Sukumar Shinde, 52, who sells food items and snacks in rural fairs, said, “Because of the lockdown, I had to throw away several food items as they have a shorter shelf life.” / credit: Sanket Jain
Balu Jadhav usually journeys through 60 villages 300 days a year, selling toys and artificial jewelry in India’s “jatras,” or rural village fairs.
So if Jadhav travels less than 1,000 miles a year, that’s a sign of distress.
“In the past two years, I covered only 150 miles,” he said.
His two-decade-long routine was broken in March 2020 when far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb a pandemic caused by COVID-19, the novel coronavirus. The lockdown was extended to 67 days, causing 121 million people to lose their jobs within the first month. Yet, with this lockdown, India couldn’t contain the coronavirus. Meanwhile, because case numbers ebbed and flowed for two years, district administrators banned fairs.
With a history of over 150 years, these fairs remain an important source of income for marginalized people. In Jadhav’s home state of Maharashtra, located on India’s Arabian Sea coast, almost every village hosts an annual fair for a couple of days. Jatras are held in reverence of local deities. Rural vendors sell a variety of items, including toys, posters of regional deities, local books, footwear, artificial jewelry, balloons and household items. “A fair is like a festival and a holiday season for rural people,” said Gangabai, Jadhav’s wife. “Everyone prepares good food, dresses up and relatives from different villages attend the fair.”
With no option for selling goods, the Jadhavs were forced to work in 10 other occupations. They labored as farmworkers and masons, and in factories, but nothing helped them earn enough to survive. “There was no regular work because COVID devastated the rural economy,” she said.
The 2022 World Inequality Report states India is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Oxfam’s Inequality Kills report mentions, “The wealth of the 10 richest men has doubled, while the incomes of 99 percent of humanity are worse off, because of COVID-19.” Further, it found that a new billionaire was created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, millions like Jadhav could barely find 26 hours of work per month during the peak of the pandemic.
After two years, local administrators in the village of Jambhali in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district were permitted to arrange a fair that would be held January 1-2. Unfortunately, while the Jadhavs assumed it would help them sail, it was far from reality.
With rising coronavirus cases in January, reporting as high as 347,254 cases one day, several COVID restrictions were implemented again.
“We earned about 3,000 rupees ($40) from every fair before the pandemic. Now we are finding it difficult even to recover the transportation cost,” Balu Jadhav said. “Ever since COVID, people have stopped spending money because of dwindling wages.”
Hundreds of vendors in the Kolhapur district protested several times outside the local administrator’s office, demanding revocation of the ban on fairs. “Despite writing hundreds of letters, nothing concretized,” Jadhav said.
Anusuya Chavan, who lives in the same village as the Jadhav family, is in her mid-40s and sells toys. “This occupation forced us to never send the children to school, and with COVID, there’s no possibility that four of my children will ever see the school.” Her children, all below 18, are busy looking for work. “Earlier, we took loans to support our business, but now we are forced to take loans for eating food twice a day. It’s that bad.” Chavan has 13 members in her joint family and is in $670 debt. Her husband, Yuvraj, 50, has spent four decades traveling to sell at fairs. “My entire life has gone sleeping on roads,” he said. “But with lockdowns and curfews, we don’t even have roads on which to sleep.”
Vendors rely on informal loans to buy items to sell and pay them off immediately after fairs. “The moneylenders send their goons for collection, and we always pay on time,” Yuvraj said. However, with no sales, several vendors have been caught in debts of at least $3,350 each. High interest-rate fees have caused those debts to amass.
Meanwhile, fear, anger and frustration pile up, with another generation missing out on obtaining an education. That leaves Jadhav to vent.
“Even our children will have to live the same cursed life now.”
