Many things have been happening around us and for quite some time. These come down to us in snippets and it is often impossible to see it all as a part of a single canvas. It is no painting and I probably went overboard with 'canvas'--let's use the word 'page'.
Rajat Gupta is close to being imprisoned and D Raja and Yedurappa are in deep trouble. I am delighted! Money making, as we Indians are in error in conjecturing, is not the sole purview of the politician. Corporate corruption goes hand-in-glove with political corruption. In fact, what politicians receive is a puny cut--the business men are the ones who who mint the real mullah. And, this is one of the greatest gifts of post-liberalization India. Liberalization has meant quite a few things to the middle class. You can buy a house, a car or a television far more easily than when your world was quite close to "Wagle ki Duniya.' You can transfer and withdraw money easily and air tickets are cheap and you can carry a cell phone even if you manage to starve most of the days. But, hang on. Are these markers of change in opportunities or a publicity driven change of your consumption basket? In other words, has our Marginal Utility maths gone for a toss?
But more importantly the larger maths, the maths of social utility, has indeed gone for a toss.
On 18 July 2011, The Economic Times carried a report on Narayanamurthy's take on India and its Human Development Index ranking. He said that we ourselves are to blame for our 119 rank. As if we needed Infosys to know as much! One of the reasons why we have not done our due to the millions who go hungry (except for trying to redefine the poverty barrier so that we have fewer poor to show!) is that the government has nothing better to do than dupe Kashmiris, free bandwidth licenses, nuke neighbours (or at least claim to do as much) and fend extremely fishy reformists like Anna Hazare. What are the things that capture our imagination? In Delhi, people are really angry that Metallica cancelled its show, really excited that India has been a fantastic host to Lady Gaga, F1 and all that jazz. The other thing that people talk about is 'corruption' of the likes of politicians and civil servants. I am amazed that none of us ever bother to question the real crooks. When was the last time that we saw a business man on the docks? Well, it was right when reforms had started and our businessmen did not know how to hide, and we had caught Harshad Mehta. Politicians face tax-fraud raids, land in jail, and die in anonymity but nothing happens to Subroto Roy who has no business to show but all the money to host F1 races. The race track cost us ten billion rupees, cost farmers land and livelihood and generated only ten thousand jobs!
Ponty Chaddha, inebriated drivers mowing down people on the street with Lamborghini at 200mph, Kingfisher fishing for public money for a bale out, the list is endless the scams scarier than ever before. Bofors pales before the Bhopal and yet fewer politicians bother. How many strikes has the CPM called for Bhopal or for that matter illegal mining in India? This is indeed a paradise for Lutherans. I mean, come on, can we not spare the pope and catch the money laundering pirates who set up colonies and turned nations into slaves with impunity? Can we shift our protests from Ram Lila ground to Dalal street and silicon valley in Bangalore? Not really.
Well then, take a hike.
1 comment:
I have been writing diversely in this vein for a long time, Arani. See blogposts titled 'Good CEOs, bad politicians', 'Ministers travelling cattle class', 'Poor little rich thug' and 'Counterculture', part one and two. Nice to see you musing in the same vein. But our ranting will not affect the current zeitgeist, which worships money and money makers, regardless of how that money is made. It's a throwback to the post-Napoleonic era in France, when the motto was enrichissez vous, enrich yourselves, or the kind of England which Chesterton scathingly mocked in his lovely little essay 'The Worship of the wealthy' (which too is there in my blog somewhere).
You and I know the kind of reaction that is bound to set in sooner or later, don't we? The Occupy Wall Street movement is just one of the early signs of the wave. I only pray that the reaction doesn't go too far in the other direction, as historically it always tends to: I don't want a repetition of Russia in the 1920s or China in the 1960s!
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