Gobind Thukral

A group of 25 BBC journalists now on a cross-country tour of India on a special train to cover the Lok Sabha polls has an interesting graffiti “Will Indian Voters Revive Voters’ Fortunes”. It tells many stories about Indian democracy and it’s relevant. These BBC reporters - representing 12 languages across 14 services include representatives of BBC’s English, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese, Somali, Swahili, World News, Arabic Television, Persian TV services as well as BBC Internet.

Their reports are being discussed worldwide and no Indian television news channel has matches these reports. These journalists are raising fundamental issues of poverty, drinking water, education, health services and employment. Not just bjli, sarak aur pani but mal-administration and populism. But what these reporters are missing out is the question of corruption during elections. How voters are being bribed not by false promises but with cash, liquor, intoxicants and other favours.

By May 17 we would all know which combination of parties is going to rule over us. No single party, neither the Congress nor the BJP or even Third Front will be in a position to form a government on its own strength. It could be a combination of 20 political parties under the umbrella of one major party. Indians should be ready to witness not only huge tamasha but trading of our elected representatives. Many would recover fast the crores of rupees they have spent. According to some estimates between Rs 10,000 and Rs 60,000 crore would be spent by the time elections are over. This could be true as what we know that some political parties in Punjab are paying a neat Rs 3,000 to 4,000 per vote in some constituencies of Punjab. For this reason Bhatinda is much in news these days. A lawyer’s munshi in Chandigarh who belongs to that profligate constituency was paid Rs 12,000 for four votes and voters identity cards were taken away from him.

And, if there is any doubt read this report under the heading, “Indefinite happy hours’ in border areas, free liquor, drugs to win over voters.” It goes on add from Punjab’s border areas that ,”The party is on for residents in border areas, who are being won over by various political outfits with free liquor and drugs ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. No wonder that in just two months, the police have registered 723 cases under the Excise Act and recovered 21,000 litres of illicit of liquor. Another 143 cases have been registered under the NDPS Act and one kg cocaine, 53,000 tablets, 2.69 kg smack, and seven kg narcotic powder has been recovered in this border range.” Those in police and excise department who know assert this just a tip of the iceberg. Money, liquor and narcotics are flowing like a river.
In Punjab alone several hundred illicit liquor distilleries were setup the day elections were announced. Thousands of bottles of desi daru are available. This is a cheap away.

Other drugs are in plenty and particularly smack are being offered. How many new addicts particularly among the young men shall we add by the time we finish elections is anyone’s guess. In Karnataka, ambulances were caught with crores of cash meant for distribution to voters last time. Even helicopter was used for ferrying currency. Note for vote is no longer a hush-hush affair.

Picture elsewhere in the country from Kanya Kumari to Kashmir is no different. India is at least united by corruption if not otherwise. In Tamil Nadu, the police have been daily catching trucks loaded with liquor and cash was seized from political parties. There were similar reports from Haryana, Rajasthan Delhi, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere.

We have also reports though not many in published form that tell us how some candidates bribed to get party tickets. A particular leader is said to have charged at least Rs fifty lakh. Among major political parties this is well organised and is called funding the party. But here too, the prospective candidates have bribed their way up and even chief ministers are said to providing these funds. This is now well established and attracts little criticism. Journalists routinely come to know but there is not much attempt to investigate the amount, the modus operandi and report.

At another level no political party can claim to have adhered to the Model Code of Conduct in letter and spirit all the time. Several parties, big and small, ruling or in the opposition, across India have honoured the guidelines in the breach. We have reports from the Election Commission stopping flow of money or opium, transferring officers and warning candidates.

Look at Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. It has crossed previous limits by its transgressions of the Code. The Code is meant to provide a level playing field to all parties and to ensure that the ruling party at the Centre and in the States does not misuse its official position for campaigning. By effecting a State-wide reduction in bus fares just days before the Lok Sabha election without even a formal government order, the DMK government has fallen foul of the rules of the game. But then who cares.

The Election Commission for the first time in 2009 has disqualified a number of candidates from filing nomination of those who had not filed their expenditure statement after the earlier election. It has confiscated more than Rs 40 crore in cash while being transported for distribution at the height of Karnataka Assembly elections in 2008. Beyond that what they did was not known as a deterrent except roping in the Income-Tax Department to keep track of expenditure by candidates. it is having not much impact.

