plan believe it is less an economic reform and more a scheme for tighter control of dissidents.
They report that people lacking a good political record, as determined by the Basij, have been denied all welfare payments.
The research work was done by Beta-Matrix Research Con-sultancy, a European consortium of analysts that has linked up with academic economists in Tehran. Esfahan and Qazvin. Their study found widespread delays in payments in areas such as Kurdistan and Sistan va Baluchestan, where there has been separatist unrest, while applications in religious cities were processed smoothly.
They suspect the scrapping of state subsidies is being used to punish and intimidate opponents of President Ahmadi-nejad.
Mehrdad Emadi, an Iranian economist based in London, told Robert Tait, a former reporter for The Guardian of Britain, that the compensation payments are being closely screened by the Pasdaran and Basij.
“You can see a political screening of people and categorizing them into groups—who are with us and groups who have not made the right level of effort to be with us,” Emadi says.
Between 4 million and 5 million people who should qualify on financial grounds have yet to receive their first welfare check, according to the study, including many suspected of having participated in opposition Green Movement protests against Ahmadi-nejad’s disputed reelection in 2009.
According to Emadi, if a family has had a “negative report” filed by the local Basij or Pasdar office, where a family member “has been seen to be involved in antigovernment activities,” they are being denied payments. “What we’re talking about is not making bombs,” Emadi says, “but participating in street demonstrations or, in some cases, having slogans written on the walls of their houses but they have not made the effort to clean the wall or cover it.”
Tait concluded, “Far from liberalizing the economy and freeing up prices, the program is aimed at extending state control and creating a climate of fear among ordinary citizens.” That may be going a step too far. The shift away from subsidies was first proposed 21 years ago by then-President Rafsanjani and has been advocated by every president since then. It has also been endorsed by many economists and pressed on Iran year-after-year by the International Monetary Fund.
But the economic logic behind the ending of sanctions doesn’t mean that some politicians did not see how the shift from subsidies to cash welfare could be politically useful to them.
This very negative assessment is supported by Jamshid Assadi, an Iranian economist at the ESC Groupe Business School in Dijon, France, who says Ahmadi-nejad’s goal is to create a system of “serfdom” that will turn citizens into “clients” totally reliant on the government for their livelihoods.
“This policy of eliminating subsidies and transforming them into cash does not have any objective in my opinion [other than] saying to the Iranian citizen: ‘Wait a minute. If you need money, I have money to give to you. But I have not seen you in the street supporting my government. I have not seen you in the street attacking those people who object, who contest the election and my second term. But if you want to have some money every month, even more, come and be Basiji and then you will receive money,’” Assadi told Tait.