June 19, 2011 By Kaushik Mitter
Tags: Amitav Ghosh
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Smooth Sailing on creativity
Three years after Sea of Poppies in 2008, master storyteller Amitav Ghosh is back with River of Smoke, the second part of his epic Ibis trilogy, where we are reunited with many old faces and meet new ones as the action shifts from colonial Bengal and its calm Ganga waters to the stormy seas off China, to bustling Canton in the thick of the Opium Wars, where a wealthy Parsi businessman from Mumbai holds his own in cut-throat trade battles...
In a freewheeling conversation with Kaushik Mitter in New Delhi recently, Ghosh insisted he hasn’t even thought where he’ll take the story in the trilogy’s final part, or when. He talks of how writing The Glass Palace (on Burma’s last king, exiled to India) some years ago led him to think of Sea of Poppies, how he’s excited by the “incredible creative energy” in the Indian arts today, about his favourite contemporary writers, of experiences at Oxford and Harvard, and how he sees a changing India evolving.
Ghosh, who divides his time between New York, Goa and Kolkata, says he now does most of his writing in Goa, and when he’s not working he relaxes with his family and plays a round or two of badminton.
Excerpts from the interview:
Do you find India increasingly becoming an intolerant place, where the liberal space is shrinking?
A. That’s absolutely true. The other day we lost our great painter M.F. Husain — such a tragedy, the way he was hounded out... having to move to Qatar, then dying in London. You see that phenomenon replicating at every level — that space for freedom, so essential for writing or any kind of art, is shrinking constantly.
It’s not just in India... Through most of the 20th century we always thought creative freedom is essentially a problem in relation to the state... This has completely changed — it’s non-state actors who are the main threats to freedom... You have the political parties, various activists, fundamentalists of various kinds, and you have multinational corporations — also very heavily invested in controlling the outflow of information. In America various forms of expression are threatened. It actually happened, you know — various people had criticised McDonald’s hamburgers, and they were prosecuted... they were just ordinary, poor people.
Q. Do you feel the liberal consensus around which the Indian state was founded is breaking down?
A. Yes, the ground has certainly shifted... and quite dramatically. It’s also curious to see so many stories about Rising India, Shining India, Glittering India... because in every aspect of Indian life you see signs of extreme tension. Just one example: 10 years ago it was perfectly possible to drive across the interior of Orissa — I myself have driven through Koraput and Kalahandi in a car. Now it’s almost impossible to leave the coastal belt. Midnapore in Bengal — so much a part of mainland India — today it’s not really under government control. If you add up (such) districts around India, you’ll see almost a third of the country is not under state control... And more and more areas are passing out of state control every year.
Q. You’ve travelled and worked extensively in the Sunderbans. Where are we going wrong on development?
A. What’s happening is a resource takeover by the private sector... The government seems to feel it can just hand over these resources to profit-making companies — I think that it’s a disaster. Millions of people are being displaced, there’s massive violence, it’s visibly leading to the complete unravelling of the political balance.
Q. Can the lives of the poor be improved without development?
A. The problem, say, in the forest region is that because of British era forestry laws the people who lived there were deprived of all rights to that land. The state claims control of the forests, people there were not given any title to these lands, which was always their common land... The most important thing is for their title to these lands to be restored. Then it’s for them to decide... Let them strike a bargain with the companies if they want to sell it. The people now have no right to decide, that’s why they are protesting. They don’t think of themselves as poor, it’s a life they have been perfectly happy with. You are actually creating poverty in order to lift them out of poverty!
Q. You grew up in Kolkata, you’ve lived there at different times, before and during the Left period. What is your take on politics there?
A. Oh my goodness, you really want to get me into trouble (laughs)... I think in its early years the Left had some important ideas — land reforms have been important in Bengal, give them credit for that. But for the last 20 years they’ve been completely moribund — I say this not out of any sense of antipathy towards the Left, but they’ve been completely on the wrong track. Even when thinking of development and industrialisation, they’ve had no vision...
Kolkata has so many things going for it. In an era of water scarcity, it sits in the middle of a water-rich region, with easy access to both the Northeast and to Southeast Asia. It can very easily become a cultural, financial, retail hub — it has all this going for it. But when the Left finally begins to think of industrialisation, what do they think? Of all the dirty old industries. It’s so ridiculous...
Both London and New York have been through this process of de-industrialisation — and turned that into an enormous asset. They became financial hubs, cultural hubs — all those old buildings turned into galleries, art spaces... It would be so easy to do that in Kolkata if people had any kind of vision, they would have done that. But when they (Left) think of industry, they think of our grandfather’s time, not clean industries... It makes you feel so sad and so helpless. And the reason is they’re still only reading Das Kapital, they’re thinking of the 19th century.
Q. Your new book River of Smoke carries on from where Sea of Poppies left off — with many of the same characters. Have you thought about where the story moves in the third and last part of the Ibis trilogy?
A. I really haven’t. It’s strange to relate, but I’ve always conceived of this trilogy as books not connected in a linear sense, but which have a more glancing relationship with each other, like parts of a puzzle, if you like. So when I finished Sea of Poppies, I didn’t know where the next book would go. In that way it’s no different from writing a book that stands on its own.
My main concern — doing it as a trilogy — was to stay with the characters and their families... If necessary I can take up the story 20 years later, 30 years later, two generations later... and I still feel free to do that.
Q. Does the close India-China relationship that you depict in River of Smoke have any lessons for us in the 21st century?
A. People talk about this (India-China) relationship as though it was something that fell out of the sky in the last 10 years… A lot of Indians were trading in China in the 19th century, unfortunately they were trading in opium. But there is no doubt that a lot of the capital accumulation that happened in India in the 19th century came from the opium trade… This was responsible for the growth of many present-day Indian firms. So China has always been a vital aspect of our economic life. The curious thing is that there is an absolute ignorance of that in India… we never grew up with an awareness of this.
What do you think of the new English writing in India? Anything that stands out in the recent popular fiction, chick lit, etc?
A. I don’t read much chick lit (laughs), but one thing I really love is this genre of IIT novels... Chetan Bhagat and Amitabha Bagchi, both of them are extremely talented writers. It’s strange, you know, the world they are writing about is probably not of interest to anyone outside India, who haven’t been through our educational system or similar systems. To me, it was simply fascinating. Amitabha, in his first book (Above Average), what he did I think went far beyond the boundaries of any such genre — it’s really making the IITs a kind of metaphor for India...
Speaking of chick lit, at one point when I was teaching in Harvard, a Kaavya Viswanathan was my student. I never read her book, so I can’t say anything about it, except that clearly it had problems... But the work that she did for me was excellent. She was a very talented writer. (Her 2006 debut novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, written just after high school, was withdrawn after charges of plagiarism.)
I was at Harvard very briefly, and she came to some classes... I was very impressed... In that brief time that I was teaching there I had so many brilliant students from South Asia, some of whom have now published books... (such as) Ali Sethi, who’s Pakistani, a superb writer...
Q. The recent book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother created a lot of buzz in America and elsewhere. You’ve researched extensively on China — do you find parallels between the way the Chinese and Indians bring up kids, in their education systems.
A. That’s an interesting question. I can’t say I’ve read this book of Amy Chua... I’ve read about it, read excerpts from it... I’ve in fact read her earlier book World on Fire (whose subhead says it all: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability). I think she’s an exceptionally clever woman... It’s also very interesting that her children are incredibly successful, and they adore her, they’ve said so repeatedly.
I think what’s happened in America, the reason it made such an impact is that Americans have begun to realise now that there is something problematic about their system of education. For years they’ve been accustomed to thinking their education system is the best in the world; now they realise it has very deep problems. I’ve brought up two children there, they’ve been through the whole American educational system — and I’m happy to say that they’ve done very well in that system. But I certainly realise this system is riddled with terrible problems.
I also think the strengths of our system are never properly articulated. The whole world has become so battered and bullied by this constant talk about the excellence of American education by people who have no experience of it, who don’t know what it is to bring up children in different places... people automatically accept there is something magnificent in that system and that our system is horrible... And it’s really not true.
I’ve taught at Harvard and at all these places... One of the reasons I really feel relieved not to be teaching any more is that I don’t think in many significant respects that the American system works...
Q. You mean in the universities or in schools as well?
A. School education, college education... From top to bottom, it just doesn’t work. In some ways it’s become like entertainment... When as a college teacher in America you are offering a class, the children “shop” for classes. So which are the classes they’re going to take? The classes that are entertaining, the classes where they are marked very liberally. This is exactly what happens: they put their evaluations on their websites so that the students who are following know exactly who are the strict teachers, who are the not strict teachers, and they can game the system very, very well...
Education is not all fun. Education is difficult, but the idea that you have to make education fun at some point becomes self-defeating. You can’t make certain kinds of mathematics fun. You can’t make difficult things fun. And that’s not why you are doing education. Learning poetry by heart is not fun. But it’s very necessary to have that poetry in your head if you are studying English literature... I sometimes ask my children: Can you recite a poem? — and they’ve been to the top institutions in America — and no, they can’t.
They (Americans) think that rote learning is bad... But it is such an idiotic idea — what is learning but rote learning? How can you learn the multiplication tables as though it was fun? There’s nothing fun about multiplication tables... And learning is in fact 90 per cent rote learning. If you constantly attack this idea of rote learning, it’s ridiculous...
If you go to American universities now, why is it that all the departments of mathematics, engineering are filled with Asian students? They come from systems where the rigour is drilled into them from a very early age. If it hasn’t been drilled into you from an early age, you have to be truly exceptional. America is a country filled with very brilliant people, and many exceptional students. But the institutional structure doesn’t always support them.
Would you say the Indian educational system, with all its faults, still has a few lessons for America and others?
A. This is the point Amy Chua is making — in India and China and so on there is no strict dividing line between upbringing and education — it’s your family that is actually providing much of the education. And that you can’t reproduce elsewhere. For example, my niece in Kolkata, when she has to go through exams, the whole house shuts down. For two or three months no one will go out, (someone) will sit with her every evening, no one will turn on the TV, literally... the kind of things that every parent in India, every household in India does. Can you imagine this happening in America? It’s inconceivable.
Q. There are many in India who want changes in our education system, to bring in Western ideas, an American-style education...
A. That’s absolutely the wrong way to go. I’m not saying our system is without faults. There are many faults, many things wrong with it. But there’s a lot of stuff which I see constantly being said — from education ministry people and so on, most of whom have no connection with education. I look at it and just laugh to myself... These people have no conception of what they’re saying — they are going to destroy what’s good in our system and take everything that’s bad in that system and end up with the worst possible mess.
