P A G E
Tuesday, August 10, 1999
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Tuesday, August 10, 1999 |
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Report
and purport
CABINET,
PRESIDENT AND EC |
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Towards
a world “Bania Raj”
President
on board
The
Hindu-Muslim conference |
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Report and purport THE findings of the Wadhwa Commission about the gruesome murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons at Manoharpur in Orissa in January this year have expectedly caused a burgeoning controversy. Justice D.P. Wadhwa, a judge of the Supreme Court, headed the court of inquiry and, after examining the available evidence, came to the conclusion that Dara Singh, a man with a criminal past, was at the root of the evil. The evil, generally speaking, was the triple murder. In the process, the legal mind had to go above and beyond the roots—to the tree-trunk and its branches. The atmosphere at the time of the commission of the crime was seething with hatred for Christian missionaries and many organised attacks had taken place in various parts of the country on churches, Christian homes and preachers. The needle of suspicion pointed towards the saffron brigade, particularly the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Manoharpur and its adjoining areas had seen a lot of anti-Christian activity during the last two months of 1998. The Staines killings occurred on January 24, 1999. The Wadhwa Commission's findings amount to the exoneration of the Sangh Parivar. Graham Staines has been referred to in the report as a missionary dedicated to the cause of leprosy-eradication. What has caused a sharp reaction among groups opposed to the BJP-led government at the Centre is the observation of the commission that the killings were caused by a rabidly "fundamentalist" individual. There was no conspiracy by any section of the Sangh Parivar which is intrinsically related to the BJP. After upbraiding the Orissa police for failing to prevent the crime and then registering a "doctored" first information report, the commission said: "There is no evidence to show that any authority or organisation was behind the gruesome killings.... The act of murdering Staines and his two children was inspired by Dara Singh and his clout — and no authority, organisation or any other person played a role in connection with the killings". This part of the observations of Justice Wadhwa is being seen as giving a clean chit to pro-BJP outfits like the Bajrang Dal and the VHP. The BJP is happy with
the report which has been prepared in record time and
made public. Leaders of the saffron parties have
obviously tried to take advantage of the major
observations which say in effect that their groups had
nothing to do with the Staines killings and that Dara
Singh was just an aberrant person. However, the very
timing of the publication of the report carries the seeds
of suspicion. The total exoneration of "any
authority or organisation" by implication conveys
the idea that Dara Singh had nothing to do with the
Bajrang Dal. However, on May 31, the lawyer of the
commission had said that prima facie evidence was
available to link Dara Singh with the Bajrang Dal and the
RSS. The report has been described as "a whitewash,
a blatant cover-up job for the government and a clean
chit to the Bajrang Dal". The enormity of the crime
is unforgettable and the culpability factor is too big to
be confined to a single individual. Home Minister L.K.
Advani has been quoted as having absolved all saffron
outfits of guilt much before the commission began its
work. The conclusions drawn by Justice Wadhwa are being
looked at through the prism of the coming elections.
