Skip to main content

We: Commodities in a market


Money has become the measure of everything. Your social stature depends on your wealth. Your health depends on it too because our hospitals have become expensive multi-speciality industries. Your children’s education depends on it because what the top schools charge as annual fees is more than what majority of people earn in ten years. Interestingly, even your spiritual salvation depends on how much money you can contribute to the earthly reps of your heavenly gods.

Economy became the heart of our socio-political system in the last few decades. We thought economy was the panacea for all our problems. Creation of more and more wealth was the ultimate goal of globalisation. More wealth would mean more happiness. We were told so.

When wealth became the ultimate goal of life, everyone obviously chased it heart and soul. That chase became the new pilgrimage. Not only is your worth measured by your wealth but wealth is the very purpose and meaning of your life. The means you resort to for making wealth do not matter anymore. You may swindle banks out of billions and leave your country. You may run a spiritual industry like an ashram or ayurvedic centre. Even the government has funds that are above auditing. A time may soon come when your government just declares certain bank deposits of yours to be the government’s hereafter. Certain institutions and organisations may be banned and their assets taken over.

The last of the above things are possible not because the end justifies the means but because the single-minded focus on wealth has engendered a system which justifies many evils in the names of putatively noble ideas or ideals such as nationalism.

Human life is not an economy. In other words, people do not exist in an economy. People need a lot more than wealth to add meaning to their existence. Religions, morality, art, literature, and so on serve the function of adding meaning to life. Today these things have been subsumed under the chase for wealth. Consequently there is a feeling of inner emptiness. In India today, nationalism seeks to fill that emptiness. No wonder, it is a highly vengeful nationalism. It is founded on certain hollow notions like ghettoising certain communities of people so that their properties, wealth, jobs, and whatever else possible can be taken over.

It is not the majority who benefit from this, however. It’s just a tiny minority whose wealth increases year after year. The others keep becoming poorer. But they are fed with vindictive feelings against certain others who are projected as the cause of all the misery in the country. What a nice system for enriching a few at the cost of all the others!

We inhabit a marketplace. You and I are just commodities there. We are being sold day after day. Again and again. Think about that.

 

 

Comments

  1. Painfully, whatever you have asserted in this article is true and true only. We are no longer the consumers, we have become commodities ourselves and being sold day after day, again and again. Everyone who has to live and perceive himself / herself like a human-being, kicking and alive, should ponder over it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is a wretched condition though most people seem to think, or have been taught to think, that this is the best possible world.

      Delete

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 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...

War and Meaning of Victory

In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...

The RSS and Paradoxes

The oldest racist organisation in the world is all set to celebrate the centenary of its existence. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 with the specific goal of unifying the Hindus in India under a religious and cultural banner. The Indian Independence struggle that was going on in full force at that time was no concern of the RSS. Though it gave the liberty to its individual members to take part in the struggle, the organisation’s official policy was to stay clear of it altogether. That was only one of the many paradoxical ironies that marked the RSS which was a nationalist organisation that cared little for the Independence of the nation. Today, the Prime Minister of India is a man who was trained and nurtured by the RSS. Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book on the paradoxes that underscore the personality of Mr Narendra Modi. The RSS and paradoxes go hand in hand, if we take Modi as a specimen of the organisation’s great achievements. Tharoor’s final asses...