When I went from Delhi University to Oxford, I thought I was going into a place where there’s so much higher learning, so much a “life of the mind” and it was exactly the opposite... My education in Delhi had been much better than anything Oxford could have provided. I was far ahead of those other students; I’d read all the books already... I knew more than my teachers there, for heaven’s sake.
There were also wonderful things about Oxford. It let me explore avenues and byways I could not have done in Delhi, but that was possible because I’d been through this whole rigour... What really worries me is that they are in danger now of throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater!
One thing that is never factored into the debate here — do people even understand the level of cost involved... For each of my two children I’m paying over $50,000 a year for college education — each year for four years — so at the end on each child you spend something like a crore of rupees on their college education.
Our system is delivering an education which in many ways is competitive internationally — and at what cost? It’s less than one per cent of that cost. How will our society generate this kind of money for this (American) kind of education? It’s ridiculous. Even America can no longer sustain this. Everyone there is talking of the next big bubble being in American education, and I think they’re absolutely right...
Do you know what they have to do to put their children through college? People don’t realise this here — they take out these loans, and a staggering percentage of American children now come into life with a burden of loans which amount to $200,000-$300,000.
These loans have crippling rates of interest — they can never get rid of these loans, and they are specifically exempted even from bankruptcy claims... So if a person declares bankruptcy, even then they cannot get rid of these loans. For the first 20-30 years of their lives they are working to pay off these loans. Is such a system conceivable here? What impact will it have on the poor and all those who can’t afford it?
Saturday, June 25, 2011
A Corporate State!!
Friends,
I'm forwarding this article by Dr Vandana Shiva.We,the upwardly mobile,obsess and endlessly discuss the issue of corruption. Perhaps,this article will help us in having a better perspective.
I feel that one of the major factors behind corruption is an over centralized state apparatus endowed with huge discretionary powers.The thinking behind this could be that the State was a better arbiter to mediate between conflicting interests.But the present situation is that the State seems to be more aligned with the Corporate interest than with that of the poor, the rural and the tribal. Therefore it is imperative that powers of the State be decentralized in favour of local bodies.
Unfortunately,there is no organized effort in this direction.
Despite all the despondency all around,I remain hopeful that the people of this country will not be cowed down and something good, even for the Corporates and the State,will emerge from all these struggles. In a global,wired,world,it is impossible to fool all people for all times.
I trust all of us will retain our optimism and pray for precisely this outcome.
Avinash
2010 was the year of scams — 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society etc.
2011 has emerged as the year of the fight against corruption — with social activist Anna Hazare’s fast for a Lokpal Bill and Baba Ramdev’s fast to bring back black money stashed away in foreign banks.
The midnight police crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha with 100,000 followers was yet another signal of the undemocratic tendency of the government to crush social movements and social protests.
At the same time, when Ramdev’s satyagraha was attacked in Delhi, 20 police battalions were being used to crush the anti-Posco movement in Odisha and destroy the betel-vine gardens that are the basis of people’s prosperous living economy, earning small farmers Rs 400,000 per acre.
The use of force has become the norm for the government dealing with people’s protests.
In a democracy, which is supposed to be by the people, of the people and for the people, protests and movements are supposed to signal what people want or do not want.
Listening to people is the democratic duty of governments. When governments fail to listen to the people and use force against peaceful movements they become undemocratic; they become dictatorships.
When, in addition, governments that are supposed to represent the peoples’ will and interests in a representative democracy start to represent the will and interests of corporations and big business, the government mutates from being of the people, by the people and for the people to becoming of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. The state is becoming a corporate state. And this mutation transforms democracy into fascism.
Neo-liberal economic policies have a political fallout of inducing this mutation of government from a democratic representative of peoples’ interests to an undemocratic representative of corporate interests. Not only is neo-liberalism leading to the privatisation of seed and land, water and biodiversity, health and education, power and transport, it is also leading to the privatisation of government itself. And a privatised corporate state starts to see people fighting for public good and economic democracy as a threat.
It is in this context that we need to read the repeated statements of government ministers that peoples’ protests and social movements are a threat to democracy. Social movements are raising issues about economic justice and economic democracy. Corruption is a symptom of the deepening trends of economic injustice and undermining of economic democracy.
We need to connect the dots between the diverse social movements of tribals and farmers fighting to defend their land and natural resources, the movements of workers fighting to defend jobs and livelihoods, and the new anti-corruption movements whose faces are Mr Hazare and Baba Ramdev.
Corruption is the unjust, illegal and private appropriation of public resources and public wealth, be it natural wealth, public goods and services or financial wealth. The ecology movements and tribal and farmers’ movements are fighting against the corruption involved in the massive resource grab and land grab taking place across the country for the mining of bauxite, coal and iron ore, for mega steel plants and power plants, for super highways and luxury townships.
Farmers fighting the land grab along the Yamuna Expressway were killed on May 7. While they received a mere Rs 300 per sq. m. for their land the developers who grab the land in partnership with government using the 1894 colonial land acquisition law sell it for Rs 600,000 per sq. m. This is corporate corruption.
I have just received an SMS:
* Lush Green Farmhouses in Noida Expressway
* 10 minutes from South Delhi
* Clubs, Swimming Pool, Cricket Stadium
* Government Electricity and Roads
Farmhouses of farmers are burnt and destroyed to create “farmhouses” for the rich. Farms are destroyed to create Formula 1 race tracks and swimming pools for the elite. This obscene, violent, unjust land grab is the cruellest face of corruption in today’s India.
The privatisation of our seed, our food, our water, our health, our education, our electricity and mobility is another facet of corporate corruption. In the case of the privatisation of seed, farmers are paying with their very lives. Seed costs rise and farmers are trapped in debt. Farmer suicides need to be seen as part of the web of privatisation as corruption.
The government of Maharashtra has signed memorandums of understanding with Monsanto to hand over seed, the genetic wealth of farmers’ research and the knowledge wealth of society to a seed MNC. This is corporate corruption. The government of India wants to totally dismantle the public distribution system to benefit agribusiness and corporate retail. Undermining the right to food is corporate corruption.
The appropriation of public and national wealth through bribes and black money is the third facet of corruption. It is when all the streams of the fight for economic justice and economic democracy join as one will we have a strong and vibrant movement for defending and deepening democracy. Social movements are the life blood of democracy.
The government will, of course, try its best to crush democracy to protect the private economic interests it represents. The two faces of government who most frequently make statements about social movements subverting democracy are the human resources development minister, Mr Kapil Sibal and the home minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, both of whom have represented corporations against the public interest in their legal career.
They carry these corporate loyalties into their political career. They will do their very best to use every undemocratic means to crush movements for democracy and justice. Operation Green Hunt in tribal areas and the midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha are just two examples of the use of violence to protect corrupt corporate interests.
The corrupt militarised, totalitarian power of the corporate state is not democracy. Peoples’ vibrant movements fighting the concentration of economic and political power and the corrupt means used for concentration of that power are at the heart of democracy. It is people and social movements who have kept and will keep democracy alive in India.
The author is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust
Hemang Bhatt 22/06/2011 - 03:14am
Stopping Ramdevji could have been done in a civilszed way, say, give them 12 or 24 hours notice to vacate and give this notice publicly, say on TV. Then if they do not vacate then you can use a bit of force, but, beating up children and women at night?
Reply
sushant chakravarty 22/06/2011 - 02:12am
I fully agree with you that the ongoing events one after other, be it the series of scandals and then the merciless crackdown on innocent protestors. are making us bow our head in shame in front of the world. In fact we have devalued the people's right which is the most significant in the democratic setup.
We have come to such situation that we have to redefine democracy and try to find out whether democracy that exist in present context is really of, for and by the people.
According to the definition in vogue today, democracy is defined as the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Adult suffrage plays an important role in democracy. In the name of forming a democratic government, different political and communal parties throw their hats into the election ring. Every party issues its own election manifesto to influence the people in order to carry the laurels in the ensuing election battle. Besides, different parties entice the voters through election propaganda.
Where educated people are in the majority and political consciousness is adequate, it is not very difficult for people to weigh the pros and cons of the manifesto of a particular party and to ascertain what is in the best interests of the people. But where there is a dearth of education and political consciousness, and where people fail to understand the reality of the manifesto and are misled by wrong propaganda, they cast their ballots in favour of parties whose ideals go contrary to the social interest. Consequently, parties are installed in power which go against the interests of the people.
In the present democratic system, the right to cast a vote depends on age. Suppose people get the right of suffrage at the age of 21. This assumes that all persons attaining the age of 21 have an understanding of the basic problems of the people, but in reality many people above the age of 21 remain ignorant of these problems for want of political consciousness. So the right of suffrage should not be based on age. This right should be vested in those who are educated and politically conscious. Conferring voting rights on the basis of age means that people may cast their ballots without proper understanding and knowledge, while many educated and politically conscious people are debarred from voting because of their age. This is the greatest lacuna of democracy.
The second lacuna is that in the democratic system people have to hear lengthy, insubstantial lectures which are also often misleading. Leaders have to canvass all and sundry to get votes. They have to placate thieves, dacoits and hypocrites because the latter command great voting power. That is why democracy is the government of thieves, dacoits and hypocrites. The government cannot take action against them because a government which curbs their nefarious activities cannot last long.
It is possible in a democratic government that the members or the elected representatives comprise more than fifty percent of the total number of candidates winning at the hustings while the total votes secured by their party may be less than fifty per cent. In such a condition the government is said to be of a majority party, but in reality it is the government of a particular minority party. As the government is formed by a particular party the opinion of another party or other parties is not respected in the legislature. Though all parties participate in passing legislation, bill are passed according to the wishes of the party that is in the majority. When acts are passed by a particular party, that party often derives benefit from the enacted law while the people at large do not derive much benefit from it at all.
Kapil Sibal with his articulate way will try to convince all that is wrong as right and push the Lokpal bill which suits the corrupt government and all his colleagues will help him in this misdeed. Just imagine he quotes Baba Ramdev a real heroic figure who has reinvented Yoga in our country as charlatan.
The problem with him that he has to make his party bosses happy and get blessings of Manmohan and Sonia.
We have to understand that the government is formed by a particular party, the independence of the government servants is also impaired. The members and leaders of the ruling party interfere with the work of the executive and force it to tow the party line. Under duress work is done which benefits a particular party but harms the interests of the people at large. In the democratic system government officials cannot go against the wishes of the government leaders as the former work under the direction of the secretariat which is headed by the cabinet formed by the ruling party.
In so-called democracies even the judiciary cannot function independently as the ruling party pressures judges and judicial officers. Thus judgements are sometimes delivered which strangulate justice.