A view of the Jambhali fair at night. Vendors said they had never before seen such a low turnout / credit: Sanket JainVendors sell a variety of items, including toys, posters of regional deities, local books, footwear, artificial jewelry, balloons, household items, and much more in India’s rural fairs / credit: Sanket Jain“I’ve taken both the doses of the vaccine and even follow COVID norms, yet the government hasn’t given permission for fairs,” said toyseller Yuvraj Chavan / credit: Sanket JainKanthinath Ghotane traveled from the neighboring Indian state of Karnataka state to sell keychains in the Jambhali fair of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district / credit: Sanket JainFairs are more like festivals, and are special occasions for rural people. During these fairs, every household creates in front of their homes rangolis, a traditional Indian art form, in which patterns are created on the floor using powder, flower petals, colors, colored sand and limestone / credit: Sanket JainEveryone (irrespective of religion) first offers coconut and incense sticks in Jambhali’s Khwajaso dargah, a Muslim shrine, before entering the jatra. “These fairs are a sign of communal harmony,” said Sikandar Attar, a coconut and incense stick vendor / credit: Sanket JainSikandar Attar, 69, who travels to more than 100 villages every year, sells incense sticks and coconuts offered to regional deities. He began working at farms during the COVID-19 lockdown. Even today, he hasn’t been able to find his way through to make ends meet / credit: Sanket JainCredit: Sanket JainColorful LED-based toys are selling at a higher rate than other items / credit: Sanket JainRiyaz Latkar, 32, has been selling artificial jewelry for over a decade and said he has never seen a crisis like this / credit: Sanket JainDuring these two- to three-day fairs, vendors sleep and cook on the roadside. Kamalaxmi Bahurupi said, “I’ve spent my entire life cooking food on roadsides. I don’t know how long we will live like this.” / credit: Sanket JainArtificial jewelry is usually in high demand in the village fairs of Maharashtra. However, with people losing their livelihoods because of the pandemic lockdown, vendors have reported a steep decline in sales / credit: Sanket JainIn this stall, every item is sold for a fixed rate of Rs 10 (13 U.S. cents) / credit: Sanket JainBalu and Gangabai Jadhav were forced to work 10 different occupations as the fairs remained banned. “If there’s another lockdown, we’ll all die of starvation,” Balu said / credit: Sanket JainAs much as 70 percent of rural India lacks an internet connection. With schools shut because of the coronavirus pandemic, several children have been forced to pick this line of work to make ends meet and support their families / credit: Sanket JainHorse and bullock cart races remain a major attraction during these fairs. Here, a horse is getting ready for a race / credit: Sanket JainCredit: Sanket Jain
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
Farmer Narayan Gaikwad and his family faced ostracism after he tested positive for COVID-19 in 2020 / credit: Sanket Jain
Narayan Gaikwad knew something was wrong.
For eight days in August, he was given intravenous drips of electrolytes and saline solution, twice a day. By the time he realized he was being treated by a quack, it was too late. Fatigue had grappled him, and in no time, he collapsed in his house in the village of Jambhali in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
His family feared COVID-19 had caused his symptoms. They rushed 73-year-old Gaikwad to a makeshift public COVID center—10 miles from home. “There were at least 500 patients, while the facility had some 100 beds,” recalls his son, Bhagat. Next, they traveled another eight miles to a private hospital. “The doctor wouldn’t admit him because he didn’t have a COVID report,” recalls Bhagat.
“The entire system was saturated because many private doctors refused to treat COVID patients,” he says. Speedily, they rushed him to a local village doctor, who prescribed a few injections. “I did come to my senses, but my cough and cold didn’t go away,” remembers Gaikwad. All he wanted was a COVID test, which was hard to come by because the system was overwhelmed and unprepared. After that, he spent ₹5,000 (Indian rupees or $70 USD) and got a computed tomography (CT) scan. “We then rushed to a medical doctor, who prescribed week-long medicines and injections. It cost me another ₹13,000 ($180).” This was 10 days into his trek for proper healthcare and Gaikwad still couldn’t get a COVID test. “I was breathless.” To get tested, his family took him to a private university that had been converted to a COVID center—12 miles away. As anticipated, he tested positive. “I was put on oxygen, and within three days, I started feeling better,” he says with a sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, the nine members of the Gaikwad family tested positive for stigma. “People started circulating that my entire family tested positive,” says Narayan, a low-income farmer. None of them were allowed to step out of the house for a month. “We had to throw away 2,000 kilograms of harvested tomatoes worth $275,” says Bhagat. Gaikwad never anticipated this would cost them a season’s earnings.