Could the publication of the report have been delayed
until the announcement of the election results? Could the
learned judge have used less specific expressions to
highlight the non-involvement of "any authority or
organisation” in the Manoharpur killings? Justice
Wadhwa has seen the crime in the context of Orissa. What
about the unavoidable context of the waves of hate in
Dangs in Gujarat, Jhabra in Madhya Pradesh and in several
places in Maharashtra? The controversy surrounding the
report is not going to end soon. Many questions will
arise from the answers provided by Justice Wadhwa. |
No to showpiece talks PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has done well to rule out resumption of a dialogue with Pakistan till it continues to abet terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. That is the minimum price that Pakistan has to pay for its perfidy. Its Janus-faced policy stands fully exposed before the world and any negotiations that are only a showpiece would be a waste of time. After all, it is now confirmed that just when Pakistan it was engaging Mr Vajpayee in bus diplomacy, it was giving finishing touches to its Kargil treachery. Fake bear hugs and smiles for the benefit of cameras serve no purpose. In fact, going ahead with even the motions of negotiations at this stage can be problematic for any Indian leader considering that there is a lot of anger over Pakistani backstabbing. Such talks with the "enemy" might be particularly distasteful for some defence personnel and their families, which might mistake these to be a negation of their sacrifices. Islamabad has to realise that its mischief in Kargil has not only led to loss of face but also loss of credibility. Mrs Benazir Bhutto was right when she said that in future the word of a Pakistani Prime Minister would carry no conviction. But then, that kind of double talk is nothing new for Pakistani leaders. Her father, Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, himself broke the solemn promises he had made to Mrs Indira Gandhi as soon as he was out of Simla. And Mrs Bhutto too indulged in competitive India-bashing to deflect attention from her internal troubles when she was in power. Her expression of regret over this folly when she is in exile is immaterial. In international
diplomacy not everything is put in black and white. Even
verbal promises made by a leader are considered
sacrosanct. Anyone reneging on them does so at his own
peril. In principle, the Indo-Pak dialogue has to resume
sooner or later. But how can anyone lay store by any
assurances by the leaders of that country when it is
openly fomenting trouble in Jammu and Kashmir and
elsewhere? It has rather stepped up such activities out
of frustration and desperation after Kargil. Its
increased attacks on soft targets and ISI activities in
the North-East are a clear indicator of its insincerity.
India cannot be taken to the negotiating table at
gunpoint, as the Prime Minister has aptly remarked. There
has been heated debate in India over the alleged
intelligence failure in Kargil. But the fact remains that
the Indian and Pakistani forces had been vacating the
posts in the area during the winter very year. Occupying
them clandestinely was not a strategic masterstroke but a
repulsive display of going back on a promise. India has
been bitten not once but several times. It has to be at
least twice shy. Islamabad has to win back the honour
that it lost. The way to do it is certainly not through
sending mercenaries into this country. By doing that, it
is going back not only on the Simla Agreement but also on
the promises that Mr Nawaz Sharif made to Mr Clinton when
he dashed to Washington last month to save his routed
army. Talk-talk is better than war-war but talking while
one country is waging a bloody war is meaningless. |
On gold binge again IN India gold defies all economic logic. Rather gold buyers do. Despite its falling prices and unappealing potential as an investment, gold continues to find eager customers and by the thousands. There was a respite during the first two months of the financial year, raising hopes that it was losing its glitter. But that was hopelessly short-lived. By June imports soared to 80 tonnes, rather by a crazy 230 per cent over the figure for the same period last year. In the first quarter of the year this country has consumed about 187 tonnes through the open general licence route. At this rate the yellow metal may retain its unwelcome position as the second largest item of import after crude oil and may result in a foreign exchange outgo of more than $ 6 billion, last year’s record. It would have been more had the price remained buoyant; the steep fall in recent months has tended to lower the charge on foreign exchange reserve. The OGL import is only one entry point of the precious metal. NRIs bring in gold and pay a reasonable duty. Smugglers have become active despite the imposition of a token import tax to stem the uncontrolled inflow. The difference between world and Bombay prices and the evaporation of the old blackmarket for sophisticated electronic items have forced old-time smugglers to eye gold as a source of easy profit even if the pickings are meagre. While the market for
other consumer goods refuses to expand in direct
proportion to the rise in per capita income, that for
gold retains its vigour. And that is amazing. Its old
