Aaj Baazar mein

Faiz Ahmed Faiz is amongst the most famous poets of the Urdu language. Faiz, who was hounoured by Lenin Peace Prize in 1963, was seldom subjected to arrests by the right-wing pro-imperialist military regimes of Pakistan. Once, during the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq, he was arrested and taken to the police station in front of the public. In this context, he wrote 'Aaj Bazar mein'.



The video starts with a 'mushairah' (public recitation), where Faiz presents the poem, and describes its context. Then the video, with the melodious voice of Nayyara Noor in the background singing the verses of Faiz, shows the sufi culture of Pakistan, which was suppressed by the religious fundamentalist government of Zia-ul-Haq. Then, there are some clips of public floggings and public hangings of political dissidents, which were employed to ingrain terror in the people of Pakistan. Public floggings were a norm during Zia's time. The video, then, takes us on a trip to a well-known red-light area of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This red-light area is in the neighbourhood of a very famous mosque, a contradiction unresolved !

Quotations:

1) I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right. – Abraham Lincoln.

2) If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.– George Washington.

3) It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. – Thomas Jefferson.

AMUL : Story of INDIA

The value of national ‘ownership’ in development of involving 2.8 million milk producers with AMUL separates itself from other success stories . Dr. Kurien on Rural Development ---

A large proportion of rural livelihoods in India are at the mercy of the law of diminishing marginal returns from land. This has led to the bleak phenomena of rural-urban migration, casualisation of urban labour and feminisation of agricultural labour etc. with the net effect of extremely insecure rural livelihoods. A successful rural development programme must help rural people stay on voluntarily and profitably in the villages. Cooperative dairy development on the Amul Pattern has been instrumental in securing rural livelihoods in many parts of India through income generation, agricultural diversification, risk distribution, female empowerment and assured employment.

Employment generation in India has seen a spurt even through the much vaunted Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) organizations and Information Technology (IT) setups. However, one must never forget that these activities suffer from the inherent disadvantage of working under business cycles. Further, the underpinning of these businesses is cheap and skilled manpower that is both highly mobile as well as susceptible to replication by other nations. Thus, even were outsourcing and information technology to reach our rural poor, they can never offer our country a sustainable competitive advantage, leaving us vulnerable to massive disruption should the business move on to other countries where skilled labor is less costly. On the other hand, the underpinning of a successful cooperative dairy business is comprised of farmers who have a collective consciousness and a shared vision towards the domain centrality of milk and the need for cooperation in dairying. Neither they nor their milch animals can be relocated or replicated in the short or medium term by any other nation. I therefore put forward my case that cooperative dairying on the Amul Pattern forms a source of assured employment and a sustainable basis of competitive advantage for India. Here, I quote Dr. William Lewis of Mckinsey Global Institute from his book 'The Power of Productivity': 'Hours worked producing milk in India are equivalent to 45 million full-time employees. That means dairy in India has more employment than any other sector in any economy in the World'.

WikiLeaks on Corporate Corruption

Corporate corruption comes in many forms. The number of employees and turnover of some corporations exceeds the population and GDP of some nation states. When comparing countries, after observations of population size and GDP, it is usual to compare the system of government, the major power groupings and the civic freedoms available to their populations. Such comparisons can also be illuminating in the case of corporations.

Considering the largest corporations as analogous to a nation state reveals the following properties:

1. The right to vote does not exist except for share holders (analogous to land owners) and even there voting power is in proportion to ownership.
2. All power issues from a central committee.
3. There is no balancing division of power. There is no fourth estate. There are no juries and innocence is not presumed.
4. Failure to submit to any order may result in instant exile.
5. There is no freedom of speech.
6. There is no right of association. Even romance between men and women is often forbidden without approval.
7. The economy is centrally planned.
8. There is pervasive surveillance of movement and electronic communication.
9. The society is heavily regulated, to the degree many employees are told when, where and how many times a day they can go to the toilet.
10. There is little transparency and something like the Freedom of Information Act is unimaginable.
11. Internal opposition groups, such as unions, are blackbanned, surveilled and/or marginalized whenever and wherever possible.

While having a GDP and population comparable to Belgium, Denmark or New Zealand, many of these multi-national corporations have nothing like their quality of civic freedoms and protections. This is even more striking when the regional civic laws the company operates under are weak (such as in West Papua, many African states or even South Korea); there, the character of these corporate tyrannies is unregulated by their civilizing surroundings.

Through governmental corruption, political influence, or manipulation of the judicial system, abusive corporations are able to gain control over the defining element of government the sole right to deploy coercive force.

Just like a country, a corrupt or unethical corporation is a menace to all inside and outside it. Corporations will behave more ethically if the world is watching closely. WikiLeaks has exposed unethical plans and behaviour in corporations and this as resulted in recompense or other forms of justice forms of justice for victims.

Source - WikiLeaks