After he tested negative, Bhagat posted a screenshot of this report on his WhatsApp status, with the caption ‘Negative’. “It was necessary. Otherwise, we would have died of hunger, as people wouldn’t let us step outside,” says Gaikwad. In India, as in many parts of the world, ordinary people rely on groups created inside the WhatsApp messaging application on their smartphones to communicate with wide swaths of people, like their neighbors, coworkers and political allies.
It didn’t take long for the second wave to devastate India. On May 14, India reported 414,182 infections in 24 hours—the highest single day spike in the world. India’s far-right prime minister, Narendra Modi, prematurely declared a victory against COVID in January 2021. Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of which Modi is a member, started addressing election rallies in four eastern and southern Indian states—drawing several thousand people without masks. At one event, Modi proudly said, “I’ve witnessed such a rally for the first time.”
On the same day, India reported over 234,000 infections. With an oversaturated healthcare system, India ran out of oxygen, hospital beds, ventilators and essential medicines. Soon, people took to social media, making SOS calls for healthcare facilities. Hospitals started petitioning high courts for the lack of oxygen supply as several people died. As of May 30, India reported over 28 million cases with 329,000 people succumbing to the virus. A New York Times analysis reveals a more likely scenario could be 539 million cases with 1.6 million estimated deaths.
But Gaikwad couldn’t find a bed in the first wave.
“For poor people like us, the system collapsed long ago,” he says.
Three Decades of Austerity
In 1991, India “liberalized” its economy, which meant opening it to international markets, leading to a mass-scale privatization of public services and goods. In 1993, the World Bank released its World Development Report, which focused on healthcare. Ravi Duggal, health researcher and activist writes, “This report basically is directed at third-world governments to reorient public health spending for selective health programs for targeted populations wherein it clearly implies that curative care, the bulk of health care, should be left to the private sector.”
The World Bank report said investments in specialized health facilities should be diverted to the private sector by reducing public subsidies. It encouraged “social or private insurance” for clinical services. The result: 85.9 percent of people in rural India have no medical insurance.
To encourage privatization, the government reduced the customs duty on imported medical equipment from 40 percent in the 1980s to 15 percent in the early 2000s. As of 2016, it was down to 7.5 percent. From 1986-87, India spent 1.47 percent of its GDP on healthcare. Now it has been investing a little more than 1 percent of its GDP. Meanwhile, it has 43,487 private hospitals and a mere 25,778 public hospitals. Yet, a 2019 World Health Organization report pointed out average global healthcare spending was 6.6 percent of GDP.
Frontline Health Care Workers Bear the Burden
In March 2020, India’s Health Ministry tasked the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers to contain COVID across 600,000 villages. For this, they survey households, find suspected COVID cases, and monitor oxygen levels and body temperature. ASHAs also support COVID patients who are home-bound and act as a liaison to people who are able to get treatment outside the village. This is in addition to over 50 responsibilities that include universal immunization, ensuring proper pre- and post-natal care, spreading awareness about contraception, hygiene, and maintaining health records.
An Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) worker monitoring the temperature of a community member in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district / credit: Sanket Jain
For every 1,000 people, an ASHA worker—normally a woman from within a village—is appointed under India’s National Rural Health Mission. Swati Nandavdekar, 40, from the village of Mendholi in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, is one of 970,676 ASHAs. “We are tired,” says Nandavdekar, who has worked without leave for 410 days. “People abuse me verbally and don’t answer my survey questions.”
In avoiding her, people are bypassing the ostracism that follows if they test positive, as in the case of Narayan. “In the previous lockdown, everyone lost their livelihood, and now they can’t afford an isolation of 14 days,” she elaborates. This is in contrast to last year, when ASHAs like Nandavdekar were able to successfully contact-trace COVID patients.
Dr. Sangita Gurav, the only public doctor for 15 villages that Kolhapur’s Bhuye Public Health Centre serves, commented on the rising fatality rate. “People consult us only after a week from testing positive,” she says. “By this time, their symptoms become severe, and oxygen levels start dipping.”
Sandhya Jadhav, an ASHA supervisor from Kolhapur, who oversees the work of 24 ASHAs, says, “Every day I get calls from ASHAs who talk of mental stress and the instances of verbal abuse.” ASHAs receive “performance-based incentive.” In Maharashtra, they average a meager monthly income of ₹3,000-4,000 ($41-55). But it comes down to $25 for ASHA workers like Nandavdekar, who is from a smaller village. “Most of them haven’t received PPE kits, masks, hand sanitizers and gloves for surveying even in the containment zones,” says Jadhav.