utility as a hedge against runaway inflation has ceased a
long while ago. Prices are rising at a moderate pace and
gold price is no more keeping one step ahead of the
inflation rate. More importantly, it has become a dead
investment. There is not even a token return on it and if
the prices continue to remain sluggish or fall as is more
likely, storing gold will bring in losses. Yet it finds
buyers and they splurge a huge amount of, say, about Rs
30,000 crore a year for the pleasure of having the
company of the metal. There are two explanations for this
paradox. Modern ways of saving have not found many
converts both in the urban and rural areas. This is so
despite the phenomenal expansion of banking and the
successful working of mutual funds floated by
government-owned financial institutions. Obviously, small
investors are yet to recover from the shock of losing a
pile during the great stock market scam and later the
deposit raising companies which vanished with the
lifetime savings of small town dwellers. In other words,
the small army of gullible investors have got the short
end of modern financial ways, be it the share bazaar or
the non-banking financial companies. That is why they
knowingly freeze their assets in gold and cheerfully
accept small loses than hand over their money to some
huckster in the hope of big gains only to lose it all in
the end. This is an appalling commentary on the so-called
modernisation of Indian economy. |
CABINET, PRESIDENT AND EC A KIND of constitutional flu seems to have seized our functionaries. The epidemic began with the President, Mr K.R. Narayanan, asking Prime Minister Vajpayee to seek a vote of confidence, after Ms Jayalalitha withdrew her support to the government. (The correct course would have been to leave it to the Opposition to defeat the government on the floor of the house). The Vajpayee government lost by a vote of one, tendered its resignation, but was asked to continue. Later, Mrs Sonia Gandhi failed to muster the requisite strength, and the House had to be dissolved and fresh elections ordered. The plain truth is that the relations between the President and the Prime Minister have never been the same again. As a deliberate policy, the government has been taking one decision after another, which had better be left for an elected government owning collective responsibility to the Lok Sabha to handle. The result has been a most uneasy relationship between the President and the Prime Minister, to say the least. Hardly a day passes when there is no snide comment in the Press against one or the other, or in defence of either. The crunch really came when the President reportedly advised his Council of Ministers to leave the question of a new telecom policy (NTP) to be determined by the newly elected House, but the government ostentatiously rejected it for reasons it publicly explained. Its arguments have been specious and, let alone the general public, convinced neither the Election Commission nor the Delhi High Court, which is seized of the matter. The Vajpayee government forgot that, all said and done, and despite the shenanigans of our political parties, the Constitution does provide for checks and balances. For instance, the President, faced with repeated defiance, would have been within his rights to replace the Vajpayee government with another — although it would have been a highly controversial and an extraordinarily bold step. Even short of that, the government has now found that it has to deal with the Election Commission and the higher courts. Now there can be two points of view about the Election Commission coming into the picture, especially when the NTP was devised a few days before the code of conduct came into force. Indeed, the Election Commission itself was divided on the issue. Mr G.V.G. Krishnamurthy held the view that the Election Commission had no business getting involved in it, but the Chief Election Commissioner and Mr Lyngdoh held that the NTP, prima facie, did affect the level playing field in the elections. However, the Election Commission deferred a decision because the matter was sub judice but, curiously, through a Press note expressed the hope that the court would take into account the fact that it was a caretaker government that had taken the decision. Not without reason, the government cried foul. It protested that the Election Commission was trying to influence the decision of the court. It was open to the Election Commission to take its own decision in the matter, especially when, as some have argued, the caretakership nature of the government was not an issue before the court. It was open to it to move the court and ask it to decide the question. Why did it have to issue a Press note suggesting what the court should consider? The answer perhaps is the attack of constitutional influenza. And this leads us to the extension of the virus to the judiciary. The Bench that has been hearing the case has come out with the proposition that the telecom package be placed before Parliament for approval after the new Lok Sabha has been formed. In the meantime, the package could be implemented and the telecom operators required to give a legal undertaking that if Parliament rejected the package, they would not seek to enforce it. Here is the rub. Executive actions of the government are not necessarily voted on by