The 65,000 Housing Question: Disaster capitalism arrives in Jaffna
ArcelorMittal Headquarters in Luxembourg City
by Rajan Philips-April 23, 2016, 6:02 pm
by Rajan Philips-April 23, 2016, 6:02 pm
Let us call a cage, a cage, and not a steely home in a palmyrah grove! The controversial US$ 1 billion contract with ArcelorMittal to build 65,000 steel houses in the north smacks of all the vices of corrupt global capitalism and none of the virtues of a free market economy. ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest steel producer, the outcome of the 2006 takeover of Arcelor (itself a conglomerate of Spanish, French and Luxembourg companies) by India’s Mittal Steel, and subsequent gobbling up of steel companies in different parts of the world. Why would the world’s largest steel company be interested in building houses in Jaffna? One billion US dollars are not a small amount even for ArcelorMittal with annual revenue in excess of 100 billion dollars. But it is a huge amount for a Sri Lankan contract and an astounding amount for the people of Jaffna to pay for 65,000 houses. And what they will be getting is nothing like the simple ‘stone houses’ that they were used to – with modest gardens, open verandahs, through ventilation and raised foundations to keep the monsoon floodwaters away.