On May 24, ASHA workers across India had gone on a 1-day strike demanding legal status of permanent workers, adequate health safety gear, insurance and a hike in their wages. Last year, over 600,000 ASHA workers protested with similar demands.
For 833 million people, India has a mere 155,404 sub-health centers (which are the first point of contact for rural communities of 5,000 people), 5,183 community health centers, 24,918 public health centers and 810 district hospitals. That’s 1 district hospital for every 1 million people. With such a poor infrastructure, it’s the ASHAs who remain in direct contact with the villages. “We have been working since 2009 and have saved countless lives, which even the government knows,” Nandavdekar says. “But they won’t even treat us with respect.”
Last year, the Indian government announced an insurance program of $69,000 (USD) for frontline healthcare workers. “If there was insurance, why weren’t we informed of the company and other details?” Jadhav says. “They took our signature on a blank paper.”
As cases continue to rise, the job of ASHA workers is far from over.
“We are dying daily,” Nandavdekar says. “The only difference is that it’s not called death.”
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
A sugarcane cutter in the fields of western Maharashtra in India looking after her child as she juggles several tasks, often overlooking her own health / credit: Sanket Jain
KHOCHI, India—Anita Bhil regrets taking just a day off after more than two months of work without stop.
Since the first week of October, she has been cutting sugarcane for roughly 12 hours each day using a sickle. She then piles a bundle onto her head to walk over to a tractor. Each bundle of sugarcane weighs 20 kilograms (44 pounds). That’s about the equivalent of a large packed suitcase. By the end of each day, Bhil will have carried 50 bundles on her head and she will have tied together more than 100 bundles of sugarcane stems.
“In the past three years, my body has gotten used to this back-breaking labor,” said Bhil, who’s in her late 20s.
However, October’s devastating rainfall in Khochi village, followed by a sudden drop in temperature, then unusually high temperatures amid winter, caused her to be feverish. She took anti-inflammatory analgesics, returning to work the next day, despite an ailing body.
“Had I not taken a [day] off, I would have cut another 2,000 kilograms (4,410 pounds) of sugarcane,” Bhil said. A landless farm worker from the indigenous Bhil community, she had never before felt the need to migrate from her Chhavadi village in the Dhule district of western India’s Maharashtra state.
However, things have changed since 2018, she said. Incessant rainfall, rapid changes in the local climatic pattern, heat waves, and other recurring climatic events began destroying her region’s farms. For instance, between July and October of this year, natural disasters have affected more than 2.46 million hectares (6 million-plus acres) in Maharashtra alone.
For Bhil, these climate-induced events meant having no choice but to migrate 375 miles to the fields of western Maharashtra to cut sugarcane, moving from one plot to another on any given day. “No one in my family had ever entered this line of work,” she said.
Despite her deteriorating health, sugarcane cutter Anita Bhil refuses to stop working. “If I take a break, it will push me much deeper into poverty,” she said / credit: Sanket Jain
Bonded Labor
In India, the sugar industry impacts the livelihoods of 50 million farmers and their families, who have helped produce more than 500 million metric tons of sugarcane worth 1.18 trillion Indian Rupees ($14.26 billion) from October 2021 to September of this year. That turned India into the largest sugar producer and consumer worldwide in 2021-22. However, producing sweet sugar has come with the bitter taste of labor-law violations, inequality and the perpetuation of the grinding cycle of poverty. In Maharashtra, more than 1 million sugarcane cutters migrate hundreds of miles from their villages, working 15 hours a day for five to six months each year.
With income sources drying up, Bhil and her husband, Kunal, 35, took out a loan of 50,000 Indian Rupees ($615) to pay for each year of their children’s education and meet everyday expenses for up to five months. That meant both had to cut more than 181,000 kilograms (399,036 pounds) of sugarcane in roughly five months, an average of 1.2 tons (2,645 pounds) daily. For cutting 1,000 kilograms of sugarcane, plus tying and loading them onto tractors, these workers in Kolhapur’s Khochi village are paid $3.40.
