Corruption, Agitation and Wealth Creation

George F Will was referring to the US government but his words apply with greater force to India when he wrote, “The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.” [Tincture of Lawlessness. The Washington Post, May 2009.]

Corruption: Mostly poor and partially middle class in India are victims of state indifference and corruption; The money released for subsidy and loan waiver schemes is stolen by corrupt government officials. And yet if one asks us what jobs they would like to have the number one answer is to job for the government.

The very base of your very social order – and this lie includes the need for you to be clever, jugaad, and constantly try to hinder others growth. Literacy was supposed to create a level playing field for all. However, investments in education have actually widened the gap between the English-speaking classes and the vernacular masses. The same people when complaining about corruption will vote for the most corrupt politicians because those are the politicians with the resources to protect them. Now these are the structural problems to TACKLE for the development.

As Atanu dey pointed out in Anna Hazare Goes to New Delhi that this bill is more a palliative and not curative rule change. He is is giving valid reasons on the changes necessary to the structure of government, not just adding another law in the rule book.

The license-permit-control-quota raj is at the root of the criminalization of Indian politics. The less scruples one has, the greater the loot; the greater the loot, the more intense the competition to win the position; the more intense the competition, the greater the cost of fighting elections; the greater the cost, the greater the need to recover them; the more greedy and unprincipled people in government, the greater their desire to increase the government’s choke-hold on the economy.

The root cause of corruption and the related issue of absolutely abysmal governance is our set of bad rules. India’s persistent deep-rooted poverty is due to that. Douglass C. North noted that “economic history is overwhelmingly a story of economies that failed to produce a set of economic rules of the game (with enforcement) that induce sustained economic growth.” The road out of poverty starts off with people deciding on a different set of rules.

Even awareness of systematic injustices is not enough. Here is the need of new policymakers and participation of the people in politics. The people has to evolve from typical "Operational conservative and theoretical liberal"  to "Active Liberal Participant" for a solution.That is my conclusion.

Agitation: The delay in implementing is definitely meaningless. Do we educated Indian are full of apathy and nihilism? Recent uproar for support of Anna Hazare proves me wrong.

A petition and peaceful protest has always been ignored. And the government gives in to demands — reasonable or not — when sufficient violence is employed. One wonder whether the government responds only to threats of indefinite fast and violent retreat.

While people suspecting on the motives of Anna Hazare protest, they have to know that a certain level, any act of protest is a form of blackmail. And no protest can succeed without the will of the people. The will of the people don't need impotent and parasitic government slowing down their movement. The vibrant democracy don't need to wait five years for even a small change. If the public has full fledged support, then government should listen and act on the raised concerns. Indian democracy needs volunteer like Hazare to raise their points in public.

Corruption cannot be tackled just through a non-partisan anti-corruption body though that is important but rather through transparency at all transactional levels. Every person with an opinion now has an opportunity to be heard and redesign of system will be a better start.

Wealth Creation: Does wealth have a social value? Corruption, crooked capitalism and lack of transparency has piled up to an uneven development of few. When millionaire is becoming billionaire and so on... while poor are suffering from proper transportation, rehabilitation, medical facilities, education, food security & public distribution system, there is need for a change.

Corruption is the manifestation of a systemic problem. Government power and control forms the foundation on which the massive structure of corruption is built. Visible mechanism and adequate punishment are the standards of system design, not the structure itself.

So there is a much more fundamental question is why do some elites make their money by destroying their economies and others make their money by growing their economies. It is due to having illiterate & unconscious politicians who don't think about state or nation.

Poetry of Protest - 1

I am remembering the scene in the movie "Dead Poet's Society" where Prof. John Keating was inspiring his student with the beauty of poetry : We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

While most prefer to be didactic and dry in order to make a large statement at the expense of beauty, it is only one side of the coin. There is a passion, emotions, connectivity and power contained in the poems and songs of the people. Poems are sometimes frivolous and pretentious but are written with the Streams of the subconsciousness. The personal turmoil with the experience and observation of grimed reality make poems full of universal appeal. Free versus with the words flowed create a typhoon in the minds of freedom loving people.

Poetry is to create awareness, to create the desire for dreams, social justice, gender equality and to stand up for the downtrodden. To be a poet is dare to give voice to the silent victims witnessing endless suppression, discrimination and violence. To people like Neruda and Faiz, art is for the life and not just for art’s sake. Poems were never meant to be retained but often they end up to recited and remembered without even the efforts of the academia. As they are sing and enjoyed by the people, they created meanings more than if they can do on the paper.

Men are agents of self interest with a will to do good for others. No doubt people always began in good faith against power but insensibly, commitment by commitment, when not aware of dangers of owning power, individuals will become entangled in a web of lies, falsehoods, deceits and perjuries, until they lost their souls to the power. It is necessary to understand the larger ways that discourse supports power and also the larger movements for/against power in the reference of the culture. In the next part of this essay, we will move towards examples of protest and poetry in the real word.