Independence of the audit department, too, is indispensable for the proper functioning of the public exchequer. But owing to the pressure of the party in power, it often fails to act independently. For want of proper auditing, public funds are squandered and misused. Consequently nation-building activity is not carried out properly. A government is to govern and serve the people, but it is not possible to govern in the democratic system, for who is there to be governed?
The public are placated in order to secure votes which makes the would-be rulers unfit to rule. And the would-be rulers are themselves incompetent, immoral, hypocritical exploiters or how else would they get elected? They take recourse to devious strategies and the power of money. That is why there is no one to provide worthy leadership. And as far as the question of the people is concerned, that is meaningless in a democracy. In this system the party and the leaders serve themselves in all possible ways.
Thus, it is crystal-clear that the democratic form of government is riddled with lacunae. Without removing them it is impossible to properly run the administration of a country.
Now let us discuss some reforms to democracy. Democracy cannot succeed in countries where people are illiterate, immoral, or backward. Countries like England, the USA and France are suitable for democracy, but even these countries need to introduce some reforms.
First, legislators in the states and at the centre should be elected on the recommendations of the people at large. At the time of electing representatives the people should pay heed to their education, moral standard and sacrifice for the society etc. If the representatives are elected keeping in view these factors, they will not be guided by party interests but by collective interests. In their minds the interests of the entire human race and society will dominate, and not any class interests. They will be able to enact laws keeping in mind the prob lems of all and sundry, thereby accelerating the speed of social reconstruction. Their impartial service will bring happiness to all.
The voting rights should be vested in educated persons who have political consciousness and awareness of people’s problems. Age should not be a bar to voting right. If illiterate people are given voting rights there is the possibility of antisocial and incompetent representatives being elected.
To provide a fearless and independent ambience to the administration, the secretariat should be kept free from pressures from the cabinet. The cabinet should confine itself to legislation, the passage and passing of the budget, the implementation of its plans and policies, defense etc. The power of ministers should remain confined to the parliament and they should not poke their nose into the workings of the secretariat. The chief secretary should not be under the president or the prime minister but should act independently as the executive head. All the secretaries should work under the chief secretary. Free from cabinet pressures, every department will serve the people well.
In the present system the judiciary functions under a cabinet minister, and pressure from the minister may impair its independent functioning. To remove this defect and to ensure impartial justice, the judiciary should have the right to function independently. In no case should the chief justice be treated as inferior to the president or the prime minister. Only moralists and honest persons should be installed on the hallowed seat of justice. If people fail to keep this issue under their close scrutiny, injustice will take the place of justice.
Finally, for the proper utilization of the public exchequer, the independence of the audit department too, is a must. The auditor general should be independent of the sceptre of the president or the prime minister. Only an independent audit de partment can keep proper accounts of every department.
Thus, there should be four compartments in a properly constituted democracy – legislature, executive, judiciary and public exchequer – and all of them should be independent from one another. But in such a situation there is still the possibility of injustice and exploitation. So to supervise or monitor the function of all these compartments, the benevolent dictatorship of the board of Sadvipras(Group of honest and moral people, In this context led by Lokpal) is required so that spirituality will reign supreme.
I'm forwarding this article by Dr Vandana Shiva.We,the upwardly mobile,obsess and endlessly discuss the issue of corruption. Perhaps,this article will help us in having a better perspective.
I feel that one of the major factors behind corruption is an over centralized state apparatus endowed with huge discretionary powers.The thinking behind this could be that the State was a better arbiter to mediate between conflicting interests.But the present situation is that the State seems to be more aligned with the Corporate interest than with that of the poor, the rural and the tribal. Therefore it is imperative that powers of the State be decentralized in favour of local bodies.
Unfortunately,there is no organized effort in this direction.
Despite all the despondency all around,I remain hopeful that the people of this country will not be cowed down and something good, even for the Corporates and the State,will emerge from all these struggles. In a global,wired,world,it is impossible to fool all people for all times.
I trust all of us will retain our optimism and pray for precisely this outcome.
Avinash
2010 was the year of scams — 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society etc.
2011 has emerged as the year of the fight against corruption — with social activist Anna Hazare’s fast for a Lokpal Bill and Baba Ramdev’s fast to bring back black money stashed away in foreign banks.
The midnight police crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha with 100,000 followers was yet another signal of the undemocratic tendency of the government to crush social movements and social protests.
At the same time, when Ramdev’s satyagraha was attacked in Delhi, 20 police battalions were being used to crush the anti-Posco movement in Odisha and destroy the betel-vine gardens that are the basis of people’s prosperous living economy, earning small farmers Rs 400,000 per acre.
The use of force has become the norm for the government dealing with people’s protests.
In a democracy, which is supposed to be by the people, of the people and for the people, protests and movements are supposed to signal what people want or do not want.
Listening to people is the democratic duty of governments. When governments fail to listen to the people and use force against peaceful movements they become undemocratic; they become dictatorships.
When, in addition, governments that are supposed to represent the peoples’ will and interests in a representative democracy start to represent the will and interests of corporations and big business, the government mutates from being of the people, by the people and for the people to becoming of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. The state is becoming a corporate state. And this mutation transforms democracy into fascism.
Neo-liberal economic policies have a political fallout of inducing this mutation of government from a democratic representative of peoples’ interests to an undemocratic representative of corporate interests. Not only is neo-liberalism leading to the privatisation of seed and land, water and biodiversity, health and education, power and transport, it is also leading to the privatisation of government itself. And a privatised corporate state starts to see people fighting for public good and economic democracy as a threat.
It is in this context that we need to read the repeated statements of government ministers that peoples’ protests and social movements are a threat to democracy. Social movements are raising issues about economic justice and economic democracy. Corruption is a symptom of the deepening trends of economic injustice and undermining of economic democracy.
We need to connect the dots between the diverse social movements of tribals and farmers fighting to defend their land and natural resources, the movements of workers fighting to defend jobs and livelihoods, and the new anti-corruption movements whose faces are Mr Hazare and Baba Ramdev.
Corruption is the unjust, illegal and private appropriation of public resources and public wealth, be it natural wealth, public goods and services or financial wealth. The ecology movements and tribal and farmers’ movements are fighting against the corruption involved in the massive resource grab and land grab taking place across the country for the mining of bauxite, coal and iron ore, for mega steel plants and power plants, for super highways and luxury townships.
Farmers fighting the land grab along the Yamuna Expressway were killed on May 7. While they received a mere Rs 300 per sq. m. for their land the developers who grab the land in partnership with government using the 1894 colonial land acquisition law sell it for Rs 600,000 per sq. m. This is corporate corruption.
I have just received an SMS:
* Lush Green Farmhouses in Noida Expressway
* 10 minutes from South Delhi
* Clubs, Swimming Pool, Cricket Stadium
* Government Electricity and Roads
Farmhouses of farmers are burnt and destroyed to create “farmhouses” for the rich. Farms are destroyed to create Formula 1 race tracks and swimming pools for the elite. This obscene, violent, unjust land grab is the cruellest face of corruption in today’s India.
The privatisation of our seed, our food, our water, our health, our education, our electricity and mobility is another facet of corporate corruption. In the case of the privatisation of seed, farmers are paying with their very lives. Seed costs rise and farmers are trapped in debt. Farmer suicides need to be seen as part of the web of privatisation as corruption.
The government of Maharashtra has signed memorandums of understanding with Monsanto to hand over seed, the genetic wealth of farmers’ research and the knowledge wealth of society to a seed MNC. This is corporate corruption. The government of India wants to totally dismantle the public distribution system to benefit agribusiness and corporate retail. Undermining the right to food is corporate corruption.
The appropriation of public and national wealth through bribes and black money is the third facet of corruption. It is when all the streams of the fight for economic justice and economic democracy join as one will we have a strong and vibrant movement for defending and deepening democracy. Social movements are the life blood of democracy.
The government will, of course, try its best to crush democracy to protect the private economic interests it represents. The two faces of government who most frequently make statements about social movements subverting democracy are the human resources development minister, Mr Kapil Sibal and the home minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, both of whom have represented corporations against the public interest in their legal career.
They carry these corporate loyalties into their political career. They will do their very best to use every undemocratic means to crush movements for democracy and justice. Operation Green Hunt in tribal areas and the midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha are just two examples of the use of violence to protect corrupt corporate interests.
The corrupt militarised, totalitarian power of the corporate state is not democracy. Peoples’ vibrant movements fighting the concentration of economic and political power and the corrupt means used for concentration of that power are at the heart of democracy. It is people and social movements who have kept and will keep democracy alive in India.
The author is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust
Hemang Bhatt 22/06/2011 - 03:14am
Stopping Ramdevji could have been done in a civilszed way, say, give them 12 or 24 hours notice to vacate and give this notice publicly, say on TV. Then if they do not vacate then you can use a bit of force, but, beating up children and women at night?
Reply
sushant chakravarty 22/06/2011 - 02:12am
I fully agree with you that the ongoing events one after other, be it the series of scandals and then the merciless crackdown on innocent protestors. are making us bow our head in shame in front of the world. In fact we have devalued the people's right which is the most significant in the democratic setup.
We have come to such situation that we have to redefine democracy and try to find out whether democracy that exist in present context is really of, for and by the people.
According to the definition in vogue today, democracy is defined as the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Adult suffrage plays an important role in democracy. In the name of forming a democratic government, different political and communal parties throw their hats into the election ring. Every party issues its own election manifesto to influence the people in order to carry the laurels in the ensuing election battle. Besides, different parties entice the voters through election propaganda.
Where educated people are in the majority and political consciousness is adequate, it is not very difficult for people to weigh the pros and cons of the manifesto of a particular party and to ascertain what is in the best interests of the people. But where there is a dearth of education and political consciousness, and where people fail to understand the reality of the manifesto and are misled by wrong propaganda, they cast their ballots in favour of parties whose ideals go contrary to the social interest. Consequently, parties are installed in power which go against the interests of the people.
In the present democratic system, the right to cast a vote depends on age. Suppose people get the right of suffrage at the age of 21. This assumes that all persons attaining the age of 21 have an understanding of the basic problems of the people, but in reality many people above the age of 21 remain ignorant of these problems for want of political consciousness. So the right of suffrage should not be based on age. This right should be vested in those who are educated and politically conscious. Conferring voting rights on the basis of age means that people may cast their ballots without proper understanding and knowledge, while many educated and politically conscious people are debarred from voting because of their age. This is the greatest lacuna of democracy.