Parliament. The question of questions is: can the judiciary set the Lok Sabha agenda in advance? Is the House bound to take notice of it? As far as the Constitution is concerned, there is complete separation between the functions of the judiciary and of Parliament. Neither can interfere with the proceedings of the other. The court’s solution may be guided by the best of motives, but then there is need for care all round. The telecom operators are reportedly amenable to the court’s suggestion. And the government welcomes it because it would blunt Opposition criticism. The BJP has a rosy view of its prospects of returning to power, but can that be a sound basis for a legal settlement? In any case, the financial institutions are having reservations on immediately funding the project. The objection of the financial institutions appears to be the court’s proposal that the NTP is vetted by Parliament. It is said that if the financial institutions do not help the industry by November, serious consequences would follow. The telecom companies too are having second thoughts, it appears, on withdrawing all pending litigation. It seems to me that in the last six months actions have been taken by the constitutional functionaries the consequences of which they could neither forsee nor control. President Narayanan may
be privately reflecting on the consequences of his
decision to ask Mr Vajpayee to take the vote of
confidence. The Election Commission may be privately
reflecting on its decision to hold elections in
September-October, not earlier. One suggestion at one
point of time was that it had not been properly briefed
about the weather. The Vajpayee government may be having
second thoughts on rushing with the telecom policy which
it can neither fully implement nor abandon. What a mess! |
“Two nations” in South
Africa EVEN a first-timer to South Africa will not fail to observe that on the roads of Johannesburg and Durban, nearly 80 per cent of the cars are being driven by the whites, 10 per cent by the Indian community and the rest by the Africans and the Coloureds (mixed population). Consider now the population statistics of the country: the whites are only 15 per cent of the population, the Indians 4 per cent and the Africans and Coloureds are as much as 80 per cent in a country of 40 million. This is an indication of the overwhelming prosperity of the white minority. Thus President Thabo Mbeki is not at all off the mark when he has been repeatedly saying that South Africa is a country of “two nations”, one of a prosperous white minority and the other of a large population of black and poor South Africans. The 15 per cent white minority owns nearly 80 per cent of the country’s wealth: they are in control of the best of land, the corporate sector and the higher echelons of the bureaucracy. All economic and social indicators of the country say that very little has changed in the first five years of new democratic South Africa under President Nelson Mandela in regard to the status of the Africans. Yet Africans are not so much troubled over the persistent inequalities because of a small mercy; they can now raise their head in pride that they are recognised as citizens of South Africa and they are not just Bantus as they were before 1994. A couple of years ago, Mr Mbeki’s office (then Deputy President) prepared a report on “Poverty and Inequality in South Africa”. The report bluntly revealed that as much as 61 per cent Africans are poor. The corresponding figures for other racial groups is: Coloureds 38 per cent, Indians 5 per cent and the whites 1 per cent. Figures for 1993 say that about 59 per cent of the national income went to the whites. The share of the African majority was 29 per cent, representing a white-black economic disparity of 11 to one. According to analysts, during the Mandela period, the economic lot of the Africans may have improved by just about 5 to 10 per cent. Thus if South Africa boasts of a relatively high per capita income, the average income of the blacks is only a 11th that of the whites. According to another survey, approximately 47.2 per cent black households live in poverty, compared to 2.1 per cent whites. Also 54.5 per cent of black families in rural areas are poor. Infrastructure developments to support daily life in the black townships are woefully inadequate, pointing out that no more than 16 per cent of black households in rural areas are connected to public electricity, with only half having access to enough water for their needs. In respect of “quality of life”, Mr Mbeki’s report noted that the same basic features of the “two nations” applied. About 85 per cent of all white households had a telephone connection as compared to 14 per cent in black households. Mr Mbeki’s report revealed that 50 per cent of the white households had an after-tax income of rands 60,000 (Rs 480,000) and more per annum in 1995, the corresponding figure for African households was just 6 per cent. The overwhelming majority of the unemployed poor (93 per cent) are Africans. Of those who are employed but earn less than rand 1,000 a month, 42 per cent are Africans, while whites who may belong to this category constitute 4 per cent. It is to be noted that chronic unemployment is the lot of the blacks in urban areas. And despite the lack of jobs, people continue to flow into urban areas to escape the low income