Such clarity. A brilliant account of the lack of democracy around the world. Always someone else determining the agenda. Wake up world - these are more of the reasons we need to choose and work for socialism. JS
India's Tryst With Destiny
by Colin Todhunter
On 15 August, India will celebrate Independence Day. There will be the usual celebratory flag waving and nationalist sentiments. The mainstream media will wallow in it, and key figures will indulge in the type of self congratulatory back-slapping that is common across the world when celebrating nationhood. But what will people be celebrating? The throwing off of British colonialism, the development of nationhood? Perhaps both of those things, but maybe neither, for what has ‘the nation’ and ‘independence’ come to mean in 2013?
Forget nations, flags or fly
pasts. Freedom and self determination should be about ordinary people, ordinary
people who farm and produce, who create genuine wealth, things of genuine
worth.
Forget about sound bites referring
to ‘the world’s biggest democracy’. Placing an X on a ballot paper every four
years or so does not constitute democracy. If people are misinformed, misled
and manipulated to think and act in a certain way, while backroom deals are
carried out without their knowledge, they are but ignorant links in a chain
(1,2).
Then there is no freedom, no
self-determination. Someone else has appropriated the freedom and has enslaved.
Someone else is determining the agenda.
Look no further to see this in
action in that self-anointed bastion of ‘freedom and democracy’, the US.
Influence is bought and paid for
by millionaire backers who fund politicians when running for office. And just
in case that does not work to full effect, there is the infamous ‘revolving
door’ that allows top corporate people to move in and out of the high echelons
of government with ease in order to ensure the required policies are enacted.
And don’t let the media get in the way of any of this. It won’t. Concentration
of media ownership and the integration with armaments companies, banking
interests and industry guarantees the public remain blissfully ignorant of
issues, not least of how ‘democracy’ really works.
It all serves to ensure that the
one percent maintain hegemony over the 99, maintain their unimaginable wealth
and privileges and maintain the rest of the population in ignorance, in a state
of powerlessness, in a state of poverty, relative poverty or vulnerability.
Yell moronically ‘USA!USA!’ when the
authorities protect the people from imaginary or manufactured demons, or sign
up and go to kill and die under the patriotic banner of ‘god and nation’. Mission accomplished,
manipulation assured, control complete.
Class-based interests
Look at the top companies in the
West. Never mind that a select number of companies predominate, dig further and
you will find four institutions hold major stakes in most of these top
companies and in doing so exert control over international finance and monetary
policy via the IMF, World Trade Organisation, World Bank and Central European
Bank (3). Ultimately, control and wealth is highly concentrated in the hands of
certain individuals or families.
In India too, a relative handful
of families control much of the economy and society and are all too willing to
fall in line with Western elite interests (4,5), whose hegemonic strategy lies
in depressing wages, exploiting markets and maximising profit. Their interests
do not lie with those of the 800 million who live on less than two dollars a
day, the bulk of the people residing in the eight states that contain more poor
people than 26 sub-Saharan African countries combined or the almost one in two
children who are malnourished or their families; nor do their interests lie
with the tens of millions across India who are having their lands stolen, their
rights trampled on, their villages destroyed, their homelands occupied by
paramilitary forces just because the rich require their land, their
acquiescence, their mineral rich mountains, their agriculture.
The system cannot remedy this
situation. It thrives on it. It produces it. But, of course, in an attempt to
justify imperialism and plunder, the lie is forwarded that globalisation or
neo-liberalism exists to lift the poor out of poverty, to liberate the masses
from their burden.
The reality is that, in the name
of ‘economic development’, what is currently happening in India constitutes the
biggest land grab since Columbus and the biggest forced removal of peoples from
their lands in history (6,7). Elite interests and supporters of their agenda in
the media imply that the victims are unfortunate ‘collateral damage’ on the
road to the promised land.
Sure, certain people have
prospered in India in recent years.
Sure, many now have lifestyles that their parents could only have imagined. But
even under slavery, the lives of slaves improved over time. Moreover,
notwithstanding the massive human ‘collateral damage’, there is been a terrible
price to pay in terms of the damage caused in pursuit of an unsustainable model
of development that destroys traditional agriculture, destroys the ecology and
strips bare natural resources. This type of ‘development’ is warped and wholly
unsustainable, whether within India or on a global level.
The poverty alleviation rate
in India is more or less the same as it was back in 1991 when
the US educated, World Bank/IMF trained Indian bureaucrat politicians
began to assume power and shift the country towards the neo-liberalism required
by their US backers (5).
India 's education system,
healthcare system, infrastructure and welfare system has already been
sacrificed via illegal ‘capital outflows’ into foreign bank accounts, which has
accelerated since the opening up of the economy in '91. A few have been
enriched. At what cost to the rest?
In the West, it’s the same story.
The secular theology of neo-liberalism has resulted in what many of us
predicted. Tens of millions now bear the brunt of ‘austerity’, as companies
rake in record profits and the extremely wealthy increase their wealth again by
record amounts (8,9). Call it monopoly capitalism, a ‘new world order’ or some
other name. The result is there for all to see: a rich and increasingly
internationalised elite and the impoverishment of workers throughout the world.
On Independence Day, or during
similar events in other places, we should urge people to think hard before
bowing down to the flag, before swelling with pride and saying ‘god save the
queen’, ‘the land of the brave’ or ‘mera pyara Bharat’.
Most
nation
states are run for the benefit of and to protect elite interests. And those
interests have no respect for national boundaries or for the people they share
the same land mass with. They have no hesitation in sacrificing national
economies (10) or the lives of their compatriots en masse in
barbaric wars (11) for ever greater power and profit.
Don’t be distracted with bogus notions of freedom, self-determination
and patriotism.
The
colonial oppressor is still there, and
he has the compliance of India’s increasingly wealthy elite.
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