The second lacuna is that in the democratic system people have to hear lengthy, insubstantial lectures which are also often misleading. Leaders have to canvass all and sundry to get votes. They have to placate thieves, dacoits and hypocrites because the latter command great voting power. That is why democracy is the government of thieves, dacoits and hypocrites. The government cannot take action against them because a government which curbs their nefarious activities cannot last long.
It is possible in a democratic government that the members or the elected representatives comprise more than fifty percent of the total number of candidates winning at the hustings while the total votes secured by their party may be less than fifty per cent. In such a condition the government is said to be of a majority party, but in reality it is the government of a particular minority party. As the government is formed by a particular party the opinion of another party or other parties is not respected in the legislature. Though all parties participate in passing legislation, bill are passed according to the wishes of the party that is in the majority. When acts are passed by a particular party, that party often derives benefit from the enacted law while the people at large do not derive much benefit from it at all.
Kapil Sibal with his articulate way will try to convince all that is wrong as right and push the Lokpal bill which suits the corrupt government and all his colleagues will help him in this misdeed. Just imagine he quotes Baba Ramdev a real heroic figure who has reinvented Yoga in our country as charlatan.
The problem with him that he has to make his party bosses happy and get blessings of Manmohan and Sonia.
We have to understand that the government is formed by a particular party, the independence of the government servants is also impaired. The members and leaders of the ruling party interfere with the work of the executive and force it to tow the party line. Under duress work is done which benefits a particular party but harms the interests of the people at large. In the democratic system government officials cannot go against the wishes of the government leaders as the former work under the direction of the secretariat which is headed by the cabinet formed by the ruling party.
In so-called democracies even the judiciary cannot function independently as the ruling party pressures judges and judicial officers. Thus judgements are sometimes delivered which strangulate justice.
Independence of the audit department, too, is indispensable for the proper functioning of the public exchequer. But owing to the pressure of the party in power, it often fails to act independently. For want of proper auditing, public funds are squandered and misused. Consequently nation-building activity is not carried out properly. A government is to govern and serve the people, but it is not possible to govern in the democratic system, for who is there to be governed?
The public are placated in order to secure votes which makes the would-be rulers unfit to rule. And the would-be rulers are themselves incompetent, immoral, hypocritical exploiters or how else would they get elected? They take recourse to devious strategies and the power of money. That is why there is no one to provide worthy leadership. And as far as the question of the people is concerned, that is meaningless in a democracy. In this system the party and the leaders serve themselves in all possible ways.
Thus, it is crystal-clear that the democratic form of government is riddled with lacunae. Without removing them it is impossible to properly run the administration of a country.
Now let us discuss some reforms to democracy. Democracy cannot succeed in countries where people are illiterate, immoral, or backward. Countries like England, the USA and France are suitable for democracy, but even these countries need to introduce some reforms.
First, legislators in the states and at the centre should be elected on the recommendations of the people at large. At the time of electing representatives the people should pay heed to their education, moral standard and sacrifice for the society etc. If the representatives are elected keeping in view these factors, they will not be guided by party interests but by collective interests. In their minds the interests of the entire human race and society will dominate, and not any class interests. They will be able to enact laws keeping in mind the prob lems of all and sundry, thereby accelerating the speed of social reconstruction. Their impartial service will bring happiness to all.
The voting rights should be vested in educated persons who have political consciousness and awareness of people’s problems. Age should not be a bar to voting right. If illiterate people are given voting rights there is the possibility of antisocial and incompetent representatives being elected.
To provide a fearless and independent ambience to the administration, the secretariat should be kept free from pressures from the cabinet. The cabinet should confine itself to legislation, the passage and passing of the budget, the implementation of its plans and policies, defense etc. The power of ministers should remain confined to the parliament and they should not poke their nose into the workings of the secretariat. The chief secretary should not be under the president or the prime minister but should act independently as the executive head. All the secretaries should work under the chief secretary. Free from cabinet pressures, every department will serve the people well.
In the present system the judiciary functions under a cabinet minister, and pressure from the minister may impair its independent functioning. To remove this defect and to ensure impartial justice, the judiciary should have the right to function independently. In no case should the chief justice be treated as inferior to the president or the prime minister. Only moralists and honest persons should be installed on the hallowed seat of justice. If people fail to keep this issue under their close scrutiny, injustice will take the place of justice.
Finally, for the proper utilization of the public exchequer, the independence of the audit department too, is a must. The auditor general should be independent of the sceptre of the president or the prime minister. Only an independent audit de partment can keep proper accounts of every department.
Thus, there should be four compartments in a properly constituted democracy – legislature, executive, judiciary and public exchequer – and all of them should be independent from one another. But in such a situation there is still the possibility of injustice and exploitation. So to supervise or monitor the function of all these compartments, the benevolent dictatorship of the board of Sadvipras(Group of honest and moral people, In this context led by Lokpal) is required so that spirituality will reign supreme.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Don't Separate Science from Religion, Folk Culture or Crankdom
Friends,
You may, perhaps,like to go through this brilliant review by Prayik Kanjilal of this recently published book by Angela Saini.
The essence of a scientific outlook is to be compulsively curious about the world around us.And to use the results of that enquiry to make for a better life for ALL people.
In his famous report to the British Parliament in 1835,Macaulay is on record to say that in his travels through India he could not find beggars or thiefs and found people to have sound moral values.He goes on to say that the British could never rule India unless they broke the backbone of the nation, the rich social and cultural heritage and the ancient system of education. Unless this was broken and the Indians were made to believe that everything English and Western was superior,they could never be ruled and dominated.
The past almost 200 years have shown how effective the Western world has been in demolishing our ancient culture, folklore and education system.Unfortunately, even after Independence,only the ruling class changed but not the ideology of the elites subjugating the masses and fattening themselves at their expense by cynically exploiting the natural resources which belong to all for their personal accumulation.
It is in precisely this context that even science has operated and it is time that we revive our rich ancient traditions and rely on our own resources rather than being a copy-cat culture.To be sure,adopt what is good and Socially relevant from all over the world.I especially admire the unequivocal concept of equality,as opposed to our caste ridden system premised on inequality, on which the Western citizenship is largely based.
We just can't afford not to embrace the spirit of service and equality for all and Science better serve that cause instead of being a handmaiden of the elites.
Science with a dash of jugaad
April 30, 2011 By Pratik Kanjilal
Geek Nation: How
Indian science is taking over the world
by Angela Saini
Hachette, Rs 499
An interview-based book tracing the growth of Indian science from the Nehruvian era to Chandrayaan is intrisically valuable. And it is timely when internationally, India is perceived to be transitioning from the land of holy cows and lighter-than-air babajis to recapture the legacy of Aryabhata and Sushruta. But was Geek Nation written for the Indian reader? If I had read it on a rainy English evening with a refreshing pint within easy reach, it would have purged my mind of elephants, maharajas, big fat weddings and similar Orientalist claptrap. Reading it in the hard light of Delhi’s summer, I was not initially moved. But it was interesting nevertheless because I was seeing India through the eyes of an outsider — a reporter.
Geek Nation is a journalist’s book. That is both its strength and its weakness. Angela Saini, a British engineer and science journalist, offers sound research and scrupulously balanced reportage from the forefront of Indian science. But the book keeps to the rubric of the journalistic story — he said, she quipped, they countered, and so on. Saini’s groundwork is exhaustive but had she crossed the reporter’s line and spoken her own mind, this would have been a more substantial book.
Saini comes to India prepared to discover geek paradises in academia and finds grimy, claustrophobic dystopias instead. She seeks creative minds and finds awkward swots speaking funny English. She seeks the next Google and finds barracoons of coolie coders. And she struggles to accept a culture in which plenty sits easily with penury, as does quasi-religious charlatanry with rigorous science.
Indian readers will be rapidly exhausted by these oppressively progressive Western anxieties. When a technological culture ramps up, it first uses its creativity to do things cheaply and efficiently. Pathbreaking innovation follows after building institutions, skills and capital. What was Japan doing after World War II? What did China and Korea do after the Cold War? They made cheap trucks, cars, bathroom tiles and pen drives. That’s normal.
Most Indians would not be upset if the IITs are grimy by Western standards, and they would prefer that its graduates worked on e-mandis rather than the next Google. And personally, I find it difficult to understand the Western compulsion to surgically separate science from religion, folk culture and crankdom. Interesting ideas sometimes come from unexpected quarters. Like Ayurveda and folk medicine, long dismissed as jadi-booti mumbo-jumbo, now inspire serious research.
But don’t be cowed by these vexing cross-cultural tensions. Remember that this is primarily the story of a quest. And since the Indian media has almost forgotten how to report science, the journey’s logbook can tell us all something about ourselves.
As she goes along, Saini arrives at an accurate analysis of India’s problems. Our children are hacking the exam system when they should be hacking the world. They are focused on fat salaries rather than interesting careers. And neither government nor business are putting even a fraction of Western budgets into original research.
Then Saini moves on to the meat of the story: what is being achieved despite these deterrents? A lunar mission which has found water on the moon, settling a question of a century’s vintage. A guerrilla open source research programme for creating the next generation TB drug, which the West has almost given up on. A biometric national ID project for over a billion people, something that the UK, with a population of a mere 62 million, has shelved as impossible. All this was achieved by the famous Indian tradition of jugaad — making do with what you have. Jugaad has typified Indian science from the earliest post-Independence days, when rocket hulls were transported to the Thumba launch pad on bicycle carriers.
I don’t mean to disparage geeks, but the word indiscriminately applied grates on the Eastern ear. To my mind — and I consider myself a geek — it signifies a compulsively curious person, someone who is equally interested in understanding Einstein’s proof for the photoelectric effect, the Big Mac Index and the magnetic compass in a carrier pigeon’s eye. But I would hesitate to apply that word to visionaries of the stature of Vikram Sarabhai or Jawaharlal Nehru, who are identified as geeks in this book.
Pratik Kanjilal is publisher of The Little Magazine
You may, perhaps,like to go through this brilliant review by Prayik Kanjilal of this recently published book by Angela Saini.
The essence of a scientific outlook is to be compulsively curious about the world around us.And to use the results of that enquiry to make for a better life for ALL people.
In his famous report to the British Parliament in 1835,Macaulay is on record to say that in his travels through India he could not find beggars or thiefs and found people to have sound moral values.He goes on to say that the British could never rule India unless they broke the backbone of the nation, the rich social and cultural heritage and the ancient system of education. Unless this was broken and the Indians were made to believe that everything English and Western was superior,they could never be ruled and dominated.
