It's funny how folks get educated in India on Tax payer subsidies and go abroad and complain about India and it's socialist policies.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! and almost every other Fortune 500 company in the sates has been built with intellectual contributions from Indians educated in IITs, RECs and other government funded institutions.(Read as Tax Payer money). If you were brought up in India, almost every home cooked meal you had as a child was cooked on subsidized LPG.
This is not an argument on brain drain. Indians are welcome to go and work in any country of their choice. We have enough and more talent from where they came from. Except by family and friends, they will not be missed.
I too have many friends and close family working abroad who I miss dearly. The point is, I might miss them, the country doesn't . We can, as the saying goes, afford to spread the love.
What I do not understand is why a few people of Indian origin living abroad turnaround and say that our system sucks. I concede, socialist ideologies are like capitalist ideologies. They are both imperfect and unfair.
They (the few I refer to above) forget that they are a product of the Indian socialist system. They are welcome to live in New Jersey or Fremont or any place under the star spangled banner and support American occupation and war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine. They can continue to clap for the cause of genocide and disaster capitalism. What irritates me is when they turn around and say that they did not benefit from socialism. They would not be where they are without many of the socialist policies that India has had in the last 60 years.
They will complain that "Indians" just don't get the concept of "copyright" and "ownership" but they will be transferring and copying Indian classical music in Gigabytes.
They will claim that Hinduism needs a revival and is threatened by "other" religions while heating their beef burgers in the microwave.
They will call you a marxist, socialist or naxalite if you point out that they are as much a hypocrite as you are. (They use labels on resident Indians like a receptionist would use post-it notes).
They complain about the "filth" in India. They readily forget that they pollute 500 times more than the average Indian.
I have no issues with any of them as long as they do not bring their political ideas on capitalism and shove it down my throat in the name of the Hindu religion.
If you suffer from an identity crisis...deal with it. Don't take it out on me.
If you suffer from a sense of superiority...look a little more closely and you will realise that it is rooted in your own misplaced feelings of inferiority.
If you think India is a big heap of problems...don't tell me you want to change things from "outside the system".
Milton Friedman was the father of contemporary disaster capitalism and the ideologue behind capitalist genocides post 1970. If he is the undisputed father than Jeffrey Sachs is the leading contender for the title of "first son". Sachs has successfully driven hundreds of thousands of people into the depths of poverty based on his agenda of structural reform in Bolivia, Poland and Russia. He man is now getting interested in the Copenhagen conference on Climate Change. The likes of Jeffery Sachs thrive in a crisis and find the most innovative ways of manufacturing and profiteering in a crisis. Their area of super-specialization is to bring a country to it's knees by forcing it to sell their assets and waiting for the coffers to get drained before stepping in with reforms that drive the country to poverty. Sachs, after killing democracy in Russia, is now wearing a halo and talking about poverty, famine and climate change.
His article in today's Hindu - We need action, not Kyoto II - sent a shiver down my spine. If Iraq was a disaster capitalism success story than the climate crisis is tailor made for Sachs and Chicago Boys. The crisis will be the playground from which Sachs can wrest the title of successor to Milton Friedman.
This paragraph in the article is very revealing -
The climate issue is too complicated to swallow in one gulp, as was tried in Kyoto in 1997. This invites a toothless agreement that could be more posturing than progress. We should think about the component parts of real progress, and then insist on practical policies by all major players, even as the legal framework is hammered out for later signature. There is still time for a three-part package: a political framework, a financing package, and a series of practical steps announced by all major regions to tilt the trajectory on emissions.
When a disaster capitalist like Sachs who evangelizes the shock doctrine uses the term "political framework" it translates to killing democracy (Russia, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Poland) and butchering any opposition (preferably with a bloodbath). When he uses the words "major players" he refers ONLY to MNCs that profiteer based on his work.
When somebody like Sachs talks about a "financing package" it will mean removing the safety nets for the poorest of the poor in the globe and providing taxation benefits to the largest corporates. It will mean creating a free market for common property resources and putting a permissible price tag to corporate pollution rather than treat it as a crime.
Sach's "Practical Policies" led to the rise of the Oligarchs in Russia, an invasion of Chechnya, a doubling of the suicide rate, the destruction of the parliament building and immunity for businessmen and politicians from being prosecuted for corruption. How practical is that?
Based on Sach's track record around "Practical Policies", "Political Framework" and "Financial Packages it is obvious that the disaster capitalists are going to tax sub-saharan Africa and other poor countries while encouraging the increase of consumption in the first-world. They will find a way to make it look "fair" by inventing a way to trade "carbon" (read "trade" as "I pollute and you pay").
The fact that the article is bereft of any mention of the contribution that his country makes to global pollution is conspicuous.His call for an interim agreement will be the cornerstone argument adopted by the Americans in ensuring that a concrete settlement remains elusive. The only agreement acceptable to the disaster capitalists of this world will be a scenario where the First World can continue to create war, destabilize nations and steal their wealth either overtly or covertly. Such an agreement will be readily signed by Obama (even without a tele-prompter).