and lack of employment opportunities in rural areas. Crime in South Africa makes the situation worse and more grim. The Mbeki report points out that Africans were 20 times more at risk from getting murdered than whites and 95 per cent of the victims in reported rape case were black women. This is hardly surprising since 75 per cent of the police stations continue to be in historically white areas. Like Mr Mandela, Mr Mbeki is concerned that while political liberation has been achieved, economically the black majority is still in chains. And redressing the economic disparity between the races is a major task of the government in Pretoria. For national reconciliation is not possible unless the injustices and disparities of the apartheid era are removed or gradually reduced. In order to redress the economic imbalance between whites and blacks, the government created the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to assist in its goal to alleviate the concentration of poverty among blacks, the majority of whom still live in slums. To assist the Pretoria government’s efforts, foreign governments, particularly from the Western industrialised countries, did make some aid available to South Africa for making RDP a success. Before the June 2 second
democratic election in South Africa, the ruling African
National Congress in its manifesto talked of having
started 500 new clinics, provided free medical care for
pregnant mothers and children under six, free meals for
five million school children and built 6,50,000 house
units. Besides this, thousands of rural South Africans
have enjoyed the benefit of electricity and clean
drinking water, which they never had before. Much has
been done under the RDP, but Mr Mbeki knows that much
more remains to be done. Many are the areas of
non-delivery. — IPA |
President
on board ONE of the very welcome features of the silent service was in the years gone by to carry VVIPs and to take them to other countries as well as to our own far-flung territories. We carried Jawaharlal Nehru to Indonesia in 1950 on the flagship Delhi. Accompanying him was his daughter Indira Gandhi and her two sons Rajiv and Sanjay. At an interesting naval ceremony, Neptune’s Court assembled on the quarter deck of Delhi and in the course of the usual speeches, Neptune was warned that in accordance with the Constitution of India, he should change his name to Varuna. Neptune’s Court then proceeded from the quarterdeck to the top of “A” turret accompanied by the Prime Minister and his party. In due course, the Prime Minister was brought before the Court and charged as follows. Firstly, he worked too hard, secondly, he had too many telephones on his desk, and thirdly, he delivered too many long speeches. With his usual charm and an infectious smile he accepted the sentence to the delight of the whole ship’s company! Dr Rajendra Prasad was our first President and Supreme Commander from 1950-62. He embarked on the Delhi in 1952 for a visit to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The story is interestingly chronicled in the brochure produced by the Western Naval Command when Delhi was decommissioned over 30 years ago. A marked feature is the colourful editing and compilation by the Gantzers. Ahead of the President had gone an advance party of civil servants determined to make sure that all would go well during the Rashtrapati’s sojourn. On reaching the island to be visited, the land-lubber instincts and fixed mind sets of our bureaucrats were shocked when they found that the nubile damsels were in the habit of going topless. This would never do! What would the President think? Hurriedly, they had blouses made for the young ladies-presumably by inviting tenders and issued careful instructions. Solemnly and with great thoroughness the local officials drilled the maidens in the strange custom till they were quite certain that the instructions had been understood by all. Came the great day, Delhi steamed into the bay. Boats went out to greet the flagship. The Rashtrapati embarked on his barge and the entire convoy raced for the island. Hurriedly the girls fell into line giggling at their unexpected raiments. The President landed and proceeded between the files of welcoming girls. More girls, unprepared ones, joined the ends of the files eager to see the great man. And then they realised they were uncovered. Panic! And so, as the benign President of India approached then, all the un-bloused girls shyly raised their skirts and covered their bosoms! Was the President
discomfited? Not on your life! He came from Bihar and in
Bihar some of the tribal maidens at the period of time,
went topless. Don’t we remember the old saying Honi
Soit Qui Mal Y Pense... (the shame be his who thinks ill
of it). We know that it’s all in the eye of the
beholder. Ah! But there was much to behold, much to
behold.... |
Towards a world “Bania Raj”