Does it mean that Indians have accepted as fact of life and expect no correction? This is making people both smug and cynical. The result is low voter turnout in large parts of the country. Even the barrage of celebrity propaganda to “get out there to vote” had no impact in Mumbai. Voting was 41.41 per cent this time around as compared to 47.15 per cent in 2004. It fell by six per cent. Urged by a special song campaign from a well-meaning Bangalore-based rock band to “Shut up and vote,” not paid heed as people feel not involved and disconnected. The leaders do not inspire and politics is turning to be a dirty word. These are dangerous signals for the so called largest democracy of the world.

BACK

America and Europe dealing differently with recession

Sawraj Singh writes from Washington

THE way America and Europe are dealing with the recession is very different. Europe has not been affected as badly as America has been. It is becoming quite clear that in the long run the concepts of a utilitarian capitalist system, a social well fare state and capitalism with human face are superior to the American cut and dry consumerist capitalism. The Europeans were able to develop much better social protective nets which have helped them to bear the pain of the recession much better than the Americans.

America has always been dominated by the rightist ideas that the market forces have an inherent strength to handle the ups and downs in the economy and if left alone the market will always correct it self. Therefore they are always opposed to the government interfering with the markets and people’s lives. The fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern block only made such thinkers even stronger in their belief. President Regan was a champion of this point of view. President Bush tried to carry this message forward but miserably failed. The modern state is too complex and moreover globalization has made the present economies so complicated and interdependent and the Regan and Bush approach cannot work.

Americans have suffered much more than the Europeans during the current recession. More people lost their jobs, more people have lost their homes and more people have committed suicide or killed their families in America compared to Europe. Not only have some workers committed suicide but some executives have also done the same. Many psychiatrists feel that the recession has increased the incidence of suicide. Far more people have attempted or thought of suicide than who actually committed suicide.

In Europe things are not as bad. Most of the European states guarantee the basic necessities of their people such as healthcare and education. The chances of losing one’s job are less than in America and the unemployment benefits are far more generous.

I predicted many years ago that in the long run Europe will do better than America and Russia will reemerge as a very powerful country. At that time, there were many who disagreed with these predictions but now even the mainstream American media seems to be in agreement with my concepts. For example, I saw on MSNBC a comparison between the American and the European workers during the current recession. The workers in Heidelberg Germany which can be compared to Detroit in America have suffered much less than their equivalents in America. Both the cities are the automobile hubs for their countries. The automobile workers in Heidelberg feel that their lives are not too much different than before the recession. Things are very different in Detroit. Two out of the three big automobile companies, General Motors and Chrysler are on the verge of bankruptcy with devastating effects on the workers. Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen are going to survive during the current economic crisis.

While the Western Europe is doing better economically than America, Russia is making a very big come back militarily. The May 9th Victory parade in Moscow, celebrating the Russian victory over the Nazis, was very impressive. It appeared as if Russia has decided to challenge the American military superiority in Europe. This parade was the biggest show of force after the cold war. There were more that 9,000 soldiers, more that 100 combat vehicles, Topol intercontinental ballistic missiles and the most modern S-400 defense missiles. There were also fleets of fighter planes, bombers and the World’s largest cargo planes.

Russia, together with China might have decided to challenge the West for a Third World war. They must feel that this is the right time to end the domination of the economically weakened West. Russia is challenging the American military in Europe and China may start doing the same in Asia. China has already started challenging America navy near its borders. After the cold war this is the first time that anybody has challenged the American navy.

It is becoming quite clear that the American individualism is proving no match for the other countries collective perspective. Europe is more socialized than America and seems to be doing better than America. Russia is still more socialized than rest of Europe and continues to regain its lost status.

China has a much bigger collective perspective and appears destined to be the leading country in the twenty first century.

BACK

Unstable Nepal heading to a civil war

Dr Sawraj Singh writes from Washington

THE Prime Minister Parchanda of Nepal has just resigned and has decided to sit in the opposition. The Nepali congress party and the United Communist Marxist Leninist party have welcomed the resignation and are in the process of forming a new government. Without naming India and America, Parchanda left little doubt that this situation was precipitated by their intervention “Foreign intervention”.