The past almost 200 years have shown how effective the Western world has been in demolishing our ancient culture, folklore and education system.Unfortunately, even after Independence,only the ruling class changed but not the ideology of the elites subjugating the masses and fattening themselves at their expense by cynically exploiting the natural resources which belong to all for their personal accumulation.
It is in precisely this context that even science has operated and it is time that we revive our rich ancient traditions and rely on our own resources rather than being a copy-cat culture.To be sure,adopt what is good and Socially relevant from all over the world.I especially admire the unequivocal concept of equality,as opposed to our caste ridden system premised on inequality, on which the Western citizenship is largely based.
We just can't afford not to embrace the spirit of service and equality for all and Science better serve that cause instead of being a handmaiden of the elites.
Science with a dash of jugaad
April 30, 2011 By Pratik Kanjilal
Geek Nation: How
Indian science is taking over the world
by Angela Saini
Hachette, Rs 499
An interview-based book tracing the growth of Indian science from the Nehruvian era to Chandrayaan is intrisically valuable. And it is timely when internationally, India is perceived to be transitioning from the land of holy cows and lighter-than-air babajis to recapture the legacy of Aryabhata and Sushruta. But was Geek Nation written for the Indian reader? If I had read it on a rainy English evening with a refreshing pint within easy reach, it would have purged my mind of elephants, maharajas, big fat weddings and similar Orientalist claptrap. Reading it in the hard light of Delhi’s summer, I was not initially moved. But it was interesting nevertheless because I was seeing India through the eyes of an outsider — a reporter.
Geek Nation is a journalist’s book. That is both its strength and its weakness. Angela Saini, a British engineer and science journalist, offers sound research and scrupulously balanced reportage from the forefront of Indian science. But the book keeps to the rubric of the journalistic story — he said, she quipped, they countered, and so on. Saini’s groundwork is exhaustive but had she crossed the reporter’s line and spoken her own mind, this would have been a more substantial book.
Saini comes to India prepared to discover geek paradises in academia and finds grimy, claustrophobic dystopias instead. She seeks creative minds and finds awkward swots speaking funny English. She seeks the next Google and finds barracoons of coolie coders. And she struggles to accept a culture in which plenty sits easily with penury, as does quasi-religious charlatanry with rigorous science.
Indian readers will be rapidly exhausted by these oppressively progressive Western anxieties. When a technological culture ramps up, it first uses its creativity to do things cheaply and efficiently. Pathbreaking innovation follows after building institutions, skills and capital. What was Japan doing after World War II? What did China and Korea do after the Cold War? They made cheap trucks, cars, bathroom tiles and pen drives. That’s normal.
Most Indians would not be upset if the IITs are grimy by Western standards, and they would prefer that its graduates worked on e-mandis rather than the next Google. And personally, I find it difficult to understand the Western compulsion to surgically separate science from religion, folk culture and crankdom. Interesting ideas sometimes come from unexpected quarters. Like Ayurveda and folk medicine, long dismissed as jadi-booti mumbo-jumbo, now inspire serious research.
But don’t be cowed by these vexing cross-cultural tensions. Remember that this is primarily the story of a quest. And since the Indian media has almost forgotten how to report science, the journey’s logbook can tell us all something about ourselves.
As she goes along, Saini arrives at an accurate analysis of India’s problems. Our children are hacking the exam system when they should be hacking the world. They are focused on fat salaries rather than interesting careers. And neither government nor business are putting even a fraction of Western budgets into original research.
Then Saini moves on to the meat of the story: what is being achieved despite these deterrents? A lunar mission which has found water on the moon, settling a question of a century’s vintage. A guerrilla open source research programme for creating the next generation TB drug, which the West has almost given up on. A biometric national ID project for over a billion people, something that the UK, with a population of a mere 62 million, has shelved as impossible. All this was achieved by the famous Indian tradition of jugaad — making do with what you have. Jugaad has typified Indian science from the earliest post-Independence days, when rocket hulls were transported to the Thumba launch pad on bicycle carriers.
I don’t mean to disparage geeks, but the word indiscriminately applied grates on the Eastern ear. To my mind — and I consider myself a geek — it signifies a compulsively curious person, someone who is equally interested in understanding Einstein’s proof for the photoelectric effect, the Big Mac Index and the magnetic compass in a carrier pigeon’s eye. But I would hesitate to apply that word to visionaries of the stature of Vikram Sarabhai or Jawaharlal Nehru, who are identified as geeks in this book.
Pratik Kanjilal is publisher of The Little Magazine
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Is India in a State of Permanent Famine
It tragic that when someone like Anna Hazare take up issues it is termed as a sacrifice and sign of greatness. I feel ashamed that we continuously live with everything wrong and stinking around us but instead of revolting against it we accept it as way of life. To make life better around us is not a sacrifice. I had once met Aruna Roy , ex IAS who left her job and fought in a village of Rajasthanfor RTI. someone told her that she had made a great sacrifice. She felt offended and said that she did what she thought was better then her IAS job and was happy doing it. She did not do it because she wanted accolades but because she believed in it and felt happy doing it.
The issue is therefore to enjoy what you are doing. Quite often all of us get in cosy drawing rooms and over a drink or coffee curse everyone from politicians to bureaucrats and then go to sleep believing that our job is done. I think we are to be blames for the mess we are in. We all preach but do not practice. Honesty is the best policy for others but not for us. This is hypocracy. we need to get out of our Kumbhkaran type slumber and be prepared to change a few lives around us. It is like once I encountered Mr A M Naik , CMD of L&T. he was giving a lecture as to why all engineers and doctors should serve India rather go abroad. Over a drink I asked him about his children and he very proudly said that they are well settled in US. that is where the paradox lies. We all have double standards in life and that has to change.
talking of corruption, having been in large Business houses, I can tell you for sure that they are the fountains of corruption all over the world but quite often go unchecked. they are able to buy law,justice and above all silence. I wish we need to start a movement to include the activities of the corporate houses also under the Jan Lokpal bill. until they are reigned in corruption cannot be fought in this country.
Have been thinking for a while and hence this instantaneous outburst.
vijoy
P.Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor for the Hindu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palagummi_Sainath) has been researching this very phenomenon for the past decade. He is the pioneer of uncovering the high rate of farmers suicides in India. Here's an article he wrote: http://www.counterpunch.org/sainath02042010.html
He taught at Trinity in the late 90s, and gave a lecture a couple of weeks ago here in college. I went for it, the statistics were eye-opening. At the talk, when he revealed shocking facts of India's rural sector (in terms of death rate, daily wages, sanitation facilities etc.) someone remarked, "I've never heard someone make the Sub-Saharan African countries look good!"
There's a documentary called Nero's Guests made by Deepa Bhaita in which Sainath is the main character. Watch it when you have time. (http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=51be8617-0e86-495d-8b1c-45ea1b2e9610)
Ananya Sahay
Charity begins at home.
Before doing anything else stop watching cricket shows – Live or on TV. Not because you do not enjoy the game or do not have respect for the game or the players but because the show is not the game – it is a poor, rigged, bastardized apologetic version of the game.
Sushil Prasad
Dear Friend,
You are not naive.Never underestimate the power of the sleeping giant within all of us.You have, infact, hit the nail on the head.
There has to be a social movement and some hard decisions(not sacrifice, as we mistakenly think.After all what is so glamorous about our,each one of us, present lives) have to be taken.There has to a movement to consume only simple things,locally produced, for the economic regeneration of our villages. People like us can contribute by strengthening the rural economy in small ways by opening cottage industries,and strengthening the village schools and health centres.
The resources of the govt have to be augmented by massive intervention of the civil society at large.Each one of us has to introspect how best we can contribute.
And,no, I am not against either cricket or films. Infact,I do enjoy both, in small doses.However, it does seem to me that the powers that be want us to remain drugged by these so that we don't discuss or be aware of more important issues. But we need to understand that we are safe only if the populace at large lives a life of dignity. In this digital,and heavily connected world, we can no longer live the life as Nero's inheritors. Not any more.
The times,indeed, are a changing.
Best regards,
Avinash
On 25 April 2011 16:07, avinash sahay wrote:
Friends,
This article in the Hindu calls for some introspection among us,the upwardly mobile Indians.Is cricket, and films, our new opiate. Are we too drugged by these to care what is happening in our country.
Do we see the structural violence inbuilt in the system against a majority of our countrymen.As per the criteria laid out by WHO,any group where 60% of the people have a BMI of less than 18.5 can be said to be in a state of famine.Here, in our country, as per the statistics released by the Planning Commission,77% of the people earn about Rs20 per day.I have seen no statistics of BMI, but where 17,000 farmers have been committing suicides every year for the past 15 years,I am not sanguine that we are not a country which is in a permanent state of famine.
I also have little doubt in my mind that unless we, the intelligentsia, wake up from our stupor of inanities like cricket, we will be shirking our responsibilities to ourselves.As the Supreme Court itself noted recently, there is not two but one India.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
Our farmers are dying, to hell with the World Cup
NARENDRA SHEKHAWAT
On average, 47 farmers have been committing suicide every single day in the past 16 years in our shining India
Yes, you read it right; to hell with the World Cup; to hell with the celebrations; to hell with all the free land and money being showered by different governments on the players. How can I jump, scream, have gallons of beer and cheer for the nation when a few kilometres away the farmers and feeders of my country are taking their own lives in hordes?
Do you know that, on average, 47 farmers have been committing suicide every single day in the past 16 years in our shining India — the next economic power, progressive with nine per cent growth?
Last month, on March 5, Friday evening, when Bangalore's watering holes were getting filled up, when all the DJs were blaring out deafening music, when we were busy discussing India's chances at the World Cup, sitting in CCDs and Baristas — just 100 km away from Bangalore, Swamy Gowda and Vasanthamma, a young farmer couple, hanged themselves, leaving their three very young children to fend for themselves or, most likely, die of malnutrition.
Why did they do it? Were they fighting? No. Were they drunkards? No. Did they have incurable diseases? No! Then WHY? Because they were unable to repay a loan of Rs 80,000 (a working IT couple's one month salary? 2-3 months EMI?) for years, which had gradually increased to Rs. 1.2 lakh. Because they knew that now they would never be able to pay it back. Because they were hurt. Hurt by our government which announced a huge reduction in import duty for silk in this year's budget (from 30 per cent to 5 per cent).They were struggling silk farmers and instead of help from the government, they get this! Decrease in import duty means the markets will now be flooded with cheap Chinese silk (as everything else!) and our own farmers will be left in the lurch.
