerable improvements have been brought to many waterworks as a result of privatization, in many cases the companies put in relatively little capita of their own, relying primarily on loans from the World Bank and related international financial institutions,” it says.
The report describes how in South Africa the Bank worked with companies to convince mu municipal councils to privatize or ‘commercialize’, an intermediate step in the process. “Urged by the World Bank to introduce a ‘credible threat of cutting service’, the local councils began cutting off people who couldn’t pay.”
“Since 1998, an estimated 10 million people have had their water cut off for various periods of time. The result has been cholera and other gastrointestinal outbreaks,” it adds.
One such outbreak infected more than 250,000 people and killed nearly 300, describes the report. “Making people pay the full cost of their water ‘was the direct cause of the cholera epidemic’,” says the report, quoting David Hemson, a social scientist sent by the government to investigate the outbreak. ‘There is no doubt about that’.
In 2002, Suez wrote off $500 million in losses at its ‘Aguas Argentinas’ project after the country’s economic collapse, costing the multinational more than eight percent of its international water business, according to another report prepared in January for Public Services International (PSI).
Suez’s Philippine subsidiary has abandoned a project in Manila after the 1990s Asian currency collapse ate into its profits, adds the report, which suggests that the company plans to divest one-third of its water business in developing countries.
“It creates a difficulty for the World Bank and other IFIs whose strategies for the water sector depend on enticing the multinationals to increase their investment and participation. Instead, they are now faced with a two-year period in which the leading company is abruptly reducing its investment,” says the report, written by David Hall of PSI’s research unit at the University of Greenwich, England.
All the water firms are now demanding further guarantees before they will invest, writes Hall. “It is no longer ‘business as usual’ with the water multinationals,” the report concludes. They “are now clearly prepared to abandon concession contracts which do not meet the new demand for security for their investments”.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.
Annemarie Schimmel: a dedicated scholar
WITH Annemarie Schimmel’s (1923-2003) death a few days ago a glorious chapter of German scholarship on the multifaceted dimensions of Islamic culture has come to an end. The most lamentable factor of her exit from the scene is that she does not leave behind any German peer in her field and there is no Western orientalist today who could rival her in intellectual integrity.
In Pakistan she will be remembered for her work on Iqbal and Shah Latif. She was in particular an authority on Shah Latif. She wanted to be buried in Makli, Thatta, beside the grave of her friend Pir Husamuddin Rashdi. But later on she changed her will. However her conversion to Islam - her Islamic name being Jamila - has been a much talked about event.
It would be in the fitness of things to recall the memories of some great German Indologists when we talk about Annemarie Schimmel. German scholars, well before the 1823’s Regulating Act of India, had managed to penetrate Indian scholarship. Max Muller, Schopenhauer, Schlegel, Schiller and Trumpp, etc. have enriched the subcontinental legacy of culture which includes some pioneering works on religion, languages and philosophy. For example, in the case of our province who could forget Ernst Trumpp’s pioneering work on Shah Latif. The works by British orientalists could be attributed to the colonial compulsions of comprehending the psyche of subject peoples, but the German orientalists should be credited with pure longing for the labour of love.
I believe that the German orientalists must have spurred on the British to understand the Indian mind as they were far in advance of the British orientalists in this field. After all, the foundationstone of Fort William College was laid in 1800 to commemorate the fall of Tipu Sultan, and it is Fort William College which could be regarded as the first major step in the direction of Indian studies because the White Man’s burden needed to be understood.
This writer has had the good fortune of talking to Schimmel on Ghalib, Iqbal and Shah Latif. I have had the opportunity of participating in cultural events with her in London. The last one was on Ahmed Faraz in London a few years ago. What impressed me most in face-to-face encounters with her was the esteem and devotion she exuded to her areas of studies. She was one of those scholars who did not study an important poet like Shah Latif or Iqbal in isolation. Anyone who has gone through her monograph on Sindhi literature would testify that it was only after a deep study of the social and intellectual background of her subject that she took up an assignment.