In my opinion, the best way to begin the Copenhagen Summit would be to burn an effigy of Jeffery Sachs and Milton Friedman. We should ensure that the IMFs, World Banks, WTOs and Halliburtons of this world have nothing to do with deciding the fate of our environment. We should also ensure that America has no space on the negotiating table. Their only mandate should be to comply. They lost their participatory rights the day they set foot in Vietnam.
We should ask for a complete retreat of all US troops to their barracks. America and Europe should be taxed for the environmental damage that they have caused over the last seventy years. Americans must be severely taxed to prevent any escalation of their destructively consumptive patterns. Any failure to comply should be dealt with in the same way that they dealt with Iraq. Bomb all the factories, bridges, hospitals, electricity plants and water treatment facilities on US soil. Once the corporatist structure of the US economy lies in ruins one will be able to see the world bloom and the environment begin to heal itself. Somebody has to tell Mr Sachs that Copenhagen is not about American Imperialism or economics. (...it is about the environment stupid!)
PS- Unlike some of us, the media still has their head where the sun does not shine. The media will go to any length to promote Sachs and his policies. The media continues to manufacture consent for people like Sachs who have so much of blood on their hands.
Most people who mark 26/11 as a global watershed and all world events as its aftermath conveniently forget the elephant in the room. That elephant is arguably the single biggest terrorist organisation in the world - the government of the United States. It has been consistently condemned by international courts for acts of terrorism. The Indian media chooses to forget this easily and is ready to apportion all blame of 26/11 to Pakistan and buy into the US definition of who constitutes a terrorist or a rogue state.
When convenient, the US government has supported, and will continue to support, brutal regimes. For example - The Taliban in Afghanistan in the 80s, The Shah in Iran, Nicolae Ceaucescu in Romania, Israel and its suppression of Palestine for over 30 years, and countries across the length and breadth of South, Central and Latin America. They have repeatedly used military aggression against civilians in the name of democracy. They have done this in Panama, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. How is killing people in the name of terror different from killing people in the name of democracy? The US has attacked over 50 countries in the last 50 years.
The killing of thousands of civilians in the name of “democracy” and calling it the "war on terror" has to end. We have to have the collective balls to tell the US that they are the “real” terrorists and they need to stop encouraging terrorism in their government and around the world. 26/11 allowed the media to seed fear in the minds of the urban middle class Indian. Fear sells very easily and the media has capitalised on this fear.
The US government, for several decades now, has decided that it will use repressive violence to manage world affairs and retain control of the global stage. The latest in its long list of atrocities can be found in Pakistan. The US army is indiscriminately bombing villages in Pakistan. There are hundreds of civilians dying. In fact it would not come as surprise if they are using chemical weapons. They are killing people in order to track down their brothers who they created, in order to fight a proxy war against the Soviets.
Thanks to the support of the United States, terrorist organisations have spread like wildfire from Iraq, to Pakistan and now to India. The media has us believe that Iran, like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the brink of chaos. The common thread across all these countries for decades is constant US interference. The fact that the US government manufactures the chaos is brushed under the carpet.
India is now going to be at the receiving end of the US policy of “global terror.”Our media has successfully created a fear psychosis about terrorist groups operating out of Pakistan buying right into US global rhetoric. This fear psychosis is very similar to the fear that Clinton and then Bush manufactured against Iraq with the WMD theories. They sold the fear to the media and the media in turn sold it to the people. If we continue on this path, it will not be long before an Indian attack on Pakistan will be justified with the words "just cause". America used those very same words when invading Iraq and Afghanistan.
We cannot expect Pakistan to do anything about India's concerns unless the US leaves the region permanently. An overwhelming US presence in the form of military aid and military strikes in Pakistan will be a distraction to peace and stability in the region.
The US departure will be in the interests of democracy, the South Asian Region and India in particular. If the US leaves, the civil War in Pakistan will end and the two countries (India and Pakistan) will have an opportunity to constructively resolve issues, particularly the contentious question of Kashmir. Addressing these would require an attitudanal change from all sides which can be catalysed by the absence of the US and the prevalence of peace.
The media has to be more responsible and understand that they are not dealing with a democratic government in the United States. They are dealing with a polyarchy. The US is one of the few countries in the world where corruption in the form of lobbying is legal. Special interests groups dictate US policies more than the electorate. The triangle of Dick Cheney, Halliburton and the Iraq War is probably the most conspicuous example of US polyarchy. Obama is not above this. Over thirty percent of his election funds came from lobbyists. His recent track-record is proof that he is no different from Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter or Nixon. Incidentally, Carter started the Afghan conflict by funding the Taliban in Pakistan. Carter is now a Nobel Laureate for peace while the region burns.