On average, 17,000 farmers have been committing suicide every year, for the past 15 years on the trot. Can you believe it? Most of us wouldn't know this fact. Why? Because, our great Indian media, the world's biggest media, are not interested in reporting this! Why? Because they are more interested in covering fashion week extravaganzas. They are more interested in ‘why team India was not practising when Pakistanis were sweating it out in stadium on the eve of the match?' They are more interested in Poonam Pandey.
The media are supposed to be the third eye of democracy and also called the fourth estate, but now they have become real estate. Pure business.
So any attention from the media is out of the question. Who is left then? The government? But we all know how it works. The other day, I was passing by Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore and happened to read the slogan written at the entrance, “Government work is god's work”. Now I know why our government has left all its work to god!
Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa announced plots for all the players. But land? In Bangalore? You must be kidding, Mr. C.M.. So he retracts and now wants to give money. But where will it come from? Taxes, yours and mine. Don't the poor farmers need the land or money more than those players who are already earning in crores?
A government-owned bank will give you loan at six per cent interest rate if you are buying a Mercedes but if a poor farmer wants to buy a tractor, do you know how much it is charging him? Fifteen per cent! Look at the depths of inequality. Water is Rs. 15 a litre and a SIM card is for free! For how long can we bite the hand that is feeding us? The recent onion price fiasco was just a trailer. Picture abhi baaki hai doston!
In 2008, Lakme India fashion show venue was in a Mumbai five-star hotel and was covered by 500 journalists and the theme was ‘Cotton'. A few hours drive from there, cotton farmers were committing suicide, 4 or 5, everyday! How many TV journalists covered this? Zero!
Sixty-seventy per cent of India's population is living on less than Rs. 20 a day. A bottle of Diet coke for us? The electricity used in a day-night match could help a farmer irrigate his fields for more than a few weeks! Do you know that loadshedding is also class dependent? Two hours in metros, 4 in towns and 8 in villages. Now, who needs electricity more? A farmer to look after his crop day and night, irrigate, pump water and use machines or a few bored, young professionals with disposable incomes, to log on to Facebook and watch IPL?
How can we splurge thousands on our birthday parties and zoom past in our AC vehicles and sit in cushy chairs in our AC offices and plan a weekend trip to Coorg when on the way, in those small villages, just a few minutes' walk from the roads, someone might be consuming pesticide or hanging himself from a tree for just Rs.10, 000? How can we?
There was much panic when there was swine flu. Every single death in the country was reported second by second, minute by minute. Why? Because it directly affected our salaried, ambitious, tech-savvy, middle-class. So there were masks, special relief centres, enquiry centres set up by government to please this section. On the other hand, 47 people are dying, every single day for the past 15 years. Anybody cared to do anything?
It has been observed that within months of a farmer taking his life, his wife follows, either by poisoning the kids first or leaving them on their own. In Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, a distressed woman farmer went to the government seed shop, bought a bottle of pesticide, on credit, went home and drank it. She was under debt for most of her life and now — even her death was on credit!
Centuries ago, there was a Roman emperor, called Nero. He was a strong ruler and also very fond of parties, art, poetry, drinking and a life full of pleasures. Once he decided to organise a grand party and invited all poets, writers, dancers, painters, artists, intellectuals and thinkers of society. Everybody was having a great time eating, drinking, laughing, and socialising. The party was at its peak when it started getting dark. Nero wanted the party to go on. So he ordered and got all the arrested criminals, who were in his jails, around the garden and put them on fire! Burnt them alive, so that there was enough light for the guests to keep on enjoying! The guests had a gala time though they knew the cost of their enjoyment. Now, what kind of conscience those guests had?
Nero's guests
What is happening in our country is not different from Nero's party. We, the middle-class-young-well-earning-mall-hopping-IPL-watching and celebrating-junta are Nero's guests enjoying at the cost of our farmers. Every budget favours the already rich. More exemptions are being given to them at the cost of grabbing the land of our farmers in the name of SEZs, decrease in import duties in the name of neo-liberal policies, increase in the loan interest rates if the product is not worth lakhs and crores. Yes, that's what we are, Nero's guests!
I'm not against celebrations. I'm not against cricket. I'm not against World Cup. I would be the first person to scream, celebrate and feel proud of any of India's achievements but, only if all fellow countrymen, farmers, villagers also stand with me and cheer; only if they do not take their own lives ruthlessly, only if there is no difference between interest rates for a Mercedes and a tractor. That would be the day I also zoom past on a bike, post-Indian win, with an Indian Flag in hand and screaming Bharat Mata Ki Jai. But no, not today. Not at the cost of my feeders. Until then, this is what I say. To hell with your malls. To hell with your IPL. To hell with your World Cup. And to hell with your celebrations.
(The writer's email is: naren.singh.shekhawat@ gmail.com)
The issue is therefore to enjoy what you are doing. Quite often all of us get in cosy drawing rooms and over a drink or coffee curse everyone from politicians to bureaucrats and then go to sleep believing that our job is done. I think we are to be blames for the mess we are in. We all preach but do not practice. Honesty is the best policy for others but not for us. This is hypocracy. we need to get out of our Kumbhkaran type slumber and be prepared to change a few lives around us. It is like once I encountered Mr A M Naik , CMD of L&T. he was giving a lecture as to why all engineers and doctors should serve India rather go abroad. Over a drink I asked him about his children and he very proudly said that they are well settled in US. that is where the paradox lies. We all have double standards in life and that has to change.
talking of corruption, having been in large Business houses, I can tell you for sure that they are the fountains of corruption all over the world but quite often go unchecked. they are able to buy law,justice and above all silence. I wish we need to start a movement to include the activities of the corporate houses also under the Jan Lokpal bill. until they are reigned in corruption cannot be fought in this country.
Have been thinking for a while and hence this instantaneous outburst.
vijoy
P.Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor for the Hindu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palagummi_Sainath) has been researching this very phenomenon for the past decade. He is the pioneer of uncovering the high rate of farmers suicides in India. Here's an article he wrote: http://www.counterpunch.org/sainath02042010.html
He taught at Trinity in the late 90s, and gave a lecture a couple of weeks ago here in college. I went for it, the statistics were eye-opening. At the talk, when he revealed shocking facts of India's rural sector (in terms of death rate, daily wages, sanitation facilities etc.) someone remarked, "I've never heard someone make the Sub-Saharan African countries look good!"
There's a documentary called Nero's Guests made by Deepa Bhaita in which Sainath is the main character. Watch it when you have time. (http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=51be8617-0e86-495d-8b1c-45ea1b2e9610)
Ananya Sahay
Charity begins at home.
Before doing anything else stop watching cricket shows – Live or on TV. Not because you do not enjoy the game or do not have respect for the game or the players but because the show is not the game – it is a poor, rigged, bastardized apologetic version of the game.
Sushil Prasad
Dear Friend,
You are not naive.Never underestimate the power of the sleeping giant within all of us.You have, infact, hit the nail on the head.
There has to be a social movement and some hard decisions(not sacrifice, as we mistakenly think.After all what is so glamorous about our,each one of us, present lives) have to be taken.There has to a movement to consume only simple things,locally produced, for the economic regeneration of our villages. People like us can contribute by strengthening the rural economy in small ways by opening cottage industries,and strengthening the village schools and health centres.
The resources of the govt have to be augmented by massive intervention of the civil society at large.Each one of us has to introspect how best we can contribute.
And,no, I am not against either cricket or films. Infact,I do enjoy both, in small doses.However, it does seem to me that the powers that be want us to remain drugged by these so that we don't discuss or be aware of more important issues. But we need to understand that we are safe only if the populace at large lives a life of dignity. In this digital,and heavily connected world, we can no longer live the life as Nero's inheritors. Not any more.
The times,indeed, are a changing.
Best regards,
Avinash
On 25 April 2011 16:07, avinash sahay
Friends,
This article in the Hindu calls for some introspection among us,the upwardly mobile Indians.Is cricket, and films, our new opiate. Are we too drugged by these to care what is happening in our country.
Do we see the structural violence inbuilt in the system against a majority of our countrymen.As per the criteria laid out by WHO,any group where 60% of the people have a BMI of less than 18.5 can be said to be in a state of famine.Here, in our country, as per the statistics released by the Planning Commission,77% of the people earn about Rs20 per day.I have seen no statistics of BMI, but where 17,000 farmers have been committing suicides every year for the past 15 years,I am not sanguine that we are not a country which is in a permanent state of famine.
I also have little doubt in my mind that unless we, the intelligentsia, wake up from our stupor of inanities like cricket, we will be shirking our responsibilities to ourselves.As the Supreme Court itself noted recently, there is not two but one India.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
Our farmers are dying, to hell with the World Cup
NARENDRA SHEKHAWAT
On average, 47 farmers have been committing suicide every single day in the past 16 years in our shining India
Yes, you read it right; to hell with the World Cup; to hell with the celebrations; to hell with all the free land and money being showered by different governments on the players. How can I jump, scream, have gallons of beer and cheer for the nation when a few kilometres away the farmers and feeders of my country are taking their own lives in hordes?
Do you know that, on average, 47 farmers have been committing suicide every single day in the past 16 years in our shining India — the next economic power, progressive with nine per cent growth?
Last month, on March 5, Friday evening, when Bangalore's watering holes were getting filled up, when all the DJs were blaring out deafening music, when we were busy discussing India's chances at the World Cup, sitting in CCDs and Baristas — just 100 km away from Bangalore, Swamy Gowda and Vasanthamma, a young farmer couple, hanged themselves, leaving their three very young children to fend for themselves or, most likely, die of malnutrition.
Why did they do it? Were they fighting? No. Were they drunkards? No. Did they have incurable diseases? No! Then WHY? Because they were unable to repay a loan of Rs 80,000 (a working IT couple's one month salary? 2-3 months EMI?) for years, which had gradually increased to Rs. 1.2 lakh. Because they knew that now they would never be able to pay it back. Because they were hurt. Hurt by our government which announced a huge reduction in import duty for silk in this year's budget (from 30 per cent to 5 per cent).They were struggling silk farmers and instead of help from the government, they get this! Decrease in import duty means the markets will now be flooded with cheap Chinese silk (as everything else!) and our own farmers will be left in the lurch.
On average, 17,000 farmers have been committing suicide every year, for the past 15 years on the trot. Can you believe it? Most of us wouldn't know this fact. Why? Because, our great Indian media, the world's biggest media, are not interested in reporting this! Why? Because they are more interested in covering fashion week extravaganzas. They are more interested in ‘why team India was not practising when Pakistanis were sweating it out in stadium on the eve of the match?' They are more interested in Poonam Pandey.
The media are supposed to be the third eye of democracy and also called the fourth estate, but now they have become real estate. Pure business.