Anita has reported a consistent decline in her physical and mental health, which has meant the amount of sugarcane she has been able to cut has decreased. She’s been keeping a mental count of every kilogram of sugarcane because last year, by the time the season ended, the couple was 54,000 kilograms short of their target. That is why they returned to the sugarcane fields this year. Yet, every hour lost to a health ailment pushes workers deeper into bonded labor. “I won’t be able to meet this year’s target as well,” Kunal said.
However, what makes sugarcane cutting appear lucrative to poor people is the advance sums.
“It’s a debt trap,” explained Narayan Gaikwad, 75, who has spent more than four decades fighting for the rights of cane cutters, farm workers and daily wage earners. A member of All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Gaikwad has unionized hundreds of sugarcane cutters in the Kolhapur district.
“The wages have fallen drastically in the farming sector because of tremendous losses caused by rains and heat waves,” he said.
In the Dhule district, for 10 hours of work, men are paid $1.80, while women earn $1.20. But over in the sugarcane fields of western Maharashtra, workers like Anita and Kunal Bhil are paid $3.40. However, no one can be assured work will be available because of the impact climate change has had on farming. And yet, it’s better than what they faced on their family farm in Chhavadi village.
“When there’s no work in the fields, you are forced to take loans from private money lenders,” Gaikwad explained. “To repay this loan, workers then take loans from sugarcane contractors—it’s a vicious debt cycle.”
On any given day, 49.6 million people around the world are forced into modern slavery, said an International Labour Organization report. The report finds that one-fifth of people involved in forced labor exploitation are in debt bondage, which is most prominent in the mining, agriculture and construction sectors.
“Marginalized communities, ethnic and religious minorities, and indigenous peoples are among the groups at particular risk,” it mentions.
A September 2021 report by Anti-Slavery International and International Institute for Environment and Development issued a warning: “Climate and development policy-makers and planners urgently need to recognize that millions of people displaced by climate change are being, and will be, exposed to slavery in the coming decades.”
Loading sugarcane stems on a tractor is risky because the fields are slippery. Many workers have reported fractures / credit: Sanket Jain
Recurring Climate Disasters
Kunal was once proud of the diversity of crops farmers cultivated in his region: Soybean, cotton, maize, sorghum and others. However, since 2018, it’s become increasingly difficult to grow these crops.
“None of them could survive the changing climate.”
Kunal’s father and two uncles collectively own 16 acres. Last year, on four acres, he cultivated pearl millet and was able to harvest just 17 quintals (3,747 pounds). “I was expecting at least 35-40 quintals.”
As a result, he couldn’t sell a single kilogram and kept the entire harvest for household needs.
The monsoon rains started late in his region. By the time the crop was ready, rainfall was too heavy to allow for harvesting. This was surprising, given Kunal comes from a drought-prone region. “We always cultivated crops that don’t require much water, but now everything has changed.” When he decided to shift to water-intensive crops, the delayed rainfall and the devastating October rains destroyed those, too. “We can’t decide what to grow because of the fluctuating climate.”
Moreover, the losses aren’t restricted to the farming fields. Of his three daughters, Kunal brought two of them to the sugarcane fields. “Who will take care of children back in the village when everyone migrates?” he asks.
Kunal, who became a helping hand too early in his life, couldn’t go to school. “I never wanted this to happen to my children, but looking at the climate disasters, I think even they will have to do this work.”
Every year, more than 1 million farm workers migrate hundreds of miles from Maharashtra’s farming villages to the fields of western Maharashtra to cut sugarcane / credit: Sanket Jain
Paying for the Sins of the Global North
Between 1991 and 2001, climate disasters led to 676,000 deaths and affected an average of 189 million people living in developing countries every year, according to the Loss and Damage Collaboration’s report. “In the first half of 2022, six fossil fuel companies made enough to cover the costs of extreme climate- and weather-related events in all developing countries and still have nearly $70 billion left over in pure profit.”
Loss and Damage refer to the economic and non-economic impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation or adaptation. Oxfam’s report said the estimated cost of Loss and Damage can range from $290 billion to $580 billion. Research published in Lancet found that from 1850 to 2015, the Global North was responsible for 92 percent of excess emissions, the United States 40 percent and the European Union 29 percent.
