Skip to main content

Whose India?


The Sangh Parivar and the corporate clique that supports them are celebrating the Amrit Mahotsav of India’s independence. Their India has reasons to celebrate. Two of them have entered into the top ten of the Forbes list of the richest people in the world. Adani has climbed over Ambani to occupy the third place while the latter is in the eighth place. Gautam Adani’s economic growth has been nothing less than fabulous after Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister. His brother, Vinod, has also emerged as superrich with a wealth of Rs1.69 lakh crore. IMF has declared that Indian economy has beaten the British economy to emerge as the fifth strongest economy in the world. At this rate, India is going to push Germany and Japan behind by 2030 to become the third largest economy in the world. Great. But who benefits? That’s a pertinent question.

There is a dark, very dark, side to this economic growth. In the global hunger index, India is slipping down pathetically.  Out of 116 countries, India’s place is a wretched 101. We are on a par with starving countries like Somalia now. Most other countries of South Asia are faring much better than India in this regard. The 2022 national survey on family health [NFHS-5] reveals the startling fact that 67% of the country’s children below the age of 5, 58.6% of the women in the reproductive age group, and 25% of the men between the ages of 15 and 49 are suffering from anemia. The country’s economy is healthy but not the citizens.

In human resources development index, India stands at 161 out of 191 nations. That is far below countries like Bangladesh and Bhutan. The Covid pandemic stole the lives of about 47 lakh Indians, according to the WHO. That is one-third of the world’s total number of Covid deaths. Nothing to be proud of in the health sector. The Indian government’s thoughtless policies and actions with respect to the pandemic (such as the instant lockdown) led to the catastrophic situations. The state where the largest number of children died in those days due to lack of oxygen supply in hospitals is now spending crores of rupees to advertise itself as the shining beacon of the country. The people of that state could not even afford to bury their dead and hundreds of corpses floated down the holy river of Ganga.

84% of Indians saw their wealth fall in the post-pandemic situation. But at the same time the number of Indian dollar-billionaires rose from 102 to 142. Many of these billionaires cashed in on the misery of their compatriots with the support of the government. It is estimated that Covid-related industries helped these people to raise their asset to Rs 6 lakh crore.

The Modi government has taken Indian economy forward by leaps and bounds. But who benefitted by that growth? That is the question. Not the majority of the people of the country. But a tiny minority. The corporate sector. This corporate sector has paid back to the BJP a share of their profit and the party has become one of the richest political parties in the world today.

The corporate sector will continue to flourish in India as long as Modi continues as the PM. Their taxes were reduced from 30% to 22% while the common man’s taxes were hiked every now and then though indirectly. The loans taken by the most affluent are written off in Modi’s India while the poor are driven to suicide because of their inability to pay back the loans. Modi has written off big corporate loans amounting to Rs10 lakh crore. The ordinary Indian will pay back all that in the form of various taxes and cess and so on.

In the meanwhile, Modi continues to sell the country to the corporate sector. Banks and insurance and transport systems and forests and industries are all becoming private properties.

Even more tragic is what has been done to academics, judiciary and other institutions which should have remained above politics. They have all been corrupted by the Sangh Parivar. History is fabricated now and justice is ravaged. And Modi continues to be a national hero. Which means there is little hope ahead.

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Dour reading... and as the spectre of similar 'growth obsession' rises here, I see how it is that these...... let's call them ultra-Conservatives rather than the F-word..... plot their way to a true and disproportionate divide between the haves and have-nots. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Public Distribution System seems to be collapsing too. Much of what was given earlier has been stopped. The poor are going to face worse days, I feel.

      Delete
  2. Very informative, thanks for posting such informative content. Expecting more from you.
    Most Trusted Mumbai Matrimony Services

    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

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r