Her monograph on Sindhi literature has its Sindhi version and one could compare this monograph to comprehensive works on Sindhi literature only to come to the conclusion that Prof Schimmel’s work, though brief, would satisfy us more. Properly referenced and deftly annotated she brought the hallmark of German scholarship to bear upon her work. Her studies of Iqbal - the most famous of all of them Gabriel’s Wings is also an important work. A scholar of Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Sindhi and, to some extent, Urdu, she tried her best to present a lovable - rather edifying - image of Islam and Islamic mysticism.
Islamic scholarship is poorer today. Schimmel was the best advocate of Islamic heritage. Her works “Through the Wheel & Pain and Grace,” “Pearls of Indus” and the “Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, Mystical Dimensions of Islam & Calligraphy and Islamic Culture” are among 75 works on Islam which came from her pen.
There are very few of her class to be looked upon as scholars who won’t grind their personal axes while talking about Islam. In one of her interviews she said, in a lighter vein, that she was aware of the fact that Islam-bashing had become a familiar pastime of most orientalists. She thought that it was not scholarship but ventilation of a deep-seated prejudice against Islam. She thought that one reason for this attitude was the fact that Islam had displaced Christianity in many areas. The West, she once said in an interview, should not forget what it did to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Australia-New Zealand and some islands of the Pacific. She is on record having said that Europe owed its gigantic progress in science and technology to Islamic learning in inductive logic and experimental science which it acquired through the Muslim seats of learning in Spain. What are Paris, Cambridge and Oxford universities if not the first Western seats of learning designed to assimilate all that which could be transmitted to the West through translations of Arabic translations of the Greek classics.
Whenever Schimmel talked on Rumi, Shamsuddin Tabrizi, Hallaj and Sarmad it appeared as if the undreamt of doors of perceptions were suddenly opened. She was, in particular, fond of Rumi and Hallaj and it was through her lecture, in the 1960s, in Karachi that her comment on Allama Iqbal’s revised opinion about Hallaj had created a stir at an Iqbal Seminar. She had said that Iqbal had turned a devotee of Hallaj towards the last decade of his life and he repented his earlier views on the famous mystic. I remember Baba Zahin Shah Taji, who had disciples such as Dr M. M. Ahmed and Dr Ali Ashraf, seconding Schimmel’s stand in one of his articles.
Not before long the Ismailia association entrusted to Jon Elia the task of writing Masih-i-Baghdad - Hallaj, Mutalia Tawasin and translation of Kitab-ul-Tawasin. Geelani Kamran translated Tawasin into English. The Hallaj fever gripped us and we saw a translation of his Deewan by Muzaffar Iqbal. Muzaffar Iqbal is known for his three selections of Pakistani literature besides his two novels, Inkhila and Inqitaa. Syed Noman-ul-Haq has also finished his work on Hallaj, which is to be published by Sheharzade, a prestigious publishing house being looked after by well-known short-story writer Asif Aslam Farrukhi.
The reason of my recounting the Hallaj fever is simple. It is only by the effort of one person to put a great mystic in the proper perspective that the whole picture went on changing. Not that Hallaj had been an unwept and unsung hero of mystic Islam but he didn’t enjoy academics’ serious attention. His Persian Deewan whose authenticity has been challenged on the premise that this would put him above Rudaki, the first poet of Persian, was translated by no less a person than Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi. It was brought out under the title of Seerat-i-Hallaj, with a preface by Maulana Zafar Ahmed Usmani.
Schimmel’s death on January 27 made me recount what she did to the fervour of Hallajean studies. Perhaps this fact alone proves that a true scholar has the capacity to turn many a dormant reputation into come-alive giants. Hallaj’s rebirth in the subcontinent could be attributed to Schimmel and the same could be said about Rumi as well.
