Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Speaking during a function in Raigad yesterday, Prime Minister Modi threatened the nation with more “difficult decisions.”  From today's Times of India A couple of days back, Steve Forbes, Editor-in Chief of Forbes magazine condemned Mr Modi’s demonetisation as immoral and theft of people’s property.  A few days back, Wall Street Journal wrote that “Instead of factory openings or large new investments, the images that tell India’s current economic story include snaking lines outside banks, distressed workers migrating back to their villages, and tax raids on jewelers and officials caught with hoards of allegedly illicit cash.” Today is Christmas, a festival that marks the birth of a man in whose name a major religion came to be founded.  Christianity has always upheld suffering as a virtue.  It has relished imposing more and more rules and regulations, restrictions and penalties on its people.  Its priests and other leaders love to threaten t...

BJP has made a clean sweep of the Chandigarh municipal elections by winning 20 of the 26 seats.  Amit Shah has already declared the victory as the people’s approval of the demonetisation.  We should not disregard Shah’s declaration as the Hanuman’s natural devotion to his god.  In fact, BJP’s sweeping victory is an indication of things to come.  The party may end up winning many more elections in the coming months.  As many as seven states are going to assembly elections in 2017. “An economic measure should be, and normally is, judged on the basis of how it  benefits  the people, and any measure that brings distress to the people is derided for that reason. What we find in the present case however is just the opposite:  the more demonetization brings distress to the people, the more it is applauded for its wisdom and courage.”   Prof Prabhat Patnaik wrote recently in The Citizen .  [emphasis retained from the original] There...

“(W)hereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something .” Yuval Noah Harari says that in his book Sapiens , which I have been quoting extensively of late.  The emphasis belongs to the original. Religion asks us to believe in a god or many gods.  It may ask us to believe in a lot more things such as heaven and hell, or that a bath in a particular river will wash away all our sins, or that you can’t be part of the community unless you part with your foreskin, and so on.  Money demands a much simpler faith from us: that other people have faith in its value.  Without that faith, money is as useless as the waste paper in your dustbin.  Remember what Prime Minister Modi said to the nation on Nov 8?  “From midnight today, all the five hundred and one thousand rupee notes with you will be worthless paper .”  Worthless paper, that’s what one speech from one particular individual made out ...

Our ancient forefathers were nomadic foragers.  They went from place to place in search of food.  Animals which were not dangerous were hunted.  At some time in history, some of those foragers decided that they were tired of the constant chasing after food.  They chose to settle down and cultivate their own food.  Some animals were domesticated too. Animals were not used to domestic life.  They were used to roaming freely without any master to boss over their movements except the laws of nature which demanded constant vigilance against predators.  Man was one of those predators. But man was different from the other predators because he had a more evolved brain which told him that it was to his advantage to hunt the male sheep or the old ones, leaving the females to breed and also to provide milk.  But male sheep were also required for the breeding process since there was no genetic technology in those days.  Hence man resorted t...

Thomas Jefferson who drafted the famous American Declaration of Independence which contains the oft-quoted phrase that “all men are created equal” owned about 200 slaves when he wrote that and never set them free even upon his death .  It doesn’t mean Jefferson was a fraud or even a hypocrite.  Rather it points to certain bizarre truths about social systems and the beliefs which create them.  The Americans during Jefferson’s time did not even consider Negroes as human beings.  Negroes were subhuman, according to the beliefs that upheld the American social system of the time. All social systems are built upon certain beliefs most of which may not stand up to rational analysis.  The ancient Indian caste system or many other social practices such as Sati were not based on any objective truths.  Social systems are created by certain individuals in order to protect their interests by subordinating the interests of others.  It was not mere selfis...

Every narcissist loves to leave a mark wherever possible.  Writing is the easiest way to produce marks.  Ink is indelible.  That’s why democracy uses ink to brand every voter.  And now I have a ruler who uses the same ink to brand anyone who takes out her own money from the bank.  Source I have had so many rulers that I am not surprised by anything anymore.  They came from all sorts of places crossing oceans and mountains just for leaving their marks.  They left their marks in the wombs of my women too.  That’s also a kind of writing; a rewriting of history.  The deepest marks are made in history.  The Mughals did it best, I think.  Long, long before them came somebody who wrote in Sanskrit.  They were the best, perhaps.  They wrote the Vedas.  Then they wrote the end of the Vedas and called them Upaniashads though Vedanta was a more logical name.  But the Vedas never ended.  The Vedas contin...

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 mi...

Ten days are over after the Prime Minister’s overnight reform of demonetisation.  There’s no sign of adequate valid currency reaching the people.  On the contrary, works are held up, workers go without money to buy food, medical treatments are affected, farmers are unable to buy seeds and cultivate their lands, those who have agricultural produce at home cannot sell them because traders don’t have valid money to pay...  How long does the country want this situation to prolong? The Supreme Court has already expressed its apprehensions about possible riots in the country if adequate valid currency is not made available.  The country can’t expect people to die of starvation when they have their hard-earned money lying in the banks. Moreover, do Indians deserve this situation?  80% of Indians live on less than Rs10,000 per month. They don’t have any black money.  But it is they who actually suffer from the current situation.  The innocent are...