Capitalism: A Ghost Story… How long can the cardinals of corporate gospel buy up our protests? By Arundhati Roy via OutlookIndia.com

This is NOT about the United States, it is about India.  Or is it about India and NOT about The United States?  Sometimes I get confused…

Post-Independence, right up to the ’80s, people’s movements, ranging from the Naxalites to Jayaprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti, were fighting for land reforms, for the redistribution of land from feudal landlords to landless peasants. Today any talk of redistribution of land or wealth would be considered not just undemocratic, but lunatic. Even the most militant movements have been reduced to a fight to hold on to what little land people still have. The millions of landless people, the majority of them Dalits and adivasis, driven from their villages, living in slums and shanty colonies in small towns and mega cities, do not figure even in the radical discourse.

As Gush-Up concentrates wealth on to the tip of a shining pin on which our billionaires pirouette, tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy—the courts, Parliament as well as the media, seriously compromising their ability to function in the ways they are meant to. The noisier the carnival around elections, the less sure we are that democracy really exists.

 
  India’s new megacorps—Tatas, Jindals, Essar, Reliance—are those who’ve moved to the head of the spigot that’s spewing money extracted from inside the earth.  
 

Each new corruption scandal that surfaces in India makes the last one look tame. In the summer of 2011, the 2G spectrum scandal broke. We learnt that corporations had siphoned away $40 billion of public money by installing a friendly soul as the Union minister of telecommunication who grossly underpriced the licences for 2G telecom spectrum and illegally parcelled it out to his buddies. The taped telephone conversations leaked to the press showed how a network of industrialists and their front companies, ministers, senior journalists and a TV anchor were involved in facilitating this daylight robbery. The tapes were just an MRI that confirmed a diagnosis that people had made long ago.

The privatisation and illegal sale of telecom spectrum does not involve war, displacement and ecological devastation. The privatisation of India’s mountains, rivers and forests does. Perhaps because it does not have the uncomplicated clarity of a straightforward, out-and-out accounting scandal, or perhaps because it is all being done in the name of India’s “progress”, it does not have the same resonance with the middle classes.

 

This entry was posted in Uncategorized by Thom Prentice. Bookmark the permalink.

About Thom Prentice

White, male, educated, comfortably middle class [but now poor], and born in the United States—in short, a privileged citizen of a predatory imperial nation-state within a pathological capitalist economic system. (Direct steal from Dr. Robert Jensen, UT-Austin)***** Engaged in Direct Non-Violent Resistance to entire system, but from a below-the-grass-roots level***** Pro-Democracy Advocate and Global Warming Activist. Facebook Page: Thomas Prentice***** WhiteGuy, Intellecty'all, Symbologist [for those who like Dan Brown and The DaVinci Code], Deconstructioneer, Scribbler, Scrivener, Authentic Journalist, Reader, Thinker, 14 year cancer survivor just finishing yet another year of chemo, high school teacher, editor, and college prof, Ph.D. - UT-Austin - 1995. "Dr. Democracy", Return to 'The Customer Is Always Right' Capitalism Advocate. Shameless flirt ***** Asker of awkward and inconvenient questions, what they do NOT tell you is far more important than what they DO tell you. Dog person. Failed parallel parking. ***** There is no conscience in Capitalism. Democracy should rule Capitalism but Capitalism should NEVER rule Democracy. Without Economic Democracy, political democracy is useless and worthless. GWM. ***** Prone to telling off people who need to be told off in the fine tradition of my grandfather. I'm waiting for a face-to-face with the Michele Bachman/google Santorum/Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan types. Also with Vichy Democrats and oil-funded enviro groups. Gay Incorporated is useless. Post-partisan and post-ideological. Used to dance with his shirt off. ***** Not necessarily post-Capitalist in the Authentic Adam Smith way but certainly post-Capitalist in the THATCHER/REAGAN/MILTON FRIEDMAN/AYN RAND way.. Our economic and social arrangements need to be changed but not just from one ideology to another. Let talk about and create new options for social arrangements. Les Miserables. ***** Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things but he was spot-on about how Industrial Capitalism causes people to become alienated and about his 'labor theory of value' which shows why/how Capitalist thieves steal the value of a person's labor. A person works so many hours or days for s/himself and the rest of the labor is "free" and therefore the value goes to the Capitalist One Per Centers as profit. Mars Attacks. ***** Just documenting signs of the looming apocalypse -- or rather, apocalypsii / TURN OFF THE TV.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>