In 1991, Vanuatu, an island country in the south Pacific Ocean, first proposed on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) compensation for the impacts of rising sea levels due to climate change. It took 31 years for the issue to be addressed at a COP.
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), held last month in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, ended with an agreement to establish a Loss and Damage fund.
However, several details, such as its operation and which countries would contribute to this fund, haven’t been finalized. The negotiations ended with an agreement to establish a “transitional committee,” which would make recommendations on operationalizing the funding and adopting it at the next COP.
To top it off, no agreement remains about what counts as Loss and Damage. Meanwhile, thousands of workers like Anita Bhil are being pushed every day into bonded labor.
Sugarcane cutter Sarla Bhil said she started migrating to sugarcane fields for work only three years ago because of recurring climate disasters, which are devastating crops in her region / credit: Sanket Jain
‘No Option But to Migrate’
After cutting cane for more than two months this year, Prakash Bhil, 32, said he made a firm decision.
“No matter what, I won’t return next year to cut sugarcane.” He paused for a few moments and said, “But…” Then he stopped again. Almost teary-eyed, he placed his hand on the right leg. He thought it might be fractured, but he couldn’t visit a doctor because of the workload. “But it all depends if I will be able to cut enough sugarcane this year and whether rains create any havoc in my village,” Bhil said. “I just hope my children get a good education.”
Last year, the fields where he worked saw devastating rains, washing away cotton, soybean and sorghum. “Nothing survived.” Earlier, he found work for at least 25 days a month. “Now even finding 15 days of work is becoming difficult,” he said, referring to the impact of incessant rainfall.
Unable to pay off a $74 loan from last year, he returned to the sugarcane fields. “This year, I took an advance of $245 and won’t be able to repay it because of my poor health.” While he’s resting, the entire burden has fallen on his wife, a frail Sarla in her early 20s.
Anita Bhil brought her infant daughter to the sugarcane fields because no one was available back home to provide childcare / credit: Sanket Jain
Back to Work 3 Days After Giving Birth
“There are massive labor rights violations in the production of sugar,” said Narayan, the organizer. He then shared the story of a sugarcane cutter who had migrated to the Kolhapur district. She was 9 months and 9 days pregnant.
“She was cutting sugarcane for seven hours and started experiencing labor pains in the evening. The case was so complicated that three public hospitals rejected her.” Narayan then took her to the district hospital and ensured a safe childbirth. “After three days, she was back to cutting cane,” Narayan added. “A decade since then, nothing much has changed.”
For more than seven years, community healthcare worker Shubhangi Kamble in Maharashtra’s Arjunwad village has been helping make public healthcare accessible to sugarcane cutters by going door to door, providing healthcare on the spot and connecting workers with doctors and hospitals. She said the cutters’ situation has been getting worse every year, attributing it to declining incomes caused by climate change impacts.
“Sugarcane cutters are trapped in debt, and no matter what happens to their health, they don’t take a break. Many do not even complete their prescribed medical course because they can’t afford the costly medicines,” she shared. In the past three years, complaints of body aches, fatigue, and dizziness have increased among cane cutters, especially among women, according to Kamble.
One among them is Anita Bhil, who, despite her deteriorating health, is adamant about not taking a break.
“A day’s off can push an entire generation into poverty,” Bhil said, as thuds of chopping sugarcane reverberated throughout the fields.
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
On September 10, sections of the second Nord Stream 2 pipeline laid from the German shore and Danish waters were connected in a so-called “above water tie-in.” The opposing pipe strings were lifted from the seabed by the lay barge, Fortuna. Then the pipe ends were cut and fitted together. The welding to connect the two lines took place on a platform located above the water on the side of the vessel. Then the connected pipeline was lowered to the seabed as one continuous string / credit: Nord Stream 2 / Axel Schmidt
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s analysis and was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter.
The current crisis of spiraling gas prices in Europe, coupled with a cold snap in the region, highlights the fact that the transition to green energy in any part of the world is not going to be easy. The high gas prices in Europe also bring to the forefront the complexity involved in transitioning to clean energy sources: that energy is not simply about choosing the right technology, and that transitioning to green energy has economic and geopolitical dimensions that need to be taken into consideration as well.