UNDER INDIA’S ancient division of labour, statecraft has been the exclusive preserve of the Kshatriyas. Even in those days, Banias alone were able to generate some surplus capital necessary for war efforts, construction and developmental activities. Throughout the 1960s, the Swatantra Party, the voice of free enterprise in those heady days of Nehruvian socialism, had warned of a disaster if the government took over the functions of the Banias, i.e. industry and business. It has been a direct attack on the public sector and nationalisation. What we witness today is a clean reversal of the roles. The Bania, a much more powerful business class – not caste — has begun increasingly taking over the functions of the state the world over. Right in India, the Prime Minister and economic ministers make announcements of public policies not in Parliament but at the conventions of business organisations like FICCI and CII. Often they are grilled and insisted on assurances on crucial policy issues. Even the Opposition leaders, including those from the Left, are obliged to register their presence at such assemblies. What is good for the business is good for the country. Business lobbying for individual firms may still be based on liaison and kickbacks. But global pressures have become more effective. Governmental defeatism and a sense of helplessness govern all economic decisions. Any adverse decision or concession is justified in the name of investors’ displeasure. Watch the telecom muddle. The Congress, the main Opposition party, opposes Atal Behari Vajpayee’s decision to favour the cellphone operators at a huge loss to the exchequer not on the basis of policy as such but the manner in which it has been done. The long hidden hand might force the Congress to do the same if it were at the helm of affairs. It is this sense of inevitability that has made the government blind to the latest moves by the multinational corporations to wrest unlimited powers from developing countries of the South, like India. Under the proposal, a ‘corporate bill of rights’ with a body of rules and disciplines to protect foreign investors and their investments is being crafted by the ‘rich nations club’. This is sought to be imposed on the South in the guise of the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The proposed investor-state mechanism of the MAI stipulates that foreign-based corporations would have the powers even to sue the governments directly for the alleged violations of the investment rules. Its implications on countries like India are obvious. When finally imposed on the world, it will vest the transnational corporations with ample powers to enforce their own rules over and above the sovereign powers of the respective states. The blueprint for what several NGOs and public spirited organisations in the USA call imposition of economic colonialism on the developing countries, was first drafted by the International Chamber of Commerce. The draft sought to grant more sovereign powers to the MNCs than even the local firms. Later the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the ‘rich nations club’ of 29 top industrial countries, began negotiating MAI. The original plan was to bring it back to the World Trade Organisation and through it impose the new regime on the developing countries. Last year, the OECD countries had conducted negotiations between themselves on MAI. They had also invited others outside to join them. But some of its own members had strong reservations, mainly due to the objections from their local firms who were apprehensive of the impact of such moves. Moreover, influential NGOs and civil society groups in OECD countries had launched a fierce campaign against MAI. Also, the sudden collapse of the currencies of Asian Tigers followed by their economic miseries raised further doubts about the acceptability of the new regime. The mass closure of factories, loss of jobs to millions of workers, suicides and deaths, skyrocketing prices, fall in wages of those who managed to gain some kind of employment, deserted dockyards and vacant markets had a severe psychological impact on the people all over the world. Before 1997, Asian Tigers have been touted as role models for all developing countries as Mianmar was the specimen of economic isolation. Even the ardent globalisers like the economic editors and their reporters had to grudgingly accept the truth that currency crisis there was primarily triggered by the speculators engaged in fly-by-night investments. The inability of the local governments to control the harmful movements of capital flows had made it worse. There was a sudden realisation about the dangers emanating from the MAI regimes which impose severe restrictions on any kind of regulation of capital in host countries. All this had put a break on the moves to impose MAI all over the world through the WTO. Now, in about three months, a ministerial committee of the WTO is scheduled to meet in Seattle to revive the issue of MAI. Prominent NGOs and civil society groups in the USA and many OECD countries are planning to launch massive protests during the meeting against the proposal. Strangely, the response in India to the moves by the ‘rich nations club’ has been rather muted. Rightly or wrongly, some even see a conspiracy of silence on the part of the government and the all-knowing corporate-controlled financial press. While the latter is torn between different corporate interests, the BJP government is apparently trying to hush up the whole issue as it otherwise would spark another tumultuous debate within the country. Understandably, the government fears that any public debate on an explosive issue like MAI is going to be on the lines of the anti-Dunkel protests. It is likely that even the RSS-controlled Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which has