So any attention from the media is out of the question. Who is left then? The government? But we all know how it works. The other day, I was passing by Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore and happened to read the slogan written at the entrance, “Government work is god's work”. Now I know why our government has left all its work to god!
Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa announced plots for all the players. But land? In Bangalore? You must be kidding, Mr. C.M.. So he retracts and now wants to give money. But where will it come from? Taxes, yours and mine. Don't the poor farmers need the land or money more than those players who are already earning in crores?
A government-owned bank will give you loan at six per cent interest rate if you are buying a Mercedes but if a poor farmer wants to buy a tractor, do you know how much it is charging him? Fifteen per cent! Look at the depths of inequality. Water is Rs. 15 a litre and a SIM card is for free! For how long can we bite the hand that is feeding us? The recent onion price fiasco was just a trailer. Picture abhi baaki hai doston!
In 2008, Lakme India fashion show venue was in a Mumbai five-star hotel and was covered by 500 journalists and the theme was ‘Cotton'. A few hours drive from there, cotton farmers were committing suicide, 4 or 5, everyday! How many TV journalists covered this? Zero!
Sixty-seventy per cent of India's population is living on less than Rs. 20 a day. A bottle of Diet coke for us? The electricity used in a day-night match could help a farmer irrigate his fields for more than a few weeks! Do you know that loadshedding is also class dependent? Two hours in metros, 4 in towns and 8 in villages. Now, who needs electricity more? A farmer to look after his crop day and night, irrigate, pump water and use machines or a few bored, young professionals with disposable incomes, to log on to Facebook and watch IPL?
How can we splurge thousands on our birthday parties and zoom past in our AC vehicles and sit in cushy chairs in our AC offices and plan a weekend trip to Coorg when on the way, in those small villages, just a few minutes' walk from the roads, someone might be consuming pesticide or hanging himself from a tree for just Rs.10, 000? How can we?
There was much panic when there was swine flu. Every single death in the country was reported second by second, minute by minute. Why? Because it directly affected our salaried, ambitious, tech-savvy, middle-class. So there were masks, special relief centres, enquiry centres set up by government to please this section. On the other hand, 47 people are dying, every single day for the past 15 years. Anybody cared to do anything?
It has been observed that within months of a farmer taking his life, his wife follows, either by poisoning the kids first or leaving them on their own. In Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, a distressed woman farmer went to the government seed shop, bought a bottle of pesticide, on credit, went home and drank it. She was under debt for most of her life and now — even her death was on credit!
Centuries ago, there was a Roman emperor, called Nero. He was a strong ruler and also very fond of parties, art, poetry, drinking and a life full of pleasures. Once he decided to organise a grand party and invited all poets, writers, dancers, painters, artists, intellectuals and thinkers of society. Everybody was having a great time eating, drinking, laughing, and socialising. The party was at its peak when it started getting dark. Nero wanted the party to go on. So he ordered and got all the arrested criminals, who were in his jails, around the garden and put them on fire! Burnt them alive, so that there was enough light for the guests to keep on enjoying! The guests had a gala time though they knew the cost of their enjoyment. Now, what kind of conscience those guests had?
Nero's guests
What is happening in our country is not different from Nero's party. We, the middle-class-young-well-earning-mall-hopping-IPL-watching and celebrating-junta are Nero's guests enjoying at the cost of our farmers. Every budget favours the already rich. More exemptions are being given to them at the cost of grabbing the land of our farmers in the name of SEZs, decrease in import duties in the name of neo-liberal policies, increase in the loan interest rates if the product is not worth lakhs and crores. Yes, that's what we are, Nero's guests!
I'm not against celebrations. I'm not against cricket. I'm not against World Cup. I would be the first person to scream, celebrate and feel proud of any of India's achievements but, only if all fellow countrymen, farmers, villagers also stand with me and cheer; only if they do not take their own lives ruthlessly, only if there is no difference between interest rates for a Mercedes and a tractor. That would be the day I also zoom past on a bike, post-Indian win, with an Indian Flag in hand and screaming Bharat Mata Ki Jai. But no, not today. Not at the cost of my feeders. Until then, this is what I say. To hell with your malls. To hell with your IPL. To hell with your World Cup. And to hell with your celebrations.
(The writer's email is: naren.singh.shekhawat@ gmail.com)
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Deceptions of a Rising India
Prime Minister down, WikiLeaks has exposed the rotten state of the world's largest democracy for all to see.
Food prices become intolerable for the poor. Protests against corruption paralyse Parliament. Then a series of American diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks exposes a brazenly mendacious and venal ruling class; the head of government adored by foreign business people and journalists loses his moral authority, turning into a lame duck.
This sounds like Tunisia or Egypt, countries long deprived of representative politics and pillaged by the local agents of neoliberal capitalism. But it is India, where in recent days WikiLeaks has highlighted how democratic institutions are no defence against the rapacity and selfishness of globalised elites.
Most of the cables — being published by The Hindu, the country's most respected newspaper in English — offer nothing new to those who haven't drunk the “Rising India” Kool-Aid vended by business people, politicians and their journalist groupies. The evidence of economic liberalisation providing cover for a wholesale plunder of the country's resources has been mounting over recent months. The loss in particular of a staggering $39 billion in the government's sale of the telecom spectrum has alerted many Indians to the corrupt nexuses between corporate and political power.
Even the western financial press, unwaveringly gung-ho about the money to be made in India, is getting restless. Early this year, the Economist asked: “Is Indian capitalism becoming oligarchic?” — a question to which the only correct response is “Hell-ooo”. In the Financial Times, Indian business dynasties have been described as “robber barons”.
The intimate details about politicians revealed by the WikiLeaks still leave you speechless. What can one say about the former Cabinet Minister, a fervent spokesman for low-caste Hindus, who demanded a large bribe from Dow Chemical Company, which is being helped by senior American officials to overcome its association with the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal that in 1984 killed and maimed tens of thousands of Indians? Indeed, the cables reveal U.S. business and officials to be as embedded in India's politics as they are in Pakistan's. In 2008, the aide to an old courtier of the Nehru-Gandhi family showed a U.S. diplomat two chests containing $25 million in cash — money to bribe members of Parliament into voting for an India-US nuclear deal, itself a prelude to massive U.S. arms sales to India. Publicly opposed to the nuclear deal, the leaders of the Hindu nationalist BJP are at pains to reassure American diplomats of their pro-U.S. credentials, even dissing their murderous Hindu nationalism as opportunistic, a mere “talking point”.
The cables offer many such instances of the ideological deceptions practised by the purveyors of “Rising India”. Virtually all economic growth of recent years, a senior politician admits, is concentrated in the four southern states, two western states (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and “within 100km of Delhi”. But why worry? Another, from the BJP, has nieces and sisters living in the U.S., and “five homes to visit between DC and New York”. As for the entry of retailers like Walmart into India, oh, that “should not seriously hurt the mom and pop stores that form a BJP constituency”.
Not surprisingly, the Americans have developed contempt for such representatives of the world's largest democracy, who seem to validate Gandhi's denunciations of Parliament as a “prostitute”. Hillary Clinton gets right to the point in a cabled inquiry about Pranab Mukherjee, the Finance Minister widely tipped as India's next Prime Minister: “To which industrial or business groups is Mukherjee beholden? Whom will he seek to help through his policies? Why was Mukherjee chosen for the finance portfolio over Montek Singh Ahluwalia?” — the last named is a reliably pro-U.S. technocrat.
But no one stands more diminished by the leaks than the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, one of the former employees of the World Bank and IMF who have helped make India safe for oligarchism. It has long been common knowledge in political circles that Mr. Singh removed his Petroleum Minister in 2006 for the latter's allegedly anti-American advocacy of a gas pipeline to Iran. We now know from the cables that the then U.S. Ambassador congratulated himself for this “undeniable pro-American tilt” of the Indian government. Visiting the White House in 2008, Mr. Singh induced a nationwide cringe when he blurted out to the most disliked American President ever: “The people of India deeply love you.” (Even George Bush looked startled.) This love unblushingly speaks its name in the cables; even the racketeers of Pakistani military and intelligence appear dignified when compared with the Indians stampeding to plant kisses on U.S. behinds. Mr. Singh has presided over an ignominious surrender of national sovereignty and dignity.
There are many more revelations in store; these are tense days for many politicians, business people and journalists. They probably hope the bad news is buried by the cricket World Cup celebrations. They will also try to prove their fealty to the father of the Indian nation — last week politicians vied to threaten a sensitive study of Gandhi by the American writer Joseph Lelyveld with proscription. But there is nothing more un-Gandhian than this supra-national elite's wild cravings for power and wealth, and its indifference to suffering — a pathology of economic globalisation that Egyptians and Tunisians will soon learn elected governments don't cure, and even help conceal. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
(Pankaj Mishra is the author of Temptations of the West)
Food prices become intolerable for the poor. Protests against corruption paralyse Parliament. Then a series of American diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks exposes a brazenly mendacious and venal ruling class; the head of government adored by foreign business people and journalists loses his moral authority, turning into a lame duck.
This sounds like Tunisia or Egypt, countries long deprived of representative politics and pillaged by the local agents of neoliberal capitalism. But it is India, where in recent days WikiLeaks has highlighted how democratic institutions are no defence against the rapacity and selfishness of globalised elites.
Most of the cables — being published by The Hindu, the country's most respected newspaper in English — offer nothing new to those who haven't drunk the “Rising India” Kool-Aid vended by business people, politicians and their journalist groupies. The evidence of economic liberalisation providing cover for a wholesale plunder of the country's resources has been mounting over recent months. The loss in particular of a staggering $39 billion in the government's sale of the telecom spectrum has alerted many Indians to the corrupt nexuses between corporate and political power.
Even the western financial press, unwaveringly gung-ho about the money to be made in India, is getting restless. Early this year, the Economist asked: “Is Indian capitalism becoming oligarchic?” — a question to which the only correct response is “Hell-ooo”. In the Financial Times, Indian business dynasties have been described as “robber barons”.
The intimate details about politicians revealed by the WikiLeaks still leave you speechless. What can one say about the former Cabinet Minister, a fervent spokesman for low-caste Hindus, who demanded a large bribe from Dow Chemical Company, which is being helped by senior American officials to overcome its association with the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal that in 1984 killed and maimed tens of thousands of Indians? Indeed, the cables reveal U.S. business and officials to be as embedded in India's politics as they are in Pakistan's. In 2008, the aide to an old courtier of the Nehru-Gandhi family showed a U.S. diplomat two chests containing $25 million in cash — money to bribe members of Parliament into voting for an India-US nuclear deal, itself a prelude to massive U.S. arms sales to India. Publicly opposed to the nuclear deal, the leaders of the Hindu nationalist BJP are at pains to reassure American diplomats of their pro-U.S. credentials, even dissing their murderous Hindu nationalism as opportunistic, a mere “talking point”.