Gas wars in Europe are very much a part of the larger geostrategic battle being waged by the United States using the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Ukraine. The problem the United States and the EU have is that shifting the EU’s energy dependence on Russia will have huge costs for the EU, which is being missed in the current standoff between Russia and NATO. A break with Russia at this point over Ukraine will have huge consequences for the EU’s attempt to transition to cleaner energy sources.
The European Union has made its problem of a green transition worse by choosing a completely market-based approach toward gas pricing. The blackouts witnessed by people in Texas in February 2021 as a result of freezing temperatures made it apparent that such market-driven policies fail during vagaries of weather, pushing gas prices to levels where the poor may have to simply turn off their heating. In winter, gas prices tend to skyrocket in the European Union, as they did in 2020 and again in 2021.
For India and its electricity grid, one lesson from this European experience is clear. Markets do not solve the problem of energy pricing, as they require planning, long-term investments and stability in pricing. The electricity sector will face disastrous consequences if it is handed over to private electricity companies, as is being proposed in India. This is what the move to separate wires from the electricity they carry aims to achieve through Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s proposed amendment to the existing Electricity Act of 2003.
In order to understand the issues related to transitioning toward green energy, it is important to take a closer look at the current gas supply-related issues being faced by the European Union. The EU has chosen gas as its choice of fuel for electricity production, as it goes off coal and nuclear while also investing heavily in wind and solar. The argument advanced in favor of this choice is that gas would provide the EU with a transitional fuel for its low carbon emission path, as gas tends to produce less emissions than coal. It is another matter that gas is at best a short-term solution, as it still emits half as much greenhouse gas as coal.
As I have written earlier, the problem with green energy is that it requires a much larger capacity addition to handle seasonal and daily fluctuations that planners have not accounted for while advocating for switching over to clean energy sources. During winter, days are shorter in higher latitudes, and the world therefore gets fewer hours of sunlight. This seasonal problem with solar energy has been compounded in Europe with low winds in 2021 reducing the electricity output of windmills.
The European Union has banked heavily on gas to meet its short- and medium-term goals of cutting down greenhouse emissions. Gas can be stored to meet short-term and seasonal needs, and gas production can even be increased easily from gas fields with requisite pumping capacity. All this, however, requires advance planning and investment in surplus capacity building to meet the requirements of daily or seasonal fluctuations.
Unfortunately, the EU is a strong believer that markets magically solve all problems. It has moved away from long-term price contracts for gas and toward spot and short-term contracts—unlike China, India and Japan, which all have long-term contracts indexed to their oil prices.
Why does the gas price affect the price of electricity in the EU? After all, natural gas accounts only for about 20 percent of the EU’s electricity generation. Unfortunately for the people in the EU region, not only the gas market but also the electricity market has been “liberalized” under the market reforms in the EU. The energy mix in the grid is determined by energy market auctions, in which private electricity producers bid their prices and the quantity they will supply to the electricity grid. These bids are accepted, in order from lowest to highest, until the next day’s predicted demand is fully met. The last bidder’s price then becomes the price for all producers. In the language of Milton Friedman’s followers—who were known as the Chicago Boys—this price offered by the last bidder is its “marginal price” discovered through the market auction of electricity and, therefore, is the “natural” price of electricity. For readers who might have followed the recently concluded elections in Chile, Augusto Pinochet—who was a military dictator in Chile from 1973 to 1990—introduced the Constitution of 1980 in Chile and had incorporated the above principle in a constitutional guarantee to the neoliberal reforms in the electricity sector in the country. Hopefully, the victory of the left in the presidential elections in Chile and the earlier referendum on rewriting the Chilean constitution will also address this issue. Interestingly, it was not the former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher—as is commonly thought—who started the electricity “reforms” but Pinochet’s bloody regime in Chile.
At present in the EU, natural gas is the marginal producer, and that is why the price of gas also determines the price of electricity in Europe. This explains the almost 200 percent rise in electricity price in Europe in 2020. In 2021, according to an October 2021 report by the European Commission, “Gas prices are increasing globally, but more significantly in net importer regional markets like Asia and the EU. So far in 2021, prices tripled in [the] EU and more than doubled in Asia while only doubling in the U.S.” [emphasis added].