been effectively silenced by Vajpayee, might find another issue to embarrass the government. Apparently, the government’s soft-pedalling of the MAI controversy has kept the Indian NGOs, environmentalists and anti-enslavement groups have been kept in the dark. None of them, including the Left, have so far taken up the issue as they had done in the case of the Dunkel proposals. There have been little attempt to make it a serious national issue. As for the BJP government, apart from the fears of an angry public debate it is also avoiding any situation where it would have to displease the USA or other western powers. Interestingly, even the Indian corporate sector has not shown any enthusiasm for MAI. This has been in sharp contrast to their responses to all earlier globalisation programmes. This may be due to the fact that the Indian corporates can hardly make use of the sweeping privileges that MAI will give to the MNCs. According to the latest figures, only one Indian firm figures among the 500 giant companies the world over. Among this, there is not a single Indian private firm. This explains the limited scope for benefits from MAI to the Indian firms in other countries. Even without MAI, MNCs wield more economic and political clout than the vast majority of nation states in developing countries as well as the industrialised West. The number of MNCs has marked a 650 per cent increase in two decades. Tony Clarke calculates that 52 of the top 100 economies around the world are MNCs, and not nation states. Mitsubishi is bigger than Indonesia which is earth’s fourth-most populous country. The combined annual income of the biggest 200 corporations is greater than those of 182 nation states. These corporations are responsible for the livelihood of over four-fifths of humanity on this planet. UN Human Development Report says the 225 richest individuals on earth, most of whom heads of the powerful MNCs, have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of half of humanity. World’s 500 largest companies earned a total of 111,463 billion dollar revenue which would be 31 times India’s gross national income. Measured by sales, Reliance Industries, the largest private sector Indian company, is less than one-third of the size of the smallest company in Fortune 500. There have been revelations as to how the corporates with such overbearing powers, have already taken over democratic life in the West. According to a report, in capital cities of Europe, Japan and North America, MNCs have become sophisticated political machines. Armed with a battery of policy research institutes, big business lobbying machinery, legal and public relations firms and political advertising apparatus, lucrative, donations to the political parties, corporations are able to determine government legislation and policy making on a wide range of economic, social and environmental issues. Reports cite how through these processes, citizens’ basic rights have been hijacked by the corporate interests even while growing numbers of people and their associations have become politically disenfranchised. In the USA, corporations were also granted ‘eminent domain’ under the law, with the result that jury trials were eliminated for determining whether corporate practices cause harm or injury and, if so, what damages should be assessed. According to David Corten, a former World Bank official, the world is now ruled by a “global financial casino staffed by faceless bankers and hedge-fund speculators who operate in the shadowy world of global finance.” In 1992, financier George Soros, following a bet with then UK Prime Minister John Major, sold 10 billion dollar worth of British pounds on international money markets for a one billion dollar profit and single-handedly managed to force a devaluation of the pound. He had thus scuttled a new proposal for an exchange rate system in the European Union. Such is the power of the
new emerging ‘global casino’. At the moment,
opposition to MAI comes mainly from and within the
‘rich nations club’. Despite this, if they
succeed in imposing the new regime, it will amount to the
emergence of a colonial super structure over and above
the sovereign powers of nation states with special
diplomatic and judicial immunity to the transnationals. |
The Hindu-Muslim conference A strange fatality seems to be dogging the steps of the Nationalist Party in connection with the attempts that have been in progress in Bombay for some time with a view to settling outstanding national issues. The Swarajist Conference has already been postponed several times and even now is being held without the participation in it of the foremost leader of the party. And now the Hindu-Muslim Conference, which was to be held this week, has been postponed to an unspecified date next month because of the inability of Pandit Malaviya and Dr Ansari to attend the conference. The reason for this inability is not stated, but, however, good the reason, the fact itself will be generally regretted. If there is one matter
rather than another in which a conference of the leaders
is a matter of immediate urgency, that matter is the
Hindu-Muslim question. As long as that question is not
satisfactorily settled, political activities in the
country must remain largely in abeyance as they have been
for months now. |
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