Culture of resistance

While illusions of reform is creating a ground for revolutionary environment, one needs to see the relation between establishment and the unprivileged ones. Everywhere in the world, people are not suffering from an excess of civil disobedience, infact suffering from an excess of civil obedience of few elites. The case of protest and violence are heavily related.  As Johann Hari mentioned about effects of protest in the UK that has far reaching effect and it is true for all over the world : -

"There is a cost to this chilling of protest. Every British citizen is the beneficiary of a long line of protesters stretching back through the centuries. Every woman reading this can vote and open her own bank account and choose her own husband and have a career because protesters demanded it. Every worker gets at least £5.93 an hour, and paid holidays, and paid sick leave, because protesters demanded it. Every pensioner gets enough to survive because protesters demand it. What what your life would be like if all those protesters through all those years had been frightened into inactivity? If you block the right to protest, you block the path to progress. You are left instead at the whim of an elite, whose priority is tax cuts for themselves, paid for with spending cuts for the poor."

In a recent address Akbar Ganji, a representative of the Green Movement in Iran, characterized history thus: “Human history has been interpreted in many ways. I read this history as a sustained course of struggle for liberty—the struggle of slaves, women, people of color, the poor, the disenfranchised, of religious minorities and dissidents of various sorts, to rid themselves of the tyranny they have endured.” In a history of the revolutions in Paris, there is a provocative phrase: “The time of the oppressed is by nature discontinuous” – apparently there is more truth in it than any statement made about victims of power

Often war/violence is assumed as the last resort of the problem, but the first approach that the establishment prefers. The authority of state lies in the allowance of violence given to the state by the people. When the state tend to use violence against its own people, it loses that sanction and trust of masses. The opposite violence born due to the protest catch society between two poles. History has shown us that US authorities have started to talk with Martin Luther King, Jr. because Dr. King’s alternative appear moderate by comparison across all the political spectrum, stretching from Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.
 
Violence is not some abstract or theoretical question to be puzzled through. It’s simply part of life and protest also. And that doesn’t mean you participate or don’t participate. It just means that you deal with it.  A decision to resort to violence is not something to be undertaken without great care—and stated in terms that were addressed to reasonable people. Great  leaders like Nehru and Mandela have felt the historic obligation to make a stand and to define it. That is why once an independence  or prime aim of revolution was achieved, most of the sensible leaders elope with the peaceful democratic movements. Arundhuti Roy recently quote an apt statement about nature of violence  : It would be immoral of me to preach violence unless I’m prepared to pick up arms myself. It is equally immoral for me to preach nonviolence when I’m not bearing the brunt of the attack.  

I protest !

Why there is a Julian Assange at all ? Reason: watchdog journalism is dead. The media is bought and paid for the PR work. We have to be careful to distinguish between the man and the institution since confusing the two can lead to the unfortunate mistake of shooting the messenger for delivering an unpalatable message. Its the individuals who had changed the world by creatively destroying the old institutions and building new ones.

We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels and free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep and conformists. This country suffers from an excess of civil obedience. As Oscar Wilde said: “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”

The right to protest clears the path to progress and inclusion. There is a short term sacrifice of protest. Every person is the beneficiary of a long line of protesters stretching back through the centuries who has stand up for the unprivileged and oppressed. Every worker gets minimum wages, every woman reading this can vote and every pensioner gets enough to survive because protesters demanded it. What what life would be like if all those protesters through all those years had been frightened into inactivity?  We were left at the whim of an elite, whose priority is tax cuts for themselves, paid for with spending cuts for the poor.

When two entities exchange value for mutual benefit, it is symbiosis. When two entities exchange value with one gaining more than the other, it is exploitation. When two entities exchange value at the cost of the third, it is…yes, drum-roll the word we Indians love to hate, talk about and practice the most, Corruption. The measure of corruption is not just the exchange of money. It is the distance and dissimulation rulers exhibit in relation to their own governments. To be always honest and aware about ground realities is enough in the fight against corruption.

India is a nation of sheep walking in herds and try to stick as closely as possible with the caste and enclosed community with not willing or able to break rank or file for anything. Opportunists align themselves with changing beliefs to temporarily form identity-based groups in order to achieve political or economic objectives subsuming the manifest differences between their identities. This country needs large numbers of anarchists and entrepreneurs for the progress and mobility across various groups.

Examples of this unbreakable code of silence are prevalent everywhere around us. Our moral compass tends to be so tilted in the favor of strongly armed with money power than the needy. Then, we justify lack of emotions and sensibility to each other with by the name of Immunity or barbaric I ask? Ours society punishes the victims and ensure that the torturers or criminals roam free without any sense of guilt.

Our various fortune tellers think one day some of us will rise and bring about some sort of revolution led by a savior to end all our evils. Well newsflash! Saviors come from people who are determined to save themselves. They don't arise from those who keep their heads down in the rat race making sure not to be noticed, because  if someone stops them and asks, they will have to say something which will challenge the system, and then their lives will stop as they will become aware of their own soullessness because they are the system.

It's the nature of a human that when you get neglected somewhere you want to go back and prove a point. I don't give respect to do-gooders as they are idiots who actually believe that everyone is trying to do their best and don't have an intention of harm. Squeezed between well-intentioned stupid people and the essentially criminal, I am pissed. I have a foolish head that does not abide by the moral values of everyone and absurd traditions of honor. I am a emotional and over aggressive as well as because I can't cover up the truth. The power of truth and transparency will surely unveil the hypocrisy around and in us.

 It is to hard to pigeonhole the man in any identity or role as Jonathan Swift, author of the English classic Gulliver’s Travels (1726), had pithily observed that “when a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”