The Nepali congress party and the U.C.M.L are leaning toward India. Similarly the elite in Nepal are thoroughly pro-India and pro-America. India and America were never happy with the Maoists coming to power in Nepal because; the Nepali congress party has always been leaning toward India and the West. It’s concept of Nepal has been more of an India’s protectorate rather than a truly independent country. The Maoists on the other hand, wanted Nepal to really become an independent country.

The Maoists wanted to revise the India – Nepal Friendship Treaty because they felt that this did not treat both countries at equal level. They even objected to the manner in which the Indian ambassador asked the Prime Minister of Nepal to come to the embassy and sign the treaty. They considered this act as a historical example of the unequal treatment of Nepal by India. The Maoists also felt that India was aligned with America in trying to contain China. The Maoists wanted Nepal to form an independent foreign policy and treat India and China equally.

The immediate cause for the resignation was related to General Katral, the chief of the Nepalese army. General Katral was opposed to the integration of the 19,000 Maoist fighters into the Nepalese army. Parchanda ordered dismissal of General Katral but the President Ram Baran Yadav asked Katral to stay on. Parchanda felt that this was anti democratic and went against the constitution of Nepal which does not give the right to the President to override decisions taken by the Prime minister because the President is just a ceremonial head and the Prime minister is considered the real representative of the people of Nepal. Parchanda said that his struggle is against the foreign intervention, for democracy and patriotism.

It looks like that Nepal will not be able to resolve the present crisis by peaceful means and by the parliamentary politics. The Maoist army and the regular army have very fundamental differences which cannot be resolved within the present system therefore a civil war appears very likely.

The army only agreed to enter into a compromise with the Maoists because it was being miserably beaten. The army had lost control over most of Nepal and its influence was only limited to the area around Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. The Maoists agreed to the present compromise because they felt that when the army will collapse then the Indian army supported by America will invade Nepal and the Maoists did not feel that they had the strength to fight such a war.

This is not the first time that the communists had to leave when they were in power. First, it happened in Telengana and then in Kerala where a democratically elected government was dismissed. The Maoists in Nepal made history when they came to power in the democratically elected government.

However, the present situation in Nepal will convince many Maoists that the concept of a peaceful revolution is not workable. Mao emphasized that revolutions cannot be brought by peaceful means. Not only in Nepal but in the entire Indian subcontinent the Maoists will be reading Mao’s thoughts on people’s war again.

[The writer is Chairman Washington State Network for Human Rights]

BACK

 
The cursed colonialism continue

Professor Vinod Anand

COLONIZATION is the act or the process of establishing a colony or colonies like what had happened in the past. It has two distinct connotations: de facto and de jure. The first one means ‘concerning the fact’ or in practice by not necessarily obtained by law. The second means ‘following the decree’ and is created or developed without or contrary to regulation. In other words, de facto colonization means what happens in real life beyond the domains of any legal sanctity, and de jure colonization, means what happens as per law. In fact, colonization has a very long history from ancient times to the 20th century, and it had many causes like trade, farming of uninhabited land, overpowering. The conflict always existed between the colonizers and the native people.

In the present day world, de jure colonization is no more there. All the countries are fully independent, and are no longer the victims of the so-called colonizers of the past. But, unfortunately, there are still de facto colonizers. De facto colonization has two facets: (a) it occurs within a given country, and (b) it is spread over other countries as well. For example, the US is the biggest de facto colonizer. Another example is that South Africa. Let us briefly see how?

There is immense de facto segregation especially in the US, and in many other developed countries in terms of racial segregation occuring either because of past social and economic conditions and residential patterns or other reasons not related to laws establishing such segregation. Besides, it is also severe in South Africa. One can find all this in these countries through observation. For exapmle, in South Africa, the original habitants and even the mixed races are are highly marginalised and hence ignored by the so-called elite classes.The same is the case in the US and other western and developed countries. In South Africa, there are still completely separated (gegraphically speaking) residential areas, especially in big cities, one for the ‘whites’, the others for the ‘non-whites’ including the mixed races.Even the universities are also advantaged ( essentially meant for the whites) and disadvantaged ( essentially for the non-whites). The whole country is highly racist. But in time to come there will surely be upsurge against this kind of racism and this kind of defacto colonization will soon come to an end, as has happened in Zimbabwe (earlier known as Rhodesia) which is presently in a bad shape in all respects basically because of acute discrimination and marginalization of the non-whites by the so-called whites. It is in shambles both economically, socially,and politically. Let the governing bodies learn from this turmoil of Zimbabwe and try to rectify the situation in South Africa before it becomes too serious.