The cables offer many such instances of the ideological deceptions practised by the purveyors of “Rising India”. Virtually all economic growth of recent years, a senior politician admits, is concentrated in the four southern states, two western states (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and “within 100km of Delhi”. But why worry? Another, from the BJP, has nieces and sisters living in the U.S., and “five homes to visit between DC and New York”. As for the entry of retailers like Walmart into India, oh, that “should not seriously hurt the mom and pop stores that form a BJP constituency”.
Not surprisingly, the Americans have developed contempt for such representatives of the world's largest democracy, who seem to validate Gandhi's denunciations of Parliament as a “prostitute”. Hillary Clinton gets right to the point in a cabled inquiry about Pranab Mukherjee, the Finance Minister widely tipped as India's next Prime Minister: “To which industrial or business groups is Mukherjee beholden? Whom will he seek to help through his policies? Why was Mukherjee chosen for the finance portfolio over Montek Singh Ahluwalia?” — the last named is a reliably pro-U.S. technocrat.
But no one stands more diminished by the leaks than the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, one of the former employees of the World Bank and IMF who have helped make India safe for oligarchism. It has long been common knowledge in political circles that Mr. Singh removed his Petroleum Minister in 2006 for the latter's allegedly anti-American advocacy of a gas pipeline to Iran. We now know from the cables that the then U.S. Ambassador congratulated himself for this “undeniable pro-American tilt” of the Indian government. Visiting the White House in 2008, Mr. Singh induced a nationwide cringe when he blurted out to the most disliked American President ever: “The people of India deeply love you.” (Even George Bush looked startled.) This love unblushingly speaks its name in the cables; even the racketeers of Pakistani military and intelligence appear dignified when compared with the Indians stampeding to plant kisses on U.S. behinds. Mr. Singh has presided over an ignominious surrender of national sovereignty and dignity.
There are many more revelations in store; these are tense days for many politicians, business people and journalists. They probably hope the bad news is buried by the cricket World Cup celebrations. They will also try to prove their fealty to the father of the Indian nation — last week politicians vied to threaten a sensitive study of Gandhi by the American writer Joseph Lelyveld with proscription. But there is nothing more un-Gandhian than this supra-national elite's wild cravings for power and wealth, and its indifference to suffering — a pathology of economic globalisation that Egyptians and Tunisians will soon learn elected governments don't cure, and even help conceal. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
(Pankaj Mishra is the author of Temptations of the West)
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Anyone Can Be a Leader
EVENT What you do does not matter; but how you do it, does; anyone can be a leader and make a difference, says management trainer Robin Sharma. PRINCE FREDRICK reports
Oseola McCarty was a washerwoman and appeared destined for a life of obscurity. But, when she was 87, this African-American made astonishing news. She donated $150,000, saved through decades of frugal living, to the University of Southern Mississippi and requested scholarships be given to deserving students who couldn't pay their way through college.
Leadership expert and management trainer Robin Sharma — during a three-hour workshop organised last weekend by Madras Metro Round Table 95 and Madras Metro Ladies Circle 70 at the Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall — uses McCarty's life story to illustrate his point that anyone can be a leader and make a difference in this world.
In fact, while dispensing ideas for bolstering sagging businesses and careers, Sharma gives a plethora of biographical accounts, ranging from CEOs of top-ranking companies to people holding menial jobs. Each of these little stories supports an idea that is integral to Sharma's philosophy of life and work. He urges his audience to consider being a ‘rock star at work'. Approach your day's work as if you are on stage and giving a performance. What you do does not matter; but how you do it, does. To show what dedication to one's calling can do for you, Sharma plays the vlog of a man who has been installing carpets for 55 years and is considered a super-star of carpet installation.
Another huge pillar of his thought is the idea of “surviving” one's death. Greatness is measured by the impact you have on future generations. Sharma has committed to heart a popular saying he learnt from his father — “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. When you die, the world should cry and you should rejoice.” Sharma talks about motorcycle champion ‘Joey' Dunlop, whose funeral in 2000 was characterised by a massive surge of 50,000 mourners. The Irish legend has the love of millions not because he was a supremely talented motorcycle racer, but because his heart thumped with compassion for starving and homeless people. When the ethnic conflict in Bosnia was at its height, he would load his trailer — used to transport his racing motorcycles — with food and clothing and take them to the strife-hit. He also reached food for orphans in Romania in a similar fashion.
Another absorbing story was how customers of South-West Airlines helped the corporation during a crisis. When the company was in the red, its past customers, whose hearts it had won through good service, sent envelopes with $5 and $10 bills. They were telling the company, “We want you to be in business.” Sharma says people appreciate businesses that truly serve them and reward this service. They don't understand the language of advertising — however sweet it may be — if the words are not backed by actions.
Sharma ended his session with the thought that everyone should look beyond money and life's transience. Money is important. It buys many comforts. But it takes character to give you a continual peace and joy. “In hundred years, all of us will be dust,” he stresses. “The CEO will be buried or cremated next to the street sweeper.” A sobering and liberating thought!
Keywords: Management ideas, Robin Sharma
A
Oseola McCarty was a washerwoman and appeared destined for a life of obscurity. But, when she was 87, this African-American made astonishing news. She donated $150,000, saved through decades of frugal living, to the University of Southern Mississippi and requested scholarships be given to deserving students who couldn't pay their way through college.
Leadership expert and management trainer Robin Sharma — during a three-hour workshop organised last weekend by Madras Metro Round Table 95 and Madras Metro Ladies Circle 70 at the Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall — uses McCarty's life story to illustrate his point that anyone can be a leader and make a difference in this world.
In fact, while dispensing ideas for bolstering sagging businesses and careers, Sharma gives a plethora of biographical accounts, ranging from CEOs of top-ranking companies to people holding menial jobs. Each of these little stories supports an idea that is integral to Sharma's philosophy of life and work. He urges his audience to consider being a ‘rock star at work'. Approach your day's work as if you are on stage and giving a performance. What you do does not matter; but how you do it, does. To show what dedication to one's calling can do for you, Sharma plays the vlog of a man who has been installing carpets for 55 years and is considered a super-star of carpet installation.
Another huge pillar of his thought is the idea of “surviving” one's death. Greatness is measured by the impact you have on future generations. Sharma has committed to heart a popular saying he learnt from his father — “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. When you die, the world should cry and you should rejoice.” Sharma talks about motorcycle champion ‘Joey' Dunlop, whose funeral in 2000 was characterised by a massive surge of 50,000 mourners. The Irish legend has the love of millions not because he was a supremely talented motorcycle racer, but because his heart thumped with compassion for starving and homeless people. When the ethnic conflict in Bosnia was at its height, he would load his trailer — used to transport his racing motorcycles — with food and clothing and take them to the strife-hit. He also reached food for orphans in Romania in a similar fashion.
Another absorbing story was how customers of South-West Airlines helped the corporation during a crisis. When the company was in the red, its past customers, whose hearts it had won through good service, sent envelopes with $5 and $10 bills. They were telling the company, “We want you to be in business.” Sharma says people appreciate businesses that truly serve them and reward this service. They don't understand the language of advertising — however sweet it may be — if the words are not backed by actions.
Sharma ended his session with the thought that everyone should look beyond money and life's transience. Money is important. It buys many comforts. But it takes character to give you a continual peace and joy. “In hundred years, all of us will be dust,” he stresses. “The CEO will be buried or cremated next to the street sweeper.” A sobering and liberating thought!
Keywords: Management ideas, Robin Sharma
A
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par Kahan Hain Woh?
Friends,
This thought provoking story in Sunday magazine of The Hindu of 6th Feb will probably stir the conscience of many of us who are still not numbed by the totalitarian factory that,sadly, passes off for the educational system in our country. On the one hand there are many who are beguiled by the idea of India as a Superpower.Such elements are the upwardly mobile elites comprising a certain kind of Corporates who brazenly bribe Ministers,bureaucrats and the Media to influence policies wholly unsuited to our needs and genius,heavily influenced by the soul-sapping and environmentally untenable model of development pioneered in the West.
On the other side are the almost 50% of the poor who earn less than a dollar a day whom this "development" model has totally passed by.The number of poor in India exceeds the number that lives in the whole of Africa. And in this age of instant communication it will be difficult to argue that India will remain immune to events happening in the rest of the world,including Egypt.Therefore, it's time we citizens took charge of the situation instead of depending on the Govt or the Corporates. We'll never hear the bad news in the popular media because, for the most part,it is owned by the same Corporates who believe there is nothing vulgar living in billion dollar homes when the majority of our countrymen live in slums.
If our ambition is to have the same lifestyles as our profligate elites,it may be a very small ambition indeed.Nor, do I think,it is possible given the fragile eco-system that all of us share.Therefore it's high time that we see the larger picture and get wedded to the larger Idea. Not of India as a superpower, borne out of a brittle self worth of the super elites, but that of a life of dignity for All Indians.For we are all entitled to equitably share the fruits of our same Mother Nature.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
This thought provoking story in Sunday magazine of The Hindu of 6th Feb will probably stir the conscience of many of us who are still not numbed by the totalitarian factory that,sadly, passes off for the educational system in our country. On the one hand there are many who are beguiled by the idea of India as a Superpower.Such elements are the upwardly mobile elites comprising a certain kind of Corporates who brazenly bribe Ministers,bureaucrats and the Media to influence policies wholly unsuited to our needs and genius,heavily influenced by the soul-sapping and environmentally untenable model of development pioneered in the West.
On the other side are the almost 50% of the poor who earn less than a dollar a day whom this "development" model has totally passed by.The number of poor in India exceeds the number that lives in the whole of Africa. And in this age of instant communication it will be difficult to argue that India will remain immune to events happening in the rest of the world,including Egypt.Therefore, it's time we citizens took charge of the situation instead of depending on the Govt or the Corporates. We'll never hear the bad news in the popular media because, for the most part,it is owned by the same Corporates who believe there is nothing vulgar living in billion dollar homes when the majority of our countrymen live in slums.
If our ambition is to have the same lifestyles as our profligate elites,it may be a very small ambition indeed.Nor, do I think,it is possible given the fragile eco-system that all of us share.Therefore it's high time that we see the larger picture and get wedded to the larger Idea. Not of India as a superpower, borne out of a brittle self worth of the super elites, but that of a life of dignity for All Indians.For we are all entitled to equitably share the fruits of our same Mother Nature.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
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