Skip to main content

Black Money and other Demons


Farmers' Protest in Surat
Source: The Indian Express
The farmers in PM Modi’s own state poured litres of milk and threw kilograms of food grains on the road two days back in protest against the non-availability of valid currency.  There are protests in other states too against the restrictions put on cooperative banks on which farmers and small traders rely heavily.

If we analyse the social media including blogs, we’ll discover that it is the middle class that supports Modi’s tilting at the windmills of black money.  The middle class has its own morality whose hypocrisy was exposed brilliantly by Bernard Shaw in the character of Alfred Doolittle.  The middle class pretends to be moral while it is far more immoral than any other class.  It will discover all the loopholes in any given system and use those loopholes for their most selfish purposes all the while assuming that they are the most patriotic, religious and righteous people in the world.

The middle class is the actual driving force of all social systems such as religion as well as most political systems.  It likes to believe so at least.  The fact is that religions have their own popes or godmen or ammas.  The fact is that politics in any country has its own Ambanis and Adanis. But the middle class loves its own illusions and delusions.

The latest delusion of the Indian middle class is that the demon of black money is being destroyed by the contemporary broad-chest avatar of Lord Vishnu.  Just as the middle class has its own religious rituals like immersions or confessions or whatever to cleanse the system of all evils, ritually at least, now it has this purification ceremony which has assumed religious proportions.

High denominations of currency were withdrawn many times in the past too.  Black will come back with more vigour sooner than later.  That’s how life is: substantially black. Learn from the cosmos, if you like: dark matter and dark energy are real and gods are sweet delusions.

OK, but we need to clean up the system once in a while.  No doubt.  Let the system be cleaned up.  But why should all cleansing processes be at the cost of the poor? 

Every time a reformation takes place the poor pay the price.  The farmers, the cattle growers, the petty traders, daily wage earners... they have been the most affected by the latest holy cow in the country. The previous holy cows attacked certain communities including Dalits who were also economically poor.  

Maybe this is the latest way of eliminating poverty: by eliminating the poor.  Maybe this is how evolution continues.  Let us not forget the simple truth that we belong to the species of homo sapiens which flourished by eliminating thousands of species from the planet including fellow species like homo rudolfensis and homo eragster.  

Let evolution continue; no one can stop natural processes.  Let evil be conquered; no one can limit human delusions.  But let us also learn to look within and check whether we are fighting the real demons.


Comments

  1. A strong minded piece, liked the religious connotations especially.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Patriotism is the most fervant when religion sustains it.

      Delete
  2. Very well said Sir. But who will buy your thoughts in this era of fascist forces in our country ? You are going to be labelled a traitor sooner than later.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People have already given me that label. Fortunately those people are not very powerful.

      Delete
  3. A very interesting take on it. Do not know what all this will result in.
    Is it a brilliant move or is it just a rushed measure?
    It started with lot of applause and seems to be a chaos right now.
    Richa | www.fanciersworld.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is total chaos so much so the PM can't even show his face in the Parliament.

      Delete
  4. this demonetization has nothing to do with stopping black money which has already saved abroad or in gold,dollars,etc It has only destroyed the markets and hit hard on small businesses and people associated with them

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But the PMO will soon produce statistics to show the lakhs of crores caught... Patriots will celebrate the statistics!

      Delete
  5. नोटबंदी के बाद डिजिटल पेमेंट पर जोर, जानें क्या है डिजिटल पेमेंट
    Readmore Todaynews18.com https://goo.gl/BgzxC9

    ReplyDelete
  6. I really appreciate this wonderful post that you have provided for us. I assure this would be beneficial for most of the people. device converter

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...