The media needs to stop breeding insecurity and focus its attention on the US stranglehold on world politics. We need to target our solutions at getting the US out of Asia permanently and disarming their ability to invade countries unilaterally. It is this irrational power that the US has over the international community that is preventing democratic forces from tackling terrorism. For example, no UN resolution against Israel and its oppression of Palestine has ever been passed because the US government vetoes it. If you prevent democracies from acting in unison in a situation like Palestine, you are bound to breed more terror on both sides of the war on terror. The US is replicating the Palestine story across Asia. Do we ignore it because we are naïve or because we are puppets? Either way, we are in grave peril if we continue to do so.
Begin Quote - As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new "embassy" in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don't occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad. The State Department was also reportedly planning to buy the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel (complete with pool) in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, to use as a consulate and living quarters for its staff there. - End Quote Reminds me of Saddam's Palaces.
While I waste no time in blaming the US for many of the problems across the world, I am not quick enough to condemn similar behavior that has Indian roots. Let me bring up a few examples.
Cash Crops - The Indian government blatantly encourages cash crops. Cash crops make the farmer dependent on the "market" for prices. Prices as we all know are always controlled by cartels. Investments in cash crops are encouraged and farmers from a "cash-crop" background are treated with far greater respect than their poorer peers who grow food crops that find their way to our kitchens more readily. Aditya Birla group recently received coverage for its search for large tea-estates. At the other extreme there are farmers who have managed to profitably cultivate dry-land paddy. When we are tryin to increase the per capita availability of food grain (a genuine measure of growth), why should we be more interested in tea than in paddy?
Sudan - One of my mentors recently visited Sudan. She explained how there were many Indians in Sudan. I assumed they were like Indians in many parts of Africa. Indians that could be described as second and third generation migrants who first came as labor. I could not have been farther from the truth. Two large Indian companies have a huge presence in Sudan's oil sector. They have substantial contracts from the Sudanese government. We know that Sudan is about as far away from democracy as America's corporate citizens. The government is totalitarian and violation of human rights is omnipresent. Sudan is an oil producing nation state and India's presence in the region can only be looked at as a strategy to try and gain some control over it's own energy needs. This presence of Indian corporate houses in Sudan is as unacceptable as the presence of Bechtel and Halliburton in Iraq.
Kashmir - I have lost a few good friends over my opinions on the Kashmir issue. I believe that the presence of the Army in the region is unacceptable. India never delivered on it's promise of a plebiscite in the region. The world is turning a blind eye to the human rights violations and the thousands of people who are living under gun-point (militants and the army). My position is simple. As an individual who lives down-south I have no right to have a say in what the people of Kashmir want. If cessation is what they want and that is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of ALL Kashmiris then that is what they should get. The only conclusive way to resolve the issue is through a plebiscite. What gives us the right to "integrate" a bunch of people who do not want to be part of this country.
North East Out of sight is out of mind! This area in India is probably the most soaked in insurgency. As a citizen of India, I need a "permit" to enter many parts of North Eastern India. Most Indians look on the people of the North Eastern Region as outsiders. They are called "chinky" or "Chinese". They are quickly labeled as beauticians or cooks in Chinese restaurants. The discrimination and stereotyping is rampant. The region has given us some of the best Human Rights activists that this country has seen. Women, in general, have far more rights in the communities of North Eastern India than in the rest of the country. The presence of the army, insurgency, and Human Rights violations in the region receive little or no attention in the mainstream. You cannot have a such a vast region as a part of this country and treat it’s citizens as “outsiders”.
Thanks to countercurrents.org, I came across this report on bombings in Pakistan and the death of over 80 civilians. These civilians were attending the funeral of civilian victims of another US drone attack. If you cannot see the "cycle of violence" - you are either really stupid or the American Government.
The US is deploying it’s fool-proof war sustenance strategy. This strategy, as we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine involves using immense air power (drones, helicopters guns, and fighter planes) to bomb civilians. The moment you massacre dozens of civilians, a few people are bound to loathe you. That loathing and hatred can in-turn be used as a “just cause” and the war can continue its virtuous cycle of profit for the Halliburton’s of the world and vicious cycle of death and violence for the citizens of Asia.
I love the “Change” and “Yes We Can” approach that Obama has brought to killing civilians in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan. They do not in troops any more. They just bomb them from the sky and from un-manned planes. This strategy means Obama need not talk about war as much, because Americans do not get killed as much.
Someday in the not too distant future the Pakistan government will increase taxes. The taxes will be used to repay loans taken from the IMF, World Bank and the US government. The Pakistan Government will use the money from these loans to pay American contractors to build infrastructure (roads, hospitals and schools). This infrastructure will need to be rebuilt because it will be first destroyed by the might of the US army. But, these taxes will not be enough. In addition to the taxes US contractors will be allowed to charge locals for the use of water, air and soil.
God Bless American Business! How many more children have to die for the blessing to be complete?
