Skip to main content

Inflation can kill



Media Watch

This week’s Media Watch is entirely dedicated to the Frontline because its latest issue deals with a burning topic as honestly as only the Frontline can. Inflation. While the Modi government is spending thousands of crores of rupees on building temples, statues and the Central Vista for himself, millions of Indians are being driven to the brink of starvation. India isn’t shining at all except in the grand advertisements put up by Modi’s propaganda system on all sorts of media channels.

More and more Indians are being pushed to the margins of existence, deprived of education, clothing, housing, healthcare, all of which have become luxuries that are out of the reach of many Indians today, says the Frontline boldly. Modi came with big schemes like bank accounts for the poor and cooking gas connections too. The bank accounts went dormant long ago and cooking gas is beyond people’s dreams now. Forget gas, even kerosene is unaffordable. The magazine quotes a man saying, “My wife uses our old kerosene stove to save gas. We no longer get kerosene on our ration card; we buy it on the black market. It’s about Rs.100 a litre and that is if we can get it.”

The magazine blames Modi’s policies for the catastrophic situation in the country today. “This inflation is as much engineered,” says the magazine, “knowingly or unwittingly, as it is imported. Merely adjusting excise duties may not be enough to rein in the runaway increase in prices.”

The article titled ‘Understanding Inflation’ shows how the low- and middle-income countries are the worst affected by the global inflation. “In countries like India, increases in production costs and prices just get passed on to workers,” says the article. In short, the ordinary Indian ends up paying for everything including the luxuries enjoyed by our politicians and the profits amassed by our corporate bigwigs. Mr Modi knows how to keep that ordinary Indian deluded and happy too. Give him hatred to eat. Also tell him that the present hardships are temporary; a great India is awaiting him somewhere in the distant future like a pie in the sky. This is just what the routine Monthly Economic Report of the government released on 12 May did. It told the Indians that their economy was doing well. Well! 


Sukumar Muralidharan of O P Jindal Global University counsels the Modi government that the tradition of nurturing the rich with the money of the poor belongs to the past, the great Indian heritage. But “that clearly is no longer a politically feasible option.”

Navpreet Kaur of Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, warns us that it’s all going to get worse. Modi government is likely to “target” the public distribution system and also the private market prices of wheat and other food items are likely to rise. According to the 2021 Global Hunger Index, India is at a miserable rank of 101 of the 116 countries examined, in spite of much-publicised schemes like National Food Security Act and the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (that name is quite a mouthful!). Effective policies are required, says the professor who writes for this Frontline. Effective policies, not schemes with big names and media hype.

The magazine carries many more articles on the subject written by eminent people who definitely know better than Modi and his bhakts. The former finance minister of Kerala and the present one of Tamil Nadu express their views loud and clear. The latter puts the blame squarely on the authoritarianism of the Modi government. “All institutions have gone under the hammer…. So now you have this unquestioned and unquestionable authority,” says PTR Palanivel Thiaga Rajan (FM of Tamil Nadu). The aggregation of power in Modi’s hands is not what the Constitution says is healthy. One consequence of such power is that the power and control over the system keeps on increasing and the outcome (quality of people’s lives) keeps going down and down. “This will not end well.” He also adds that “Part of the problem is that once you reach that level of power, you will not receive a feedback loop anywhere. You think you are in the know, but nobody wants to give you bad news…. You think your government is doing great. In fact, it is not.” 


PS. Last Media Watch: Shahjahan’s Hindu Blood

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    While the scale and effect on the lower ends of Indian society is acknowledged, I could very well have been reading today's news on the UK economic situation. There are increasing numbers of foodbanks (places for those who cannot afford to buy - supermarkets provide end of day foods and such), fuel/energy poverty is very real here too and more and more people are being forced out of their homes due to unaffordable housing. Each country is facing the consequences that arose from COVID and now the Russia-Ukraine conflict. And governments are all in denial of one sort or another as to doing anything real or practical about it. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True, it's a global problem and the Frontline does mention that too. But India can do better if it keeps Rama and Hanuman aside let Babar and Akbar sleep. That's what the magazine is saying in other words. Just see how Modi responds to the toxin of sectarianism that keeps erupting like leprosy lesions. He relishes them.

      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 Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...

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...

Sex and Sin

Disclaimer: This is not a book review The first discovery made by Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God was sex. Sex is sin in Christianity except when the union takes place with the sole intention of procreation like a farmer sowing the seed. Saint Augustine said, Adam and Eve would have procreated by a calm, rational act of the will if they had continued to live in the Garden of Eden. The Catholic Church wants sex to be a rational act for it not to be a sin. The body and its passions are evil. The soul is holy and belongs to God. One of the most poignant novels I’ve read about the body-soul conflict in Catholicism is Sarah Joseph’s Othappu . Originally written in Malayalam, it was translated into English with the same Malayalam title. The word ‘othappu’ doesn’t have an exact equivalent in English. Approximately, it means ‘scandal’ as in the Biblical verse: “ If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around t...