Despite considerable political pressure & the damage to its undeserved reputation as humanitarian, the Gates Foundation is doubling down on its decision to award Modi for building public toilets in India. No one who’s ever had to use an outhouse or had to poop outside in the bushes will ever dismiss the importance of public toilets, which in Modi’s Swachh Bharat program appear to be mainly porta-potties. But if India didn’t have an entrenched oligarchic & capitalist system rooted in massive inequalities, they’d have built public toilets a long time ago & would have prioritized sanitation over militarism & the colonial occupation of Kashmir.
Most honorifics are worthless things. People shouldn’t receive awards for doing the right thing nor certainly for being a fascist & genocidaire. The upside to the Gates Foundation persisting in giving Modi this award is now their reputation as engaged in humanitarian work will come under more scrutiny when previously they operated an undercover operation engaged in eugenics & environmental ruin, including in India. The Gates Foundation knows what’s going on in Assam state & in Kashmir. They know what went on in Gujarat. It isn’t that they don’t care about all that but that Modi’s politics reflect their own politics. There’s nothing humanitarian about an organization that engages in racist programs to forcibly sterilize millions of black, brown, poor & marginalized women.