The coupling of the gas and the electricity markets by using the marginal price as the price of all producers means that if gas spot prices triple as has been seen recently, so will the electricity prices. No prizes for guessing who gets hit the hardest with such increases. Though there has been criticism from various quarters regarding the use of marginal price as the price of electricity for all suppliers irrespective of their respective costs, the neoliberal belief in the gods of the market has ruled supreme in Europe.
Russia has long-term contracts as well as short-term contracts to supply gas to EU countries. Putin has mocked the EU’s fascination with spot prices and gas prices and said that Russia is willing to supply more gas via long-term contracts to the region. Meanwhile, in October 2021, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Russia was not doing its part in helping Europe tide over the gas crisis, according to an article in the Economist. The article stated, however, that according to analysts, Russia’s “big continental customers have recently confirmed that it is meeting its contractual obligations,” adding that “[t]here is little hard evidence that Russia is a big factor in Europe’s current gas crisis.”
The question here is that the EU either believes in the efficiency of the markets or it doesn’t. The EU cannot argue markets are best when spot prices are low in summer, and lose that belief in winter, asking Russia to supply more in order to “control” the market price. And if markets indeed are best, why not help the market by expediting the regulatory clearances for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will ship Russian gas to Germany?
This brings us to the knotty question of the EU and Russia. The current Ukraine crisis that is roiling the relationship between the EU and Russia is closely linked to gas as well. Pipelines from Russia through Ukraine and Poland, along with the undersea Nord Stream 1, currently supply the bulk of Russian gas to the EU. Russia also has additional capacity via the newly commissioned Nord Stream 2 to supply more gas to Europe if it receives the financial regulatory clearance.
There is little doubt that Nord Stream 2 is caught not simply in regulatory issues but also in the geopolitics of gas in Europe. The United States pressured Germany not to allow Nord Stream 2 to be commissioned, and also threatened to impose sanctions on companies involved with the pipeline project. Before stepping down as the chancellor of Germany in September 2021, Angela Merkel, however, resisted pressure from Washington to halt the work on the pipeline and forced the United States to concede to a “compromise deal.” The Ukraine crisis has created further pressure on Germany to postpone Nord Stream 2 even if it means worsening its twin crises of gas and electricity prices.
The net gainer in all of this is the United States, which will get the EU as a buyer for its more expensive fracking gas. Russia currently supplies about 40 percent of the EU’s gas. If this stalls, the United States, which supplies about 5 percent of the EU’s gas demand (according to 2020 figures), could be a big gainer. The United States’ interest in sanctioning Russian gas supply and not allowing the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 has as much to do with its support to Ukraine as seeing that Russia does not become too important to the EU.
Nord Stream 2 could help form a common pan-European market and a larger Eurasian consolidation. Just as it did in East and Southeast Asia, the United States has a vested interest in stopping trade following geography instead of politics. Interestingly, gas pipelines from the Soviet Union to Western Europe were built during the Cold War as geography and trade got priority over Cold War politics.
The United States wants to focus on NATO and the Indo-Pacific region, as its focus is on the oceans. In geographical terms, the oceans are not separate but a continuous body covering more than 70 percent of the world’s surface with three major islands: Eurasia, Africa and the Americas. (Although in the formulation of British geographer Halford Mackinder, the originator of the world island idea, Africa was seen as a part of Eurasia.) Eurasia alone is by far the bigger island, with 70 percent of the world’s population. That is why the United States does not want such a consolidation.
The world is passing through perhaps the greatest transition that human civilization has known in meeting the current challenges posed by climate change. To address these challenges, an energy transition is required that cannot be achieved through markets that prioritize immediate profits over long-term societal gains. If gas is indeed the transitional fuel, at least for Europe, it needs long-term policies of integrating its gas grid with gas fields, which have adequate storage. And Europe needs to stop playing games with its energy and the world’s climate future for the benefit of the United States.
For India, the lessons are clear. Markets do not work for infrastructure. Long-term planning with state leadership is what India needs to ensure supply of electricity to all Indians and ensure the country’s green transition—instead of dependence on electricity markets created artificially by a few regulators framing rules to favor the private monopoly of electricity companies.
Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement.