In Pakistan she was very close to Dr Mumtaz Hasan, Pir Husamuddin Rashdi, Hakim Mohammed Said and Dr Javed Iqbal. She was a great friend of Pakistan and she will be missed by a great number of her admirers and fans here.
Objection to playing in Zimbabwe nakedly political ploy
I had hoped to devote this column, the last before the World Cup matches get underway, to reviewing the prospects of the main challengers. But other factors have intervened and the World Cup itself had become the target or the opportunity for some good, old fashioned political skullduggery. Britain has made no secret of its intense dislike of Robert Mugabe and has told the England cricket team, loud and clear, that it should not play its match in Zimbabwe. Australia, ever loyal in its solidarity with Britain, has followed suit, New Zealand, not to be left out, has decided not to play its match in Kenya since it was not scheduled to play in Zimbabwe.
New Zealand has cited security concerns. The New Zealand cricket officials were apparently given a “routine” security briefing by the United States embassy in Nairobi, England and Australia may still play in Zimbabwe, New Zealand has refused to play in Kenya and is prepared to forfeit its points though it is still hoping that its match will be switched to South Africa.
Political and security concerns have been raised by three ‘white’ countries, purely a coincidence, one hopes, though the fact that the World Cup is being hosted by three African countries, is not lost on some.
I cover political subjects in another column I write, but in this column I keep my eye on the ball and confine myself to cricket. But I think it is necessary to make a few observations about terrorism in general. Terrorists are not nailed down to a fixed, geographic location. They have shown themselves to be highly mobile. After all, they struck in New York City and Washington DC. This means that no country is safe.
Take the case of the US space shuttle Columbia, which was flying at an altitude of 63 kilometres from Earth with a speed of 20,100 kilometres per hour when NASA declared “a space shuttle contingency”. In lay language, this meant that the space shuttle was breaking up. There were repeated disclaimers that terrorism was not involved. Ample proof that terrorism is preying on the minds and even outer space is not being ruled out. The presence of an Israeli astronaut among the crew of the Columbia brought the terrorism factor into play. The question is: Should we allow the terrorists to run our lives? That, to my simple way of thinking, would be to hand over a victory to the terrorists.
New Zealand cricket players are victims of self-delusion and an exaggerate sense of self-importance that they think that they are on the hit-list of terrorists. If they were, they wouldn’t even be safe in New Zealand. To raise the bogey of ‘security concerns’ is to declare the whole world and outer space as unsafe. Despite 9/11, the US Open was played in New York. The ICC and the Kenyan government have set in place a security system that is as safe as is humanly possible.
Zimbabwe and objections to playing there, is nakedly political. And playing World Cup matches will make Robert Mugabe respectable. And if the England and Australian cricket teams feel that they will be endorsing Mugabe’s policies by playing in Zimbabwe, then in view of what Nelson Mandela has said about the war in Iraq and, his less than flattering description of Tony Blair as “the US Foreign Minister” they might consider not playing in South Africa! It is getting not only curious but more and more absurd.
The battle of Waterloo may or may not have been won on the playing fields of Eton but Mugabe will not be brought down on the cricket fields of Harare. The World Cup is a celebration of cricket and the fact should not be lost that India and Pakistan will resume their cricket relations in the World Cup. The ice, as it were, will be broken. Sports has a way of hitting politics for a six.
Finally, there have been some fears expressed that match-fixing will rear its ugly head in the World Cup. The Delhi Police Commissioner K.K. Paul has warned that cheats are still active in South Africa. No one doubts that there will be large scale betting, both legal and illegal but to proceed from this and conclude that there will be match-fixing is to slander some of the players in advance. A clear distinction should be made between betting and match-fixing. In the past, the two have been used interchangeably. I don’t think we should lower our guard and the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit, no doubt, will be very busy. He would be a very foolish player indeed who would attempt anything hanky-panky.
My only regret about the World Cup is that I will not be in South Africa to watch it. But I am looking forward to it. I don’t want my enjoyment ruined, by the ringing of alarm bells.