Defacto colonization of South Africa is also spread over other countries as well. It has completely colonized, of course in a de facto way, its land-locked countries -Lesotho and Swaziland which are forcibly made to depend on it in all respects.

The best example of the de facto colonizer country is that of the US that has been spreading its toxic tentacles to many other countries all over the world with one pretext or another. For examplke, Pakistan is fully de facto colonized by the US in the name of protecting it against terrorism. All the policies of Pakistan are fully dictated by the US.

Let us have a brief look at the long- period strategic planning of the US to colonize the whole world. The US has been the citadel of capitalism in the world. It has been practising the supply-side management of its economy for almost three decades or so to supply all the junk that it produces to other countries.Supply-side economics focuses on the argument that economic growth can be most effectively created using incentives for people to produce (supply) goods and services.But the US has followed the policy of outsourcing of production base to other countries, where wages are low. It has been the super power ever since the seventies when the Soviet Union was broken-up and there was no opposition to the US.It controlled all the world in terms of trade and what not. All this was also linked with the Operation Desertstorm of the 1990s, the war with Iraq when the US got the full support of the western world. America also launched globalisation that was defined in its own terms: “free movement of goods and money, suppy of financial assets, but no free movement of employment”.

This strategy was greatly successful but for a short time. This supply-side strategy helped the US to make up the economy, but not in terms of money or commodities. The globalisation eventually broke the cycle of the supply-side economics that believes in the fact that once money goes into production, and the products are sold at a profit, they then come back within the domestic economy. In essence it does not matter where the product is produced as long as the people at home could afford to buy the commodies in the market. Once the supply-side hypothesis was negated through globalisation which led to outsourcing of production as the developed countries preferred to become serving economies, selling products made in other countries like China. The end result was that China amassed huge surpluses, but in the US the beneficiaries of this strategy were the large corporates that gained a lot when the money as received from the Chinese reserves was not meant for domestic production; instead it was pumped into government securities.The American market was left with about 13 trillion Dollars in the mortgage market through what is termed as’Ponzy’ deals. This is what has been termed as financial meltdown. The supply-side management in a wrong way,in fact, created the demand-side problems, that basically emerge because of the fact that the private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes, which can be controlled through active public policy including monetray policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to bring about stability in the system. It is said that the aggregate demand for goods becomes insufficient during economic downturns leading to high unemployment and losses of potential output. Government policies can be used to increase aggregate demand thus increasing economic activity and reducing unemployment.

As a result of the aftemath of this strategy the US was greatly hit by a severe financial meltdown and recession. The citizens in the US were left with very little money, and these was a severe lack of demand. This situation still goes unabated. This financial meltdwon eventually led to recession, that was also spread to other developed and even developing countries.In case it is not controlled it would lead to a world-wide depression, and in that case we would need another J.M.Keynes to revive the economy.

The US is facing a fiscal defiict of $ 1 trillion. In a recent statement the President of the US has cautioned its people that “if American do not reduce their expenditure and cut costs, India and China would outperform them” Accoring to him, “there are no quick fixes and there are no silver bullets” to come out of this recession., and “it will take a long time to fix the structural deficit.” The president is more scared of the fact that India and China or other countries would go ahead and would surpass the US in all respects. This implies that colonization would end. This is indeed a a great news. I wish it happens, and the US is left to its own fate.

In India the condition is not that serious because of a number of many strengths that we have essentially in terms of tremendous manpower of all kinds, high employment- generation capacity and potential of the widely spread informal sector, self-dependence, and the current shape of demand and the real economy. It is expected that the country’s economy would revive in a major way within the next six to seven months because by that time the stimulus packages (that were launched by the government in December 2008 and January 2009) and many other remedies like cutting the excise duty, increasing public expenditure and giving more leeway to infrastructure finance company IIFCL to raise tax-free bonds would have their fruitful impact on the economy.

In time to come, if India becomes a super power, it will in no way try to colonize the world. That is my faith in my country. I also wish that at that time all the people of Indian origin come back to their mother land, and serve the country to the best of their capacity. Let Indians stay in India and no where else. As an upcoming country, we must also sharply react against de facto